Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

Yes, I feel like I am experiencing things and experiencing things is used as evidence by me to conclude that I am experiencing things, that I have consciousness.
That evidence is not accessible to you.
So, I know what you are talking about.

I'm pretty sure you do. I'm not a solipsist, lol.

Why not? It is logically consistent.

There is this assumption that it is possible to make a perfect copy of a human, where every atom is in the right place yet it is lacking the “soul”.
And you are calling that the zombie.
Why do you think that it is possible to have an atomic copy of a human that is lacking the consciousness, the soul?

I don't see anything incoherent about it, so it's not logically impossible. After all, consciousness is not one and the same with the arrangement of atoms.

Is it logically possible that water NOT be H2O? Yes, of course it is.

Is it logically possible that air NOT be a mixture of different gases? Yes, of course it is.

Is it logically possible that COVID NOT be caused by a virus? Yes, of course it is.

All this shows is that logical possibility is not strongly related to what is *actually* the case.

The other issue that I think polymath257 was trying to raise is that maybe your senses are fooling you. Maybe your experiences are insufficient and you don’t qualify to get the certificate of “This pile of atoms has consciousness”. Maybe no human is qualified to get that certificate.

What does it mean for my experiences to be insufficent? If it's out there in my face, it's an experience I'm having. And that's all that takes to know I'm having an experience. Sure, I could be vividly seeing more stuff than I am right now, but I'm still vividly seeing stuff.

How do you know that you are actually 'experiencing' something?

It depends. First, you have to know what you are looking for. A good definition of consciousness is needed.
I think that definition will have to be based on a certain circuit or program.
If we decide that we are looking for a certain super complex circuit and we find such a circuit in an ant’s brain, we can certify that the ant has consciousness.

Even if consciousness is based on a certain circuit or program, it's clearly not the same as that circuit or program. They're qualitatively two different things. Consciousness is not an abstract label we're applying to circuitry.

No, but like other things, it might well be once we understand it. We don't understand consciousness well right now. It certainly seems logically possible that it is *really* a certain property of circuitry and we just have to figure that out. You know, like we had to figure out that air is a mixture of gases.

For example, let’s forget this consciousness thing in this example.
Let’s say I am looking for an ADDER circuit.
I can open up an kC chip and inspect the connections between the transistors. If I find a circuit that matches up with the design of an ADDER circuit, I can certify: “This chip poses the ability to add two 32 bit integers”.
I can look at pieces of rocks, wood and everything and look for ADDER circuits.

But, if someone claims that adding integers is done by a soul.... what the heck is a soul? What I am looking for?

As far as the adding is concerned, this is the work of the hardware in your example.

No one's saying that the ability to add is inexplicable. So I'm not sure this is a good example.

You seem to think consciousness is a label we apply to the activity of specific circuitry, in the same way you can point to specific circuitry and say "that's addition". That's not the case.

How do you know that is not the case? We have not yet 'opened up the circuitry' to that degree at this point. But there is every indication that the circuitry is doing everything we associate with minds and consciousness.

I don’t know. At this point in time, the brain looks like a certain circuitry and I guess, when there is a certain complexity to it or a certain circuitry, there is this phenomenon of “feeling like you are special”. Along with that, there is abstract thought, the ability to develop a language, the ability to ask “Why” questions and be curious.

And there's this unexplained capacity to vividly experience things. Try to imagine how you can get to that from neural activity. There's clearly a gap there that is being left unexplained.

I experience something and not you because it happens in my brain and not yours. It really is that simple, I think.

Consciousness is an information process (I know that I have seen something). I see no reason that cannot be the result of the working of circuitry. I really don't see the 'explanatory gap' that is anything about the 'explanatory gap' of why mass produces gravity.