Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[polymath257]

I think that is one of the main questions:
Which jobs that the consciousness do? Which jobs are handled by the brain?:
1. Storing memories of your childhood (brain or consciousness?)
2. Waking up in the morning (brain or consciousness?)
3. Taking the signal coming from the optic nerves and processing it, segmenting components, identifying objects (brain or consciousness?)
4. Feeling that the self exists (brain or consciousness?)
5. Feeling love (brain or consciousness?)
6. Appreciating beautiful poetry (brain or consciousness?)

I would say that with the exception of 4 (though I'm not too sure and need to think about this better), none of these items require consciousness. But it depends on what you mean by such things as "feeling love" and "appreciating". After all, a chat bot can easily be programmed to feel, or at least act like they're feeling. But it's a very superficial sense of the word that is qualitatively different from the phenomenal sense. Expressing words of love is different from the "I can feel my heart beating really fast" kind of love.  

And if the circuitry is detecting and processing the 'feeling of love', then it *is* the feeling of love in the first person.

Is there a location where the consciousness is plugged into the brain? Can it be disengaged?

We don't know the full picture. That's the challenge. What is going on exactly when we experience the things that we do in a way that it seems difficult (maybe almost impossible, if not impossible) to directly code into a typical computer program?

I really don't see what's supposed to be impossible about this. It happens to one individual, so it is first person for that individual and third person for others.

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And a robot with an appropriate optical aparatus would also detect the colors, shapes, and structures. It would also be able to process the scene from a (computed) other point of view.

Words cause a lot of confusion, especially when it comes to debating the topic of consciousness.

What do you mean by "detect" and "point of view" here? Do you mean in a first-person kind of sense? If so, sure, I'll grant that it's possible. But the hard problem is still there.

Where is the hard problem. Yes, it is first person from the point of view of the circuitry that detects things. I really don't see the issue.

If you 'zoom in' on a digital picture, you do not get the detector, you get the information from that detector. That doesn't mean the picture wasn't produced from the activity of the detectors.

To be able to 'see' corresponds to activity in the visual cortex of your brain. The 'pixels' come from the different receptors in the eye, so there is a limit to which you can 'zoom' that is dictated by the structure of the eye. So, yes, you *do* get the information from individual receptors in the eye when you zoom in enough. These receptors link to neurons to send the information to the brain.

This is very similar to the way you get a single pixel corresponding to a single detector in a digital camera.

So, yes, in that sense you *do* get photoreceptors (in the eye) when you zoom in.

Ok, I'm confused.

Let's go back to the air analogy you brought up earlier.

Air is a mixture of gases. You zoom in and you get to see individual particles comprising the various gas molecules.

In the case of the image "in the brain", if you zoom in enough, you're saying you end up seeing photoreceptors.

No, I see the information from a single receptor. Just like if you zoom in on a digital picture, you get the information from a single detector.

So therefore, when you say consciousness is the activity of the neurons, you do not mean that in the same sense as air being the mixture of gases or temperature being the average kinetic energy of molecules. You mean it in the sense that it is a product of the activity of the neurons but it is something else. Is that correct?

I was pointing out that it is *logically possible* for air not to be a mixture. You seem to be focused on logical possibility as the standard.

The better analogy is that of temperature. There is no logical requirement that what we measure as temperature is the result of molecular motion. But, in fact, it is the *product* of molecular motion. Talking about temperature and talking about molecular motion are the *same thing* in our universe, just from different perspectives.

Analogously, the activity of neurons and consciousness is simply the same thing in this universe, but from different perspectives (that from the outside and that internally).

If so, let's go with that. How do you get the first-person projection "in your brain" happening as a result of the activity of the neurons?

It is first person in the brain because it is happening to that brain and not another (where it would be third person).

It seems to me that a zombie could do all of these things just as easily as anyone else with a brain.

By definition, per the thought experiment, it cannot.

And the question is whether that thought experiment makes any sense at all. And, from what I have said, it seems less and less reasonable to think zombies are possible in this universe. And that means that consciousness is a physical phenomenon.

in which case, I am even more confused.

What is stopping advanced robots from experiencing qualia? It is not by definition that robots lack such experiences.[/quote]

And what is preventing the brains of supposed zombies from experiencing consciousness? The question is whether it is even possible to have the complex interactions that come from having a brain identical to a conscious human and still not have consciousness. From what I have seen, there is no way to prevent it and every reason to think it is necessary in this universe.