Does it make sense to speak of "Universal Consciousness" or "Universal Intelligence"?

[bennyboy]

Now, at some point, you are going to argue that our gradually degraded brain is no longer capable of sustaining sufficient complexity to be said to be mindful, right? So let me ask you a question-- is there a specific line at which this will be said, or is it a gradual degradation that extends right down to a minimallly sufficient level of complexity?

Neither. Consciousness is likely a product of multiple systems working together. If you remove components, you impair consciousness (e.g. cortical color blindness or hemineglect). If you disable the integration, the parts may remain, but the whole will be degraded (eg. split-brain subjects, blindsight).

Okay, so in this integration, we are now moving from the brain as a whole to a collection of subsystems, each of which contributes some component of the human experience. But each brain part consists of multiple nerve bundles, which in turn consist of (obviously) multiple nerves. Let's apply the same thought experiment to each of them, and start yanking neurons. Is there a kind of "critical" mass at which you pull just one more neuron and can suddenly non-arbitrarily announce "now there is no more vision," or "now the person has a complete lack of face recognition" or whatever? Or is it just a gray scale from full functioning down to non-functioning?