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

[pocaracas]

That's not what I said, and no, I wouldn't expect such a thing.
Gray scale, fading to darkness while there are still some structures (as in lots and lots of neurons) connected and ticking... Ever heard of Alzheimer's?

Yes, and it's kind of what I have in mind. In this case, the function of the mind deteriorates along with the brain. Since I'm investigating Chas's idea that mind is a function of complexity, and since the deterioration of brain function in Alzheimer's is an example of exactly that, I want to know at exactly what point there is no longer anything there.

So, our best available "evidence" of this effect seems to happen to people who suffer from Alzheimer's, but this disease attacks mostly the brain areas dedicated to memory, not so much for the actual functioning of consciousness.... so we don't really have much evidence of what you're asking.
We can conjecture, based on what we see happening to Alzheimer's patients.... and that is a slow decline in memories, never quite reaching zero memory, before the patient suffers some terminal malady, often from the failure of some autonomous system that also gets affected by the disease.

I think even after a person forgets their family, or their own name, or even that they are a human being, there is still "something there." They are moving down that gray scale toward a kind of raw, contentless state. And yet, they still have neuronal activity, chemical activity, atomic and subatomic activity. We still haven't identified the specific subtrate that is minimally sufficient and necessary for there to be "something there" rather than complete oblivion.

No, we haven't identified it... and I anticipate that the technology for such determination might be quite a bit far off.

But do remember, like I said above, Alzheimer's is not the best way to approach the problem of consciousness, as it affects an area of the brain that is mostly connected to storage of information, rather than the processing of that information. I don't know if the processing is done on the same area, or not, but it seems that the consensus states that it is not. And we can see an Alzheimer's patient processing the little information he has... little as it is, it usually brings about confusion and frustration. Clear hints that consciousness is still there.