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

[bennyboy]

Have I at any point showed incredulity that brains can give rise to mind? I don't think so.

Why is there subjective awareness, in a universe which is supposedly composed only of physical interactions? Why shouldn't even human beings be able to take in data, process it, and output a behavior, without ever actually experiencing this process?

I see.

You are quoting something from an earlier context. The past couple pages, I've been operating with it given that brains make minds, i.e. I'm looking at the OP through the perspective of physical monism. Here's a summary of the progression:

1) (original) It is not knowable whether any physical system, including other people, has qualia, because the qualia aren't accessible, and because brain function (with or without actual experience of qualia) is sufficient to explain behaviors. Therefore, the science of mind is rooted in a philsophical assumption, not an observable reality.
2) (later) GIVEN THAT a person with a brain who seems to experience qualia really does (and doesn't just seem to), it is still not knowable whether the existence of some form of mind is local only to complex brain structure and function, or is generalizable to simpler physical exchanges of information (like a single photon from a distant star being absorbed by an atom, for example).
3) In discussion of brain parts, I'm trying to define how precisely we can narrow down the relationship of "the brain" (really a name for a lot of separate parts with different effects on experience) to the existence (not the content) of qualia. What minimal neural system would be sufficient for the existence of the most simple "mind" or experience?

If you want me to present a single thesis, I'll take my stand on this question, which seems to be unanswerable:

-How, non-arbitrarily, can we determine that a physical system has qualia?

Nobody has yet given even a plausible answer to this question. And until we answer it, there's really no good answer to the OP.