On naturalism and consciousness

[The Grand Nudger]

It seems to me that you've offered an account for the easy part. I wasn't disputing that emotions and sensations in the central nervous system are physical components reducible to chemical formulas.

Then current physical theories handily account for "consciousness", it's constituent components, etc - it makes no sense to claim otherwise after such a caveat. Maybe they don;t account for a convincing human mind and personality, so be it (I wouldn't agree or disagree on that...in totality, lol). I would hesitate to call that the easy part, btw, may have taken us a quarter of a million years just to figure it out, after all - at the low end, 50k.

The relevant component that your suggested equation does not address is the "I feel emotions." Why should certain biological functions be accompanied by a conscious subject which experiences said functions?

The circuit "experiences" data flow as well, that's the traveling signal and data regarding that signal (which is a service that a system can provide architecturally, without any need for high lvl language). Self reference and experience are interchangeable in computational theory - because the one can provide the effect of the "other".

I would ask you, why shouldn't they? Should they have "objective experiences" while connected to their nervous systems and sense apparatus - not someone else's? I wouldn't expect that. I would expect any system attached to your eyes to describe something seen, subjectively, by those eyes - not by anothers. So there goes -all- the mystery in half the question. Why should conscious subjects be? Because certain arrangements of matter can act as logic gates (the basis of computational theory). So if the universe we live in allows it, but limits it - and what we see conforms to what the universe allows, and it's limits.........I suppose it just doesn't seem like such a hardball question for -any- theory of mind from that POV.

I still hold that a machine can, and at this point does, operate without having any conscious experience of said operations,

As do I.

unless your suggestion is that the experiences we have in mind are nothing more than certain automatons such as "Output 1 at io address "x" - write to register A."

"Nothing more than" gives it the short shrift. It would still be amazing. Automation doesn't mean easy or simple. I don't actually think that they're completely automated either. Plenty seems to be (whens the last time you told your heart to beat?) but not -everything- seems to be.

If this is all consciousness really is, I would simply want to ask what gives nerve cells in the brain such a privilege that others throughout the body are not accompanied by? As silly as it may sound, why doesn't my heart think?

Nuerons don't "think" either under the computational system. Only systems that can be shown to have computational ability. 1 nueron, meh, an eyespot...maybe...., 80 billion.....a human brain. If something "thinks" some other way - we truly have no idea how (including hearts, or any other object traditionally thought of as non-thinking.) The heart does make a gate, but it definitely doesn't make enough gates, nor do the gates possess the raw power that gates composed of nuerons would possess, if they are "doing computation".

And also, to slightly detour and indulge in an additional philosophical question this raises, on what basis do you think can we really deem any such automations as "rational" or "irrational"?

On their ability to operate within the rules delineated by the system which describes what is or is not rational. Gates and computation are all about logic. From a (current)machine standpoint, it's entirely rational (it may not be with regards to human beings). I think that it would be difficult to classify any such automation as irrational if it resembled current machine architecture. We're actually not entirely certain that biological architecture is thusly arranged. We see that it could be, we don't know that it -is-.

Is it their ability to "copy" reality accurately, or is it their success at survival (though this was certainly synonymous at one time, I don't think the same is necessarily always the case today)?

I gave the criteria above which applies to any thinking thing. I'm not sure what value accuracy or survival has in a vacuum, certainly, with regards to what may be called rational accuracy might apply. Accuracy is the soundness component, after all. Survival, though, for a machine, seems off the mark. We know that we engage in alot of irrational shit based upon a survival advantage. Rational/irrational - neither matters with regards to survival in and of themselves. We have to describe an environment - and that environment might favor one or the other. We can't call ourselves rational -based solely on survival-, so why would we extend that claim to a machine?

(my list of book reccomendations and people I need to shoot files to is long, I'll give it a look, but no promises...- I still owe Whatevs some Karen Armstrong that I haven't yet loaded to my new pc, I think that as far as books go, Dennets are the newest from that camp that I'm aware of - that I would recommend, probably more recent papers from other researchers - a few have been linked throughout the last two consciousness threads)