(August 31, 2014 at 9:21 pm)bennyboy Wrote: My question is still this: what separates any complex physical process, which necessarily can be seen as having inputs and outputs, from an official, mind-producing "gate"?
A "gate"?
It seems that's your greatest hurdle, here... one single "gate", one single neuron can't do much more than react to some input. Perhaps insects and other very small animals operate like this... a particular sensory input triggers a handful of neurons which result in a particular response.
Like it's been said too often in this thread (and other like it) a thinking mind is probably an emergent property of many, many, many, many such "gates" working together. Instead of a direct trigger from sensory "data" to action, we have several intermediary steps which aid in the decision to act... some don't even lead to any action...
