On naturalism and consciousness

[bennyboy]

So the brain doesn't have the property of mind? Hey, that's what I said!

Thats a strawman.

Yeah, I misread your last statement. I'll try again.

No you can't because that would be a fallacy of division. The collection of parts having a property doesn't mean the individual parts also have that property.

I didn't say that parts have the properties of the things that supervene on them. I said that supervenience is a chain, and that all things ultimately supervene on an unknown quantity.

In the case of supervened properties which generalize to multiple mechanisms, then the mechanisms should not be said to be the cause of the properties. The more general principle which underlies them all must be said to be the cause. In the case of movies, for example, movies piggyback on many different media. The common cause for all are the ideas and artistic sensibilities of the people who captured and edited the movie. Casablanca is all about the creators, and the medium is irrelevant.

Let's say that it is found, as Rhythm claims, that any mechanism consisting of logic gates, if sufficiently complex, is conscious. In that case, it's not very useful to say a computer creates consciousness, or a brain does, or a series of pneumatic tubes to. The common cause, i.e. the one that is both required and sufficient, would be the gate.