Mind Over Matter?

[JuliaL]

[

I think consciousness of one form or another is in all animals from the 'lowest' to the 'highest'. Nor have I any difficulty in believing that a non-biological machine could be conscious. I read somewhere but I can't remember where that it can almost be implied by the 'informational' complexity of the data being integrated, and that the 'richness' of consciousness could be mathematically 'predicted' based on that. That theory really struck a chord with me.

I agree also that it is common, useful, and preserved through evolution. But my question in this thread is not whether it exists or not but whether it needs to have a 'visible' (or 'experiential') aspect in order to work... whether all its features could be handled 'under the hood' so to speak

I expect there will be arguments over the nature of consciousness even after the phenomenon has been exhaustively characterized, reproduced and even shared.  There are still arguments over the non/existence of the celestial beings that live in heavenly bodies and sing praises to God.  If Turing Church is correct and if brain function is computable, there should be no problem with simulating consciousness in a Turing complete machine (which we fundamentally have now, we just need bigger, faster ones) even if that takes a few trillion simulated neurons and their simulated support cells.  So far, there is no evidence that something other than wet chemistry is involved in the system under investigation.

Rather than 'coma' to describe a conscious person without I/O, I'd point to the (chilling) locked-in syndrome.  The best evidence that personhood continues during that condition comes from reports from people who've recovered.  It is possible that consciousness does disappear during this and the recollections of personal existence are actually from times around the fault rather than during the failure itself (like NDEs where faulty memories of being dead probably arise during the process of brain shutdown and reboot rather than during the flatline time.) Philosophers will continue to argue about the actual vs virtual existence of experience long after practical application of their conclusions have been mooted.  The ball exists?  The ball doesn't exist? The play is at second, throw the ball!