(September 1, 2021 at 5:03 pm)HappySkeptic Wrote: Perhaps I am a functionalist. The senses have to perceived in some way. They have to illicit some response from the conscious mind to be part of our experience. I just don't see the magic in it. Again, experience is a dynamic process. Someone may look at what parts of the brain light up when we see (or imagine) red as opposed to blue, but that is like trying to infer the full experience of a baseball game from examining the skid marks on the infield.
I don't think there is anything magical about consciousness. But it is a mystery. For example, some people think that a computer with sufficient complexity might become conscious. Is that how consciousness works? We don't know. What if it is just something related to biological entities? Then the question is: why? What is it about biological entities that produces consciousness?
Consciousness is a mundane thing. Nothing magical about it. But there is something about it we don't quite understand. Maybe something fundamental to reality. And those sorts of things get philosophers very interested. If we knew, for example, that a computer of sufficient complexity would or would not be conscious, that'd be a different story. But we have no idea.
