Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[GrandizerII]

I don't see anything incoherent about it, so it's not logically impossible. After all, consciousness is not one and the same with the arrangement of atoms.

There is a small problem there and it has nothing to do with logic. It has more to do with what exists and what doesn’t exist.

I explained it to people in another thread. I will do it here since I love explaining this:
1. Let’s say I have a CD of Win XP. The CD is made of polycarbonate plastic with its aluminium layer, with its pits.
Is the CD Win XP? Or is the CD polycarbonate plastic with its aluminium layer.
What if I melt down the CD. Where did Win XP go?
Does Win XP still exist or did I destroy it? Did it obey the law of conservation of information?

All the atoms are still there. Law of conservation of matter.

In other words, software is not a physical thing.

When you load the contents of that CD into a computer, physical processes occur whereby eventually the OS UI for XP is then displayed on the screen. Now what part exactly is Windows XP does not ultimately matter. However you define Windows XP, whether in an abstract sense or by equating it to the UI on the screen or even the contents of the CD, there is no "hard problem" here.

2.  Let’s say I have a book about Mickey Mouse.
The book contains a lot of pages with words.
The words are printed (printing machine ink).
What if I melt down the book. Where did the story about Mickey Mouse go?

Can the story exist without the paper and ink? If yes, where is the story and what is it doing?

All the atoms are still there. Law of conservation of matter.

Simplistically speaking, the story exactly as depicted in the book went along with the book. But that's because we are applying the label "story" to the contents of that book (the collection of words and expressions that help us to understand the settings, the plot, and such). And once again, there is no "hard problem" here.

3. I melt you down. What happens to your consciousness?
If it still exists, where are you and what are you doing?

All the atoms are still there. Law of conservation of matter.

Depends on what the exact relationship between brain and consciousness is. I would say that it most probably fades away with the brain.

But not sure now what the exact point you were trying to make here?

Seems like you were trying to make the case that consciousness is like Windows XP and story in the previous two illustrations? But I don't agree that those two analogies hold, for reasons I already stated earlier.

What does it mean for my experiences to be insufficent? If it's out there in my face, it's an experience I'm having. And that's all that takes to know I'm having an experience. Sure, I could be vividly seeing more stuff than I am right now, but I'm still vividly seeing stuff.

How do you think of consciousness? For you, is it a binary thing. You either have conscious or not?

Or maybe you think of it as something gradual. So, right now, you are at level 1 and you experience the flavor of glucose and you love it. Then, you want twice as much glucose and you are at level 2 and you are experience a lot more. Then, you gain the ability to taste salt and you are at level 20. Then, you have the ability to feel temperature and now you are at level 50.

What do you mean by "experience the flavor" (at level 1)? I just want to be clear we're not conflating first-person perspective kind of experience with experience in the third-person sense. Am I, at level 1, experiencing the flavor in a first-person perspective?

As to your question, I would say gradual, but so long as we're clear that we're not conflating different senses of consciousness.

Even if consciousness is based on a certain circuit or program, it's clearly not the same as that circuit or program. They're qualitatively two different things. Consciousness is not an abstract label we're applying to circuitry.

So, if we have an electric current in a circuit and I connect an ammeter, the meter measures a current of 5 A.
The 5 A is not the electrons going through the wire. 5 A is a representation.
So yes, 5 A and the electrons going through the wire are 2 different things.

Great, so it's just a label of measurement we apply to the activity of the electrons. No hard problem.

Consciousness must be something that you are applying to something.
If your goal is to find consciousness, then you have to know what you are looking for.
If you aren’t looking for a circuit, then what are you looking for?
(Note: I’m not saying that all circuits have consciousness.)

You already see it (as you alluded to in prior post). That's consciousness. Also, take care not to beg the question in favor of scientism.

As far as the adding is concerned, this is the work of the hardware in your example.

No one's saying that the ability to add is inexplicable. So I'm not sure this is a good example.

You seem to think consciousness is a label we apply to the activity of specific circuitry, in the same way you can point to specific circuitry and say "that's addition". That's not the case.

Well, I suppose that the consciousness can do addition. Do you think that consciousness can perform addition operations? Or is that ability only reserved to the hardware side?

Well, it doesn't seem like consciousness is required for addition.

I think that is one of the main questions:
Which jobs that the consciousness do? Which jobs are handled by the brain?:
1. Storing memories of your childhood (brain or consciousness?)
2. Waking up in the morning (brain or consciousness?)
3. Taking the signal coming from the optic nerves and processing it, segmenting components, identifying objects (brain or consciousness?)
4. Feeling that the self exists (brain or consciousness?)
5. Feeling love (brain or consciousness?)
6. Appreciating beautiful poetry (brain or consciousness?)

I would say that with the exception of 4 (though I'm not too sure and need to think about this better), none of these items require consciousness. But it depends on what you mean by such things as "feeling love" and "appreciating". After all, a chat bot can easily be programmed to feel, or at least act like they're feeling. But it's a very superficial sense of the word that is qualitatively different from the phenomenal sense. Expressing words of love is different from the "I can feel my heart beating really fast" kind of love.

Is there a location where the consciousness is plugged into the brain? Can it be disengaged?

We don't know the full picture. That's the challenge. What is going on exactly when we experience the things that we do in a way that it seems difficult (maybe almost impossible, if not impossible) to directly code into a typical computer program?

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And a robot with an appropriate optical aparatus would also detect the colors, shapes, and structures. It would also be able to process the scene from a (computed) other point of view.

Words cause a lot of confusion, especially when it comes to debating the topic of consciousness.

What do you mean by "detect" and "point of view" here? Do you mean in a first-person kind of sense? If so, sure, I'll grant that it's possible. But the hard problem is still there.

If you 'zoom in' on a digital picture, you do not get the detector, you get the information from that detector. That doesn't mean the picture wasn't produced from the activity of the detectors.

To be able to 'see' corresponds to activity in the visual cortex of your brain. The 'pixels' come from the different receptors in the eye, so there is a limit to which you can 'zoom' that is dictated by the structure of the eye. So, yes, you *do* get the information from individual receptors in the eye when you zoom in enough. These receptors link to neurons to send the information to the brain.

This is very similar to the way you get a single pixel corresponding to a single detector in a digital camera.

So, yes, in that sense you *do* get photoreceptors (in the eye) when you zoom in.

Ok, I'm confused.

Let's go back to the air analogy you brought up earlier.

Air is a mixture of gases. You zoom in and you get to see individual particles comprising the various gas molecules.

In the case of the image "in the brain", if you zoom in enough, you're saying you end up seeing photoreceptors. So therefore, when you say consciousness is the activity of the neurons, you do not mean that in the same sense as air being the mixture of gases or temperature being the average kinetic energy of molecules. You mean it in the sense that it is a product of the activity of the neurons but it is something else. Is that correct?

If so, let's go with that. How do you get the first-person projection "in your brain" happening as a result of the activity of the neurons?

As for zombies, this above is an example of what they're lacking.

It seems to me that a zombie could do all of these things just as easily as anyone else with a brain.

By definition, per the thought experiment, it cannot.

As for robots, they might experience qualia. I never said it's not possible for them.

in which case, I am even more confused.

What is stopping advanced robots from experiencing qualia? It is not by definition that robots lack such experiences.