[ConfucianNardin]

No, the issue is with the very premise, then.

It is not clear that consciousness necessarily only emerges from a neurochemical process.

What was basically said was "We do not know for certain that it is this neurochemical process that accounts for consciousness. Isn't it reasonable to suppose that we might encounter things that actually are conscious, but whose consciousness is not accounted for by the same property (neruochemical) of the underlying process."

I'm not sure that stated premise is very useful, since it borders on the tautological.

The dog (or even a human doing some task) is akin to an intricate state machine whose next state depends on the current state and its environment. Just like the spinning top. For each of those we modify the lower level mechanisms to effect a different high level behavior. Changing the thing in the former case (Cocaine/neurosurgery) or its environment (steal the bone). Changing the thing in the latter case (cutting out part of the spinning-top) or its environment (carving the surface it spins on).

The difference in the two cases being the number of intermediate steps (or abstraction layers if you will) between the high level behavior and the low level mechanisms from which it emerges, and the complexity of the emergent behvaior.

Illusion: the low level mechanisms (biochemical or otherwise) that, using the current state and the environment, transition to the next state, and in the process "present" an experience that we interpret as ourselves thinking, making decisions, taking skillful actions and so on.

If we observe the target phenomenon "skillful action" we discover that all known occurrences are biological. This doesn't really preclude the possibility of other mechanisms producing it.

To modify the behavior of a machine, you cannot use cocaine. That's because the machine has no receptors for the comprising molecules - not because it has no thoughts. You could instead modify the logic gates it possesses instead by applying a certain pattern of electromagnetic radiation which would cause interference, just like the cocaine interferes with the normal workings of the brain.

[mjburgess]

Scientific claims are not necessities. I'm not saying I can prove consciousness is a biological process only that its overwhelming reasonable to suppose so.

Emergence is a result of causal interactions between parts of a system being different than the internal causal interaction within one part. It doesnt mean "complexity" and it really has nothing to do with a machine.

The oscillating electric field acquires no new causal interactions as the program complexity increases. Adding more H20 to a single H20 creates new causal interactions (eg. wetness).

> That's because the machine has no receptors for the comprising molecules - not because it has no thoughts

Right, so you're supposing a contrary entirely bizarre ontological view: that thoughts are something independent of a biological process.

Of all the known things in the universe which think, to remove their nerves is to destroy their capacity to think. I cannot see any reason to suppose thinking is not merely their activity.

[ben_w]

> Of all the known things in the universe which think, to remove their nerves is to destroy their capacity to think. I cannot see any reason to suppose thinking is not merely their activity.

You appear to be using circular reasoning. You assert that only biological-neuron entities are intelligent, use this assertion to create the set of intelligent entities, and then say that this is valid because to remove the neurons in those entities also removes their intelligence.

Indeed, it does — but then I get to assert that only silicon-logic-gate entities are intelligent, because their ability to process sensory inputs and translate this into signal outputs goes away when you remove their doped silicon wafers. It doesn’t help.

[mjburgess]

It would be circular if it were an argument. I haven't made an argument for it only offered it as the start of our scientific investigation. All observations of brute fact, phrased as arguments, are circular -- because the universe goes unargued for and merely exists.

What I mean is this:

You and I are having a conversation about consciousness. To do this scientifically we're going to have to point out those things in the universe that we're talking about. (We cannot begin, as socrates thought, with definitions because we dont know them yet).

So I shall collect for you all the things we have been talking about when we have said "this is conscious!". And you do the same. And my claim is that everything in this group is in this group... because ... it has a nervous system.

That is a hypothesis. My view is that this hypothesis is true and extremely well-evidence. My view is further that the only thing you can add to this group without a nervous system is something of pure imagination -- a cartoon character.

This is possible for any group: I draw a golden rabbit speaking to a silver duck. There are no such things because ducks cannot be both alive and made of gold -- as a brute fact about our universe that at its base causal interactions only play out in that way.

To believe that an electrified piece of metal could ever belong in the group of things united by their common feature "consciousness" is profound bizarre to me: what exactly is that thing meant to possess that I have?

Of what do I have when I am hungry and think of food that a piece of silicon may have? I dont know what that it, but it seems to throw away all known neuroscience to suppose it exists.

That is it not merely a cartoon fantasy, that really, the thing that makes me conscious is some peculiar abstract property of me that current running around a wire can also instance.

I have grave suspicions that neuroscientists will ever find that I possess this "structure", not least, because modifications to the way I think are easily done by insufflating cocaine (or whatever else). A drug which operates biochemically and yet modifies thought.

I'm not sure how a chemical modification to thought makes sense if the latter is an abstract property.

[ben_w]

I don’t think I follow you.

> So I shall collect for you all the things we have been talking about when we have said "this is conscious!". And you do the same. And my claim is that everything in this group is in this group... because ... it has a nervous system.

That would be great if we were in 1930 and asking which pre-existing creatures are conscious, but you are asserting that no members of a group which was created to implement all the forms of intelligence that have yet been made quantifiable (as opposed to qualitative judgements of intelligence) are in your set.

I assert that you have a list, and that you have merely defined your words to be a shorthand for that list, rather than made a hypothesis that those words are descriptive properties that allow us to even ask if other things can be in that list, nor to ask if all members of that list truly belong there. (I.e. “is a dog intelligent?”)

For example, you now assert the list is synonymous with “nervous system” (previously “conscious”, previously “intelligent”) without explaining why a digital- or semiconductor-based nervous system would fail your test.

> To believe that an electrified piece of metal could ever belong in the group of things united by their common feature "consciousness" is profound bizarre to me: what exactly is that thing meant to possess that I have?

That’s my question, too. What is that thing which you are meant to posess which supposedly cannot exist on artificial substrates? Why is a biological neuron fundamentally better at thinking than a computer simulation of a biological neuron?

Still, I’m not sure I actually follow what you’re trying to say, because your last three paragraphs seem to be distorted by either autocomplete or google translate. Either way I just cannot extract your point from them.

[ConfucianNardin]

I do not find it bizarre to pose that it could be possible to use another set of primitives (than biochemical ones) to create something analogous to the higher level structure in a human brain that produces thoughts.