[tsimionescu]

There is nothing in need of explanation. Consciousness is what consciousness does.

Just like a computer can sort numbers, a human brain can produce thoughts and speech, and describe itself to itself, which we call consciousness.

A machine that would both (a) have enought information about the working of the world, and (b) have the right algorithms for predicting how to influence human beings and other conscious animals would, I believe, be able to turn this same predictive ability on itself and come up with what we call "conscious experiences".

While I can't claim it's impossible that there is more to it than that (perhaps only beings imbued with transcendent souls by a god can actually have conscious experience - that is not ultimately disprovable, after all), I also don't see any reason to imagine that there MUST be something like "consciousness" that is apart from complex computation.

[plutonorm]

I used to agree. But when we examine the nature of our own experience there is clearly something additional that is not described by matter interacting with itself. The only solution that makes sense to me is that matter has intrinsic consciousness that varies by degree as we span from atom to brain. Otherwise you have to imagine that the feeling that accompanies our day to day experience arises from nothing out of the matter from which we are constructed. That seems more magical than adding consciousness in at the base level as an axiom.

[tsimionescu]

Does one particle have a temperature as well? Does matter have transistor-ness or Linux-ness?

Computations emerge from physical laws. If consciousness is "just" a complex computation, then it can emerge by the exact same process as Linux emerges from electrons and rock.

I will also note that, whatever else it means, consciousness implies some kind of identity - this human vs that human, this rock not that rock. But, this means that there can be no intrinsic physical property related to consciousness at the elementary particle level, as all electrons are perfectly identical, all protons are perfectly identical and so on. If electrons were to have some property of identity, some minimal quantum of consciousness, and so if individual electrons were different from one another, quantum mechanical statistics would look entirely differently and so the world would be entirely different.

Of course, you can still ascribe some non-physical, transcendental concept of consciousness to each electron, a soul of its own, as arbitrarily complex as you want to believe it, and there will never be any way to prove or disprove it's existence.

[plutonorm]

Temperature is an emergent phenomena, it is a value that describes the bulk behaviour of atoms.

But the feeling of something is a different thing entirely, it is an entirely different category of thing, it isn't a number, it isn't a thing. Do what I said in the first instance, pinch yourself. Feel the sensation, appreciate that there is a thing that it is like to experience the sensation. Then try to understand how the experience can arise from the matter. When you argue this point entirely within the confines of the abstract machine of scientific reason then you lose connection with the only piece of information that you can ever be certain of: That things feel like something, qualia is real. All other things that you may think about the world are guesses.

On your second point, I believe that the physical world is entirely an expression of consciousness. So it follows that the study of physics is the study of consciousness from an external viewpoint. The action of consciousness is physics from the external viewpoint and what we feel is what physics feels like from the inside. So if quantum mechanics proves that there is no identity to this electron rather than that electron, then it follows that this electron has the same consciousness as that electron. Because fundamentally matter and consciousness are the same thing.

When you take a strong materialist line you are disagreeing with a great number of highly influential and deep thinkers with academic credentials as long as your arm. You are also arguing against one of the favoured viewpoints of contemporary philosophers.

[tsimionescu]

The position you're describing is either solipsistic (I am the only thing that exists, all else is illusion before me) or it is religious (we are al Brahman, the division of the world into things is Maya, illusion).

I fully agree that there is no way to prove this position is wrong, but I think you also have to accept that you can't prove that materialism is wrong. I would say materialism is more useful than solipsism or transcendentalism, but this is a subjective assessment.

[plutonorm]

You need to read into the topic, your arguments are skimming the surface.