| > Whatever index card system or similar the operating procedure in the room prescribes for keeping track of state? You're missing the point. A bit is just some electrons. It could be a scribble in a notebook. But consciousness integrates several pieces of information into a coherent experience. The bits in an index card system could as well be some scratchings of graphite in a notebook. How would consciousness arise from graphite in a notebook? > We don't have any 'scientific theory' of qualia. We don't even know if they exist, I differ on this. The only thing I know for certain the universe contains is qualia. You, the idea there is a "me", atoms, bits, axons and electric potentials are merely ideas, which "I" apprehend as qualia. > or how they would manifest in the physical world. Correct, that is the question. But the Chinese room thought experiment shows it's not merely by information processing. I mean, atoms in a room are processing information - they are computing the next state of all of the atoms in the room. Are they conscious? How about a subset of those atoms? Are those conscious in a different way? The point is that the consciousness-is-computation idea is just too weak to even be a physical theory. |