[yogthos]

You're just doing sophistry here. There are patterns in the brain that form which allow it to model the world and make predictions about it. If we can understand the nature of these patterns and implement them in a different substrate, then we'd be able to do similar type of inference on a computer. That's what algorithms are.

[deadbabe]

Forming patterns when processing information doesn't mean an algorithm exists. The patterns are emergent properties of underlying processes which can't be described in a computational sense the way you want.

Otherwise, you'd have to argue all consciousness is basically just an algorithmic function. Are you prepared to go all the way with that?

[yogthos]

The entire context for this discussion is that these patterns are being implemented in artificial neural networks. Also, a pattern by its very nature implies that it can, in fact, be expressed as an algorithm. There is zero basis for the suggestion that emergent properties of underlying processes can't be described in a computational sense.

Also, not sure how anybody could reasonably argue that consciousness could not be described by an algorithmic function. It sounds like you subscribe to idea of dualism which requires belief in supernatural processes outside the material realm. Are you prepared to go all the way with that?

[deadbabe]

Maybe. I think consciousness is like a field and it could attach to hosts or systems once they are able to support quantum driven processes.

[yogthos]

Again, I'm not aware of any credible scientific basis for the position that consciousness is some sort of a field which is a product of quantum processes. The most plausible explanation is that it is encoded in the pattern of electrochemical firings of neurons.

Consciousness itself may just be nothing more than an exhaust fume resulting from the functioning of the brain rather than something profound to be explained. It may simply be a phenomenon of the system observing patterns within the world and modelling itself in the process as part of the simulation it is creating. This is basically the HOT view of consciousness, and it's really the only theory that at lest provides some explanatory power for the origin of the phenomenon.