[trapper]

Researchers are determining whether consciousness is a by-product of brain activity. Projects like blue brain aim to make this question something we can answer.

Can you expand on what assumptions we make that are in no way provable?

[dasil003]

You tell me the experiment that would show that consciousness is a by-product of brain activity and I'll tell you the assumption.

Blue Brain is a great project and will hopefully lead to many surprising discoveries, however how will it help us distinguish between a truly conscious entity and one that merely acts conscious?

[qbit]

Can we ever prove that someone or something is conscious and not just mimicking consciousness extremely well?

[rms]

There's no difference.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/04/zombies.html

[dasil003]

Great read, but irrelevant. The difficulty here is in determining what it means to "act conscious". We can agree that consciousness exerts influence on the world without knowing how to measure that influence exactly.

[trapper]

This sounds like mysticism wrapped up in psychology. If there is no measurable difference between two "beings", one a copy of the other but implemented in silicon, what would your conclusion be? Surely if consciousness is anything magical this will be impossible.

[dasil003]

That's way off base. You're not understanding my argument. Nobody said anything about magic.

The point is how can you ever verify that two beings react exactly the same to all stimuli? How are you determining "no measurable difference"? Setting aside the fact that silicon is measurably different from neural tissue, you still aren't any closer to answering the question "does the machine experience consciousness the same way I do as a result of its function?"

[rms]

You're talking about qualia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Let's just pretend that we run all the arguments for and against qualia from that article against each other and declare us all losers in advance.

[trapper]

You can run them through all manner of tests. Sense tests, logic tests, math, philosophy, reading, every experience can be compared and contrasted.

Now, assuming a large number of tests have been performed and there is a consensus they have no practical difference, why would you conclude that consciousness is not derived from brain structure?

[trapper]

If there is no practical difference between artificial and real consciousness, the simplest answer is to conclude that consciousness derives from a specific neuron structure.