[robmclarty]

Oh yeah, I'm very interested in historical circumstances and matter combinations that have seemingly given rise to consciousness.

But saying "[when] you pile up a certain number of neurons at a certain complexity you get consciousness" is begging the question. What is consciousness. What is it in the neurons that makes it? What is it about the universe we're in that allows for the phenomenon to emerge from it? This has always been how science has explained it to date: it just emerges from the complexity. But that doesn't explain anything >:|

[VLM]

You may want to look into physics and how a bulk property like "moment of inertia" kinda comes into being. Its a property of solid matter that kind of appears out of nothing.

Here's another fun topic to google. There's an island and a population of predator and their prey. Now graph those populations and you get some interesting oscillators. Where do those waveforms come from? Well, nowhere. Its a system thing there are no waveform particles or whatever.

Edited to add, maybe another way to say it is its not the emergence or "where" or "source" that doesn't exist, but the property itself that doesn't exist. There is no consciousness. There are just certain patterns that are really common among big piles of neurons. Like the big pile of neurons occasionally saying stuff like "I think therefore I am".

There is no consciousness to measure, or you could give it a number. I've got 100 consciousness score, how bout you? This is very much like intelligence. I know it when I see it, but you really kick over an anthill when you claim you can give out an "intelligence number" like an IQ. Coincidentally both seem to be self organizational, again all you need is a big pile of neurons and some time and not only does consciousness pop out, but so does intelligence.