| > Why is that a problem? Totally not a problem, except you very quickly fall down the slippery slope of mystical nonsense :D If we cannot define the boundary of consciousness (the smallest conscious system) eg, we take a conscious human and take one neuron away at a time, at what point is he not conscious? I’m not talking about not being able to communicate with us to tell us he is not conscious. I’m asking at what point are then just a lump of triggering neurons and nothing more than a machine. Is it a hard boundary or sliding scale of levels of consciousness that goes all the way down to a small system of neurons, single neuron, atom or even further? If we can assume consciousness can take forms (given the appropriate computational configuration), such as existing at different scales such as a system of birds or a star sized metal machine made of cogs computing the same system as brain does but “experiencing consciousness” at 1 human second taking billions of years (Or a super computer experiencing a lifetime in a microsecond). Or still be conscious while not being “human conscious”, eg animals, accidentally (brain damage) or planned (augmentation) reconfigured brain, or just some totally different novel system such as a galaxy. Just those two examples of thinking about consciousness very quickly get you down the rabbit hole of stuff that sounds like mystical nonsense. Eg Could the universe be conscious in some form at some size and time scale? btw.. I'm not saying those assumptions are correct but I would hope they are reasonable to think about. EDIT: (the smallest unconscious system) -> (the smallest conscious system) |