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Re:The Chinese Room Argument by tim333 on Saturday January 09, 2016 @10:52AM (#10871629)
>what difference does it make?

I guess it touches on whether machines will be able to have conscious experience similar to ours and if so will we be able to achieve immortality through uploading.

Re:The Chinese Room Argument by cryoshon on Saturday January 09, 2016 @12:03PM (#10871931)
Will machines be able to have a conscious experience that is similar to ours, probably not, as they're working with different starting materials which are handled in entirely different ways. Still conscious in some ways, probably yes. Conscious enough to discuss it with us and iron out the subjective differences? Maybe eventually.

Will we be able to upload ourselves and maintain our biological consciousness? No, neuron systems are the only substrate on which we can currently confirm that consciousness arises from-- the current problem with saying machines are conscious still applies.

Re:The Chinese Room Argument by danbruc on Saturday January 09, 2016 @12:16PM (#10871983)
No, neuron systems are the only substrate on which we can currently confirm that consciousness arises from [...]

You are making an arbitrary choice here - why the neurons? Why not the whole brain? Some structure within the brain? The molecules making up the neurons?

Re:The Chinese Room Argument by cryoshon on Saturday January 09, 2016 @12:32PM (#10872041)
We know people can have only 50% of a full brain and yet be conscious, and we also know that destruction of a few tiny pieces of the brain can result in a loss of consciousness in the sense we mean it here. The commonality is that neuron systems are required; individual neurons are not enough, nor is an entire intact animal brain without certain structures.

The line is arbitrary, but it doesn't matter so much. The factual reality is that neuron systems are what we can currently (currently! this may change) prove gives rise to consciousness, regardless of philosophical attempts at violence against the science.

Re:The Chinese Room Argument by ThomPete on Saturday January 09, 2016 @01:25PM (#10872247)
Sorry but thats actually wrong.

Read this:

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=6116

Re:The Chinese Room Argument by cryoshon on Saturday January 09, 2016 @04:11PM (#10872904)
This merely supports my hypothesis that neuron systems are what is needed... you will notice nobody is claiming that there are conscious people with 0% brain matter remaining.
Re:The Chinese Room Argument by ThomPete on Saturday January 09, 2016 @04:38PM (#10872986)
You wrote this:

"We know people can have only 50% of a full brain"

And so the question is how you define a full brain.

Neuron systems are network. It might as well be that a network is needed not the neurons per se.

Re:The Chinese Room Argument by murbard2 on Saturday January 09, 2016 @12:19PM (#10871992)
> No, neuron systems are the only substrate on which we can currently confirm that consciousness arises from--

Who's "we", you p-zombie?