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Re:4-bit calculator made from cardboard and marbles by corysama on Monday November 21, 2016 @05:12PM (#13009701)
You should read "Gödel, Escher, Bach". It's an incredibly enjoyable, though quite dense, exploration of how possibly can intelligence arise from non-intelligent things.
Re:4-bit calculator made from cardboard and marbles by stan_rogers on Tuesday November 22, 2016 @04:21AM (#13012832)
...and of how that intelligence/consciousness/whatever would exist on a level "above" the machine, so to speak. And that's where the confusion and arguments usually pop up: it's not that the machine (or slab of meat) is self-aware as much as there is a self-awareness running on the machine, and there's a reasonable chance that the consciousness is not understandable, even in principle, from an examination of the parts that enable it (whether physical or process).