It's clear to me that my own consciousness is dramatically influenced by my physical environment. After all, anything that physically interacts with my brain will affect my consciousness in some way. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that would imply it is a physical phenomenon, no?
Re:How to Build a Computer Model of God
by icebraining on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @09:49AM
(#3238342)
Define consciousness.
That's part of the problem :)
Re:How to Build a Computer Model of God
by icebraining on Tuesday November 15, 2011 @10:13AM
(#3238430)
Then the question of whether software can have consciousness is meaningless.
As Dijkstra said, "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim."
I think you misunderstood what I meant.
The closest thing to a definition would be something that experiences Qualia, but then you'd ask me to define Qualia, and at this point I can't give an objective non-circular definition.
David Chalmers does a good job of explaining it
For a minute, forget about "persisting beyond death".
Consider consciousness, is there any conceptual model at all of how it arises purely out of the known physical laws?
I can imagine building a computer with strong-AI and I see no reason - what so ever - to assume that it may possess any form of consciousness. Given all that we know about how the physical world works, and how computers work, there's no reason to assume that some particular software configuration will give rise to subjective consciousness within a computer.