Sadly the more you think about the "Hard Consciousness Problem" the more it becomes like "mystical nonsense". The more you reduce the mind into being computable physical process the more it becomes a choice (or a frustrating cycle back and forth) between consciousness not being computable no matter what including in our brain making us zombies living under some sort of illusion or consciousness being totally computable by computer or anything in which case any system could have some sort or consciousness, even human given the correct configuration, e.g. computer, a flock of specially trained neuron like birds. Where would that consciousness "be" in the flock of birds. Also could the consciousness exist on a non human time frame? Would it still exist because it was being computed even slowly? And what happens to it when it hits a breakpoint? Have you captured an instant of consciousness or has it disappeared?

I am convinced that almost all the "problems" with a computable consciousness are really the emotional problems of us humans coming to terms with our status as just another animal, which is just another pattern of matter and energy.

Yes, it implies that other animals and systems might be conscious too. Why is that a problem?

> 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)

Well, this is the problem with our society as a whole. In particular, and most importantly, the problem with intellectuals. They tend to gloss over the inexplicable things like consciousness and the mind. It's just too hairy and scary to try to tackle and try to understand. I think that's why we've distanced ourselves, ironically, from ourselves for so long.

We need to really take a long look at ourselves and try to understand what's going in our mind.

Modeling and measuring are different from genesis. Where is the mind? Should we even be asking "where"? What about "why"? Can we even ask that? Do we even know which questions make sense to ask about the mind? Maybe we can't use language to talk about it. After all language seems(again we have no real empirical basis for this) deeply coupled with the mind so we're going to use the mind to understand the mind? It's microscopes all the way down then I guess.

It is mystical simply because most people haven't really shed much light on it. So the mind remains a mystery. The mind just really, truly does not make sense. It baffles philosophers, scientists, biologists, lay people, etc. We'd rather tackle something like the inner-workings of quarks or the interactions of black holes with dark matter than even attempt to answer the question: what is even allowing me to communicate with myself and answer any of these other questions? Why do I think?

We can talk about personalities. We can talk about the brain. We can talk about language. But how do we work backward from those attributes of the mind to get to the point of genesis; where is the mouse in the wheel creating the thoughts writing this sentence.

No one knows. We don't kinda know. We, truly, have no fucking clue. We think it's related to the brain. That's it.

I don't take it as a personal attack because honestly our understanding is mystical nonsense.

I don't think this argument makes sense unless you believe that the mind, or consciousness, is a special "thing" that must be investigated--which is begging the question.

Consider the possibility that the mind does not exist; that instead it is just a collective noun we use to refer to a group of observed behaviors, the way we use words like "climate" or "weather" or "wave."

What is the smallest part of a wave that is still a wave? We can talk about the chemical characteristics of water, about momentum and turbulence, about gravity, but those all apply equally well to flat water too. Where does the wave come from? Does the concept of a wave make sense in the absence of fluid?

These seem like silly questions because we know how waves work. But similar questions don't get any less silly just because we don't know how the brain works yet.

Yes we can capture a cubic meter of a wave at an instant of time and explain everything about it being a wave. We could do the same with a brain, freeze it in an instant of time. We might me able to tell what memories it is recalling now, what it is about to say, how you are feeling. Where specific memories are located, what behavioral traits you have. Neural correlates are the easy bit.

But having captured and frozen the brains system state have we captured an instant of mind, consciousness or qualia? Can we say anything reasonable about those properties? Or do they suddenly stop existing when the state has frozen? Are we dead at that point? Could we step through consciousness like a debugger? Does conciseness or the mind only exist in between the break points, or state changes. Is consciousnesses the transition between two quantum states, and a lump of meat while nothing is going on? Slightly tougher questions.