Well, consciouness from non-conscious materials is as close to magic as it gets...

Light from non-luminous materials is as close to magic as it gets.. (lamps)

Computations from non-computing materials is as close to magic as it gets.. (computers)

Movement from non-moving materials is as close to magic as it gets.. (engines)

Nope, just consciousness from non-conscious materials.

There are no non-moving materials. Engines move (e.g pistons), and there's molecular and electron flow. Now, if you had said movement from zero Kelvin, actually non moving materials, that would really be magic. Or, light without photons (which ARE luminous).

The only real valid analogy IMO is "computations from non-computing materials". But the materials are indeed computing -- computing just means having a state, and being able to keep it or change it under certain conditions.

Then 'as close to magic as it gets' is 'not magic', and there isn't really a conflict here.

Having magic in your worldview indicates your lack of understanding, not the existence of magic.

If you don't accept that there is something we haven't yet explained because we haven't found the right paradigm to explain it yet you're stopping the evolution of science at the current level.

At the moment science has a materialistic view, but for all we know in a 100 years they'll discover things that we're unable to imagine now as we are thinking within science's current principles.

So magic is just undocumented science :P

>At the moment science has a materialistic view,

And for all we know in 100 years we'll be able to causally interact with something nonphysical? Scientific epistemology is based on where and when we can have causal contact, not on assuming that things are "material".

No, it indicates neither.

It actually indicates an area that is not explained currently by science and that some people theorise about in a "non-scientific" or anecdotal way. This has been illustrated many times by herbs used by traditional healers (using anecdotal reasoning) which were ignored by science until the technology existed to test the herbs for medicinal purposes.

Traditional forms of human knowledge ("magic") may not be "scientific" but it does not indicate a lack of understanding. The movement of epistemology from magic to science is a spectrum not a series of hard stops. The world is grey, not black and white.

melling has figured out the secret to how the brain originates conciousness, transfers short term memory into long term, how much and what percent of each lobe controls our personality, has figured out if all aspects of cognition are computational or not, and has figured out how perception works.

And he deems there is no magic here. move along now.

/s seriously these are all areas of the brain where scientific opinions are changing constantly. To belittle the functions of the brain when there is still so much more research to be done is ignorant.

It doesn't matter whether all aspects of cognition are computational. If brains run on non-computational quantum gravity juju, then we can make machines that run on quantum gravity juju. To make AI impossible, it would take literal magic, a decree from Cthulhu saying that certain physical effects are only allowed inside human brains. And even then I guess we'd find a workaround eventually ;-)

There was no belittling in melling's comment. Even with the little knowledge we have today about how the brain functions, it is perfectly reasonable to hold the materialist position that everything happening in the brain is built on the laws of physics as we understand them today, and can therefore be simulated in principle.

Whether a perfect brain simulation, or a "truly thinking" AI[0] is ever built is therefore not so much a question of whether it is possible in principle, and much more a question of whether the (immense) resources required will ever be put in use to achieve this task. It is therefore a question of economics and political science rather than a question of neuroscience.

[0] Whatever that may mean.

No, I simply understand that "never" is a pretty big number. It's not 10 years, 100 years, 1000 years, or even 10,000 years. Never is way bigger than that. So, how long do you think it will take us to build the equivalent of the human brain?

You are then assuming a purely materialist mind - that there is no "spiritual" component or some part of it that can't be understood by physical and/or chemical science (i.e. that there is no 'soul'). I personally believe in a soul (and true free-will) so I don't think we'll ever have AI.

So basically, you believe in magic.

By the way, that 'soul' thingy, doesn't reside in our brains? Or do you believe in the 21 grams 'theory'? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_Grams#Title

I really don't want to pick on you, I am just really interested if people who believe that stuff are consistent in their beliefs, or they just mix and match.

There is only a purely material mind. In every god, deamon, spirit, angel, ghost, miracle or pantheon that has ever been put forth for scrutiny, a mundane non spiritualistic world presented itself as the cause. A scientist need not focus on fairy tales to explain the workings of nature.

I'm curious, how do you define "true free-will"? Most people define it as "the ability to freely decide what I want", but that just means "the ability for my brain to figure out what the best cause of action is, based on my previous experiences", which is just another way of saying "determinism" (even if it includes some non-material planes, e.g. "soul").

What's a soul? (I'm actually curious what you think.) Does my roommate have a soul? How can I tell? Do I have a soul? How can I tell?

Also - does a cat have soul, what about a chimpanzee?

I share your belief in a soul, that isn't adequately explained by neither contemporary physics nor chemistry.

I am more positive of the future though. Just because we can't explain it right now, doesn't mean we wont ever be able to explain it. Also, even if we aren't able to explain it, we may well succeed in AI anyway. By that I mean that we could create a computer that can perform the same mental feats as a human, without understanding if it is a p-zombie or not.

Does your "spiritual component" figure out metaphors? Because that's the problem we're trying to solve.