My point was in the word "how" -- insofar as there is no concept of "consciousness" in physics. (By referring to neurological correlates, I was trying to imply that by "how" I mean above and beyond those.) In fact "consciousness" can refer to several potentially separate things: the ability to think, or self-awareness, or having experiences. To be clear, the one I mean (by far the most mysterious of these) is the last one. It also should be borne in mind that the examples of consciousness we would all agree on (humans, and probably at least mammals if not all animals) could be only the teensiest fraction of the kinds of consciousness that actually occur in the universe. --Dan On May 9, 2014, at 11:12 AM, meekerdb <meekerdb@verizon.net> wrote:
But that's a misunderstanding of what "having the slightest idea" means. We don't have the slightest idea why matter warps spacetime - but we had a good equation to calculate it. We don't have the slightest idea why charged particles obey fermi statistics - but we can calculate what they do. And when we can make robots that act just as conscious as people and we can design them to be comedians or mathematicians or artists, we still won't have "the slightest idea" how physics gives rises to consciousness at some fundamental level - but nobody will care and the question will seem moot.
On 5/9/2014 6:55 AM, Dan Asimov wrote:
No researcher has the vaguest idea of what consciousness is, and at least at present any scientific progress in this area is inconceivable.
We can analyze the neurological correlates of feelings all we want, and we won't have the slightest idea of how a physical situation gives rise to experiences.