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Split Thread Science cannot explain consciousness, therefore....

Cheetah said:
No, it is not, not even close.

The process of mind and consciousness is a very specific thing. It took millions of years of evolution and an insanely complex brain, wired in just the right way for it to work.

I would say even though it is theoretically possible to implement a mind on weird hardware, just the scale of the project in time and space would make it practically impossible.

I consider the chance of a conscious mind happening naturally with "shifting sand dunes, meteor swarms, rain storms" etc. to be impossible.
I see no way for a simple "brain like thing" to spontaneously appear and eventually evolve and become more complex and result in consciousness on these "types of hardware."
I cannot see a way for a natural mind to exist, except by starting very simply and evolving more complexity over time.
I might be wrong.
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I don't care to rehash years worth of arguments here about conscious sand dunes and the like, but I find it interesting you STILL haven't addressed the possibility of simulating universes of conscious beings by moving rocks around.

https://xkcd.com/505/

Possible or impossible?
 
I take the comic strip to be a 'thought experiment', and the question of whether it's possible or not is not really the topic in question (right Ian?)
So, how about if we try to phrase the thought experiment as a question? I would but I'm not sure if I really get it.
 
LarryS said:
is "theoretically possible" the same as "possible"? . . . if so then why add "theoretically"
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I thought it was obvious.

It might be theoretically possible, but not practically.

How many rocks, how large a desert, how much time will it take to simulate a human brain working for 1 minute? I have no idea, but there might not be a large enough desert with enough rocks.
 
Cheetah said:
I thought it was obvious.

It might be theoretically possible, but not practically.

How many rocks, how large a desert, how much time will it take to simulate a human brain working for 1 minute? I have no idea, but there might not be a large enough desert with enough rocks.
Click to expand...

the fallout of this is: I'm looking at a spent banana peel on my desk - somewhere deep within those countless sub-sub-sub atomic particles there's a random configuration with behaviors that qualifies as being conscious - this is a possible ramification of materialism.
 
LarryS said:
the fallout of this is: I'm looking at a spent banana peel on my desk - somewhere deep within those countless sub-sub-sub atomic particles there's a random configuration with behaviors that qualifies as being conscious - this is a possible ramification of materialism.
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Nope, that is a fallacy of exaggeration and overgeneralization. Not even PixyMisa claimed a banana peel was conscious

IE is depends on the definition.
 
LarryS said:
the fallout of this is: I'm looking at a spent banana peel on my desk - somewhere deep within those countless sub-sub-sub atomic particles there's a random configuration with behaviors that qualifies as being conscious - this is a possible ramification of materialism.
Click to expand...

Did you see this?

Cheetah said:
The process of mind and consciousness is a very specific thing. It took millions of years of evolution and an insanely complex brain, wired in just the right way for it to work.
...
I consider the chance of a conscious mind happening naturally with "shifting sand dunes, meteor swarms, rain storms" etc. to be impossible.
I see no way for a simple "brain like thing" to spontaneously appear and eventually evolve and become more complex and result in consciousness on these "types of hardware."
I cannot see a way for a natural mind to exist, except by starting very simply and evolving more complexity over time.
Click to expand...

It probably needs a lot of complexity in the environment, a whole ecosystem of things to compete with for a nervous system and a brain to even evolve, never mind a human mind.
 
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Cheetah said:
Did you see this?



It probably needs a lot of complexity in the environment, a whole ecosystem of things to compete with for a nervous system and a brain to even evolve, never mind a human mind.
Click to expand...

Exactly what I’m saying, it comes down to the woo of complexity, which can appear and disappear at random.
 
Cheetah said:
I thought it was obvious.

It might be theoretically possible, but not practically.

How many rocks, how large a desert, how much time will it take to simulate a human brain working for 1 minute? I have no idea, but there might not be a large enough desert with enough rocks.
Click to expand...

Well, this is where we differ. I think the possibility that I'm being simulated by someone moving rocks around is laughable. You, on the other hand, take it seriously. I can't fathom why.

So let's explore this: How, exactly, could moving rocks around simulate a universe of conscious beings? What pattern of rock movement would be needed? What would the causal mechanism be? How many rocks would it require? How much would you have to move each rock? For how long? Would the simulation still exist if a machine was moving rocks around instead of a person?
 
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Fudbucker said:
Well, this is where we differ. I think the possibility that I'm being simulated by someone moving rocks around is laughable You, on the other hand, take it seriously.. I can't fathom why.
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You don't read very well. Don't confuse possibility with probability.
 
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Fudbucker said:
Well, this is where we differ. I think the possibility that I'm being simulated by someone moving rocks around is laughable. You, on the other hand, take it seriously. I can't fathom why.

So let's explore this: How, exactly, could moving rocks around simulate a universe of conscious beings? What pattern of rock movement would be needed? What would the causal mechanism be? How many rocks would it require? How much would you have to move each rock? For how long? Would the simulation still exist if a machine was moving rocks around instead of a person?
Click to expand...
Does it really seem more crazy than what we actually do observe? In other words the brain?
 
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