It's perfectly reasonable to define consciousness as "that which emerges from neural activity" if your model is able to describe that emergent behavior.[0]
This is not the same as describing what it "feels like" from the inside. From your comment, I infer that you are rejecting the explanatory powers of neuroscience because you are expecting it to speak to the "feels like" question.
I disagree, it is only possible at the moment to define _intelligence_ as "that which emerges from neural activity". There is not evidence whatsoever that consciousness emerges from neural activity. This is just a type of religious dogma in disguise. Think about it. Thanks for the link.
Video game characters aren't consciously autonomous though.
There's always the reductive argument of "Well, we could be running in a computer simulation and when you die here you're perfectly recreated in another simulated universe."
>Video game characters aren't consciously autonomous though.
What distinction are you claiming exists between your own subjective experience and that of a video game character? (follow-up question: why do you believe this?)
>We are only brains. If your brain gets squished, you don't really care because you'll cease to exist in this light cone.
I agree with you. However, we both have to give serious consideration to the objection that our brains are a necessary but not sufficient condition of consciousness.
We do not know, as of yet, that our brains are not merely some sort of wireless router for some higher existential consciousness. I don't think it is, but intellectual integrity demands that it's seriously considered.
A wireless router that evolved through a process of natural selection from simple, not conscious single-celled (and simpler) life-forms? That seems a bit far-fetched don't you think?
How do you know that there are no other components besides the brain that cause there to be subjective experience? One might very well suspect that there is something more, considering that no arrangement of physical parts has come close to qualitatively being the same as a subjective experience.
Your soul could be observing your body and being affected by it. While your memories and feelings are in the body, your subjective experience of them may not be.
no arrangement of physical parts has come close to qualitatively being the same as a subjective experience.
This isn't a one time affair. Every human carries DNA explaining exactly how to create more intelligent conscious creatures. It doesn't take "special conditions." It happens in squalor, mud huts, ice, desert, famine, over excess—everywhere. We are self-replacing nanomachines looking like individual discrete entities on a macro scale.
Your soul could be observing your body and being affected by it.
Nope. Not possible. You are entirely your brain. Nothing more, nothing less.
> You are entirely your brain. Nothing more, nothing less.
Clearly I am only a portion of my brain since if you remove some of it I am still me. But then, if you start killing the neurons in my brain one by one, at what point do I stop being me?
Nope. Not possible. You are entirely your brain. Nothing more, nothing less.
You cannot reasonably claim to know this. Of course, your parent comment cannot know that "no arrangement of physical parts has come close to qualitatively being the same as a subjective experience" either, as long as he only has access to his own subjective experience.
How does your soul observe and affect your body? (I'm assuming you mean a two-way path there; "observing your body and being affected by it" would be one-way, and would be problematic. "A difference that makes no difference", and all.)
Can this connection be distorted or interrupted? What are the effects of doing so?
If you accept that a drug-induced solipsistic, out-of-body effect[1] is an alteration of subjective experience, are you then going to argue that "While your memories, feelings, and subjective experience are in the body, your X may not be." What would X be?
Imagine looking out the window and seeing stuff that is happening outside. If the window gets foggy, you don't experience everything that's happening outside the window. That doesn't disprove that you are observing stuff outside the window.
On the other hand, having "uncaused effects" has been found in quantum mechanics, but it's too much of a leap to suppose that your consciousness controls your body through quantum mechanical probability. Although there's something eerie about the waveform collapse having to do with conscious observers.
Yes - from the subjective perspective of Schrodinger's cat. Yes - from the subjective perspective of the detector. From the outside we observe the cat's state becoming entangled with that of the radioactive sample, but from the cat's perspective it made the observation, collapsed the state, and either died or didn't.
It's exactly the same for us, making the observation - from our perspective we observed one result or the other, collapsing the wavefunction. But to an outside observer we entangled our own state with that of the cat and the sample, and we're in a superposition of (observed cat dead, observed cat alive) - and will be until they observe us, at which point our wavefunction will collapse to one or the other. And so on.
This is not the same as describing what it "feels like" from the inside. From your comment, I infer that you are rejecting the explanatory powers of neuroscience because you are expecting it to speak to the "feels like" question.
[0] http://lesswrong.com/lw/iv/the_futility_of_emergence/