Yeah i wouldnt rule out anything, consciousness could exist to the point where we are not even really physically typing on this forum. But maybe we really are all just being selfish thinking about consciousness from our human perspective.
I mean im not sure if everyone does it, but a lot of the time when i think, im hearing my voice inside my head, like im talking to myself, but would i be doing that if humans didnt know how to talk? probably not. Im not sure how much consciousness is really just that one example on a wide scale.
what if we really are nothing more than some biological equivalent of a computer? we have actually developed computers to work roughly like our own brains already. Our brains have so many neurons we simply think we have a conscience but really within our brains we just have so many memories including emotions themselves, we think we are making conscious decisions when were not, we are only calculating our actions based on some average humanly algorithms.
You could make an argument that not even Watson can make important decisions, but none of the robots were brought up like a human. Im sure guys in that psych thread might explain the technicalities on whats needed, but what if you started off as simple as happy/sad and then have the robot learn to attach emotions to things.
Its obviously the more *simple* option that matter created consciousness. And like arguments about abiogenesis its only a matter of time when even that gets sorted. I think what may contribute in a small but very important way, will be the outcomes of neuroscience and artificial intelligence this century. It might not tell us the whole answer between matter-consciousness but its sure going to get people thinking.
