This still doesn't address my question, which was why should I believe that consciousness is not or cannot be an epiphenomenon of physical reality. Your words say it might night be. I agree. So what? You seem to have rejected materialistic interpretations with no argument.
Wordplay such as “an epiphenomenon of physical reality” wouldn’t resolve the contradiction. You argue that consciousness is somehow an outcome of a physical process and at the same time postulate that physical processes don’t imply consciousness.
Again? Please try to understand that I do not insist that consciousness is a physical process. I just wrote that to you. Did you see it? If so, why didn't you address my reply then or at least assimilate it?
You just play with words. Per your perspective, is there a mechanism that gives rise to consciousness (as the final outcome)? What is the nature of that mechanism? Is it physical or non-physical/supernatural? Is there any other option?
If you say that the nature is physical, then consciousness would be an outcome of a physical process regardless of the specifics of the process or how it unfolds. Yet, you cannot postulate that physical processes don’t imply consciousness and at the same time claim that consciousness is somehow an outcome of some physical mechanisms.
One last time: no process reveals consciousness directly except our own conscious experience, which may be and seems to be an epiphenomenon of brains. I cannot look at any other matter and call it conscious with certainty, but I assume that all higher vertebrates are conscious. My dogs are. Parrots are.
It gets harder with reptiles. A lizard seems to look around and stalk insect prey, which seems to imply consciousness. Fish seem hypnotized or between sleep and wakefulness.
You imagine that your subjective opinion is the definition of what conscious is or is not. It’s meaningless. If you follow your own logic, then the only
verifiable consciousness to you would be your own, you know for a fact that you are conscious but other than that you cannot verify with any level of certainty whether any other living system is conscious, every and all observed behaviors of living organisms could simply be unconscious reflex/tropism. But no, this is not how it works.
From a biological perspective, consciousnesses is a process that involves receiving signals from both outer environment and inner domain and translating those signals into
appropriate responses, such process occurs in every organism, from the prokaryotic cell to the human being.
The judgment with respect to the consciousness of a living system is based on the
level of appropriateness of the specific response to the specific stimulus. Statistically significant observations of responses with high level of appropriateness are evidence of consciousness.
But these are all organisms made like I was from a fertilized egg and made out of the same materials. I can't comment at all on whether human appearing robots can be or are conscious. There is no test for it. Nor does it matter.
The behavior of a robot at a fundamental level is based on a “stimulus receiver” and a “response activator”. The programming dictates the specific response to a specific stimulus. The responses are always limited due to the limitations of the programming itself. It's a programmed physical process not a conscious decision-making process.
Interestingly, the biological basis of consciousness at a fundamental level is also a “stimulus receiver” and “response activator”. The evolutionary perspective assumes that higher (human) consciousness is an evolved form of lower consciousness at the cellular level based on the same fundamental principles.
That perspective is deficient in the sense that it requires a preprogrammed
appropriate response to every possible stimulus. IOW, it takes “conscious decision-making” out of the equation by assuming
endless preprogrammed appropriate responses (similar to a robot) rather than conscious decision-making. That perspective cannot explain the enormous versatility in terms of observed appropriate responses of the living systems. Only conscious decision-making could explain such versatility of appropriate responses (to address endless stimuli from both outer environment and inner domain).
I would treat such a machine with the same kindness, dignity, and respect that I would any conscious soul.
You believe that physical processes don’t imply consciousness, yet you think that a robot may be conscious! Why is that? Is it because the processes controlling the robot’s behavior are non-physical?
You would treat robots with kindness, dignity, and respect; you assume it may be conscious, yet you doubt the consciousness of living systems!!
What a confusion!
You have no test for when the machine wakes up if ever, and no basis to say that silicon cannot do for computers what carbon does for brains.
Again, didn’t you say that physical processes don’t imply consciousness? Whatever happens in a computer is a physical process. All responses to received data are preprogrammed.
Not enough to call that support for a non-materialist metaphysics. It's an ignorantiam fallacy - if one can't show what is, he should assume it isn't.
I wonder if you would accept the same logic for the existence of God.
Regardless, the claim that there is no evidence that consciousness is an outcome of physical processes is totally supported by the simple fact that such evidence doesn’t exist. I guess you also agreed that physical processes don’t imply consciousness, didn’t you?
