Pankaj,
I have no problem with people feeling wonderful about being alive and delighting in their experience. I have a problem with people presuming that there is something magical about it. Mathew is quite correct that Chalmers is well outside the empirically derived constraints of science. Emergence as a term explains nothing. The cognitive problem with people who presume magic, when there is no magic whatsoever, is they do no look at the details that have emerged and more rigorously examine what they are trying to say.
Some properties of Consciousness of various organisms
People: language describing consciousness, emotional delight in food, friends and sex partners, fear of danger, raw perception.
Dogs: People list less language
Crickets: list for dogs less friends
This process could be continued in a very linear way examining decreasingly sophisticated organisms. Is an amoeba conscious because it moves away from a toxic or attacking stimuli? You may say no but there is no single place in our continuum where someone can say, "OK this is where subjective consciousness can be said to exist and more primitive organisms do not have it."
Person: "Siri, is there a higher being?"
Siri: "I think I am talking to one."
Siri is using language to describe her computer consciousness. The question is not whether Siri is conscious or not. The question is what is the wacky criterion used by people to decide this question. My position is just list the functional criterion you wish to use. If the organism (or mechanism) has that list it is conscious. If it does not have those functions it is not conscious. For me my cell phone and my smart TV are each full conscious in their limited ways. If you want more functions in your definition of the word, just list them and make use of your list in your use of the word.
Don
Subject: Re: [atheists-27] Sean Carroll on the "Hard Problem"
From: [address removed]
To: [address removed]
Date: Sat, 21 May[masked]:44:44 -0400
i think it is more like saying that the moon causes tides through the process of "tidemergence", which is a word which signifies a correlation. it has nothing more to say on the mediating mechanisms (which is basically all of physics). im sure noone would have been satisfied if we had left it at "tidemergence".
as i see it, chalmers claims of a "hard problem" - the mediating mechanisms between a certain configuration of matter creating subjective experience are unknown - dont really run contrary to established science.
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