There are physical processes that can change lead into gold. The real deal gold.
Also, there is no reason to believe anything about consciousness.
For example, you are not conscious and in my opinion equivalent to a machine. Prove me wrong.
Also, there is no reason to believe anything about consciousness.
For example, you are not conscious and in my opinion equivalent to a machine. Prove me wrong.
The problem with your third assertion is even if we accept that there is no way to prove the consciousness of others, you need to categorical deny your own and thus borders on absurdity and outright denial.
Well, my world view is that everything is conscious, including oxygen I just inhaled and that went to my brain, sugars I ate, bacteria in my gut, my blood, my dead blood cells, as well as my skin, sweat vapor, nails, hairs, teeth, cloths, electrostatic charge on my cloths etc. Dark matter, if it exists, may be the least conscious thing we know about.
I would call that consciousness a state of existing and interacting. It is a fundamental property, and can be explained only as much as color charge of a quark. For some people that's not consciousness. So, if what I described above is not consciousness, then whatever it is that you mean by consciousness, IMO does not exists.
There is also self-recognition, the red dot in the mirror etc. which is just a behavioral pattern, side effect of intelligence.
I always found it dubious that people privilege self awareness so greatly in discussions of consciousness considering the fact that many beings that most recognise as at least sentient such as dogs and other higher mammals often lack it, and arguably many humans too (and I'm not just talking about those before the age of 4 either).