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Comment by kaba0 | Hacker News Reader

Well, it can be an emergent property. To be honest, if your belief is heavily science-based, then there is not much else to believe regarding our very own consciouscness -- it is an emergent property of billions of interconnected neurons.

Though on the other hand, even the biggest AI systems are lightyears behind biological networks when we look at interconnectedness.

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I wouldn’t call it science-based, it’s just materialism. There’s no science in believing that something that can be completely described by a set of logical rules, or mathematical formulae, or something similar, suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic. It’s pure belief, without too many arguments for it.

> suddenly gains new features that cannot even be defined with math or logic

It at most can not be defined due to its complexity. Also, emergent properties are everywhere, like you can assign properties to a fire you can’t assign to the chemical process of burning. For all we know, consciousness may just as well be an arbitrary threshold of complexity.

But I stand corrected that the correct term is indeed materialism.

Do you mean that because of its complexity, we are not able to define it due to practical reasons (i.e. no powerful enough computer exists)? If so, that’s something completely different. Consciousness cannot be defined with math or logic even in principle. Certain aspects of consciousness can’t be defined either, like qualia (for example, the sensation of a color). Many materialists would even say that consciousness doesn’t exist because of that, and it’s all just a delusion (to which I ask: who/what is this delusion experienced by?).

What properties of fire do you mean?

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