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Your New Statesman link only talks about pseudoscience and doesn't support your assertion. The mind is an emergent property of the brain. If you can't simulate a mind by simulating a brain, then what in your opinion would it take? Or is it impossible because we all have ineffable souls that the laws of physics mysteriously cannot access?

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This is exactly the sort of problem that convinced me that consciousness/mind must be a fundamental part of the (multi/uni)verse, and not something that "emerges" from matter.

I find it terribly unconvincing that a specific arrangement of matter, or even an algorithm in software, just simply "spawns" a discrete consciousness from nothing. It might make sense if there was an underlying "consciousness field" or some such concept that the matter-arrangement tapped into in some manner.

> I find it terribly unconvincing that a specific arrangement of matter, or even an algorithm in software, just simply "spawns" a discrete consciousness from nothing.

It's not only unconvincing but unscientific, a pseudo explanation.

If we assume that, could a machine then tap this field?

> The mind is an emergent property of the brain.

This is the kind of pseudo-science that gets so much attention nowadays. Incredible.

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