Consciousness as an emerging property?
I am obviously in fine company with lots of much brighter minds and spirits that would like to have answers to questions that sound like this: What is Consciousness? Where does it come from? And how does it relate to matter? There are many angles to this question. Let's take the materialist view point: Matter is first, the universe is composed of atoms and sub-nuclear particles, etc and does actually materially exist in its own right. Matter matters. If there were no intelligent or conscious being around, there would still be matter. In fact, Consciousness is simply a side effect of matter, of chemical processes in our brain. In essence, it is an illusion, a fantasy, like watching a material movie that will happen anyways. Under this set of assumptions, Consciousness can actually arise if a system is sufficiently complex in its organization. Computers will evolve to this level and become artificially intelligent and conscious. They will develop feelings such as love, hate, they wil...