[benkahuna]

[ QUOTE ]
"Dualism is stupid"

Is there any reason why that is not equivalent to saying that computers can, at least in principle, be made conscious?

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David, the first problem is that you are using computers as an analogy for brains here. All analogies break down at some point and computers break down terribly as a model for brains. There are a number of aspects of brain functioning that do not successfully model on digital computers. Among these are:

The extensive interconnections between some 100 billion or so neurons in the brain alone. Thousands of inputs and outputs per cell is the norm.
Analogue aspects to brain functioning such as electrical activity on post synaptic cells, presynaptic inhibition by nitric oxide, and reflexive molecular mechanisms in feedback processes to list a few.
Parrellel processing on such a massive scale and the selective attention to stimuli through thalamic gating.
Despite a large body of knowledge related to functioning in the mammallian nervous system at many levels of organization, much about functioning is unknown making modeling not possible.

Not all of these are impossible with modern computers, but all of these issues pose significant challenges to modeling. We still are clueless how consciousness arises from the functioning of the brain.

That said, there's no reason to believe that artificial consciousness is not realizable. But, it might require components not currently present in computers including biological molecules like enzymes and even whole cells in colonies.