What part of you is conscious? I can randomly turn off various neurons of you and check. What atom of a piece of metal has the temperature of 20C?

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tatjam 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a good take, but where does one consciousness end, and another begin?

Does my consciousness extend only to the central nervous system (and peripheral nerves and such are inputs)? Or am I my brain + all nerves? What about organs, does my consciousness include my liver? Is my liver another conscious entity? Going the other way, if I'm using a computer, does my consciousness extend to the computer? I use a computer for well over 8 hours a day, I can use vim motions more naturally than, say, move my earlobes or control my toes. Does that make it part of my consciousness?

Sadly, I don't think any answer to these questions can be achieved in our current times, or maybe ever if consciousness is somehow non-physical. So even the very reasonable claim that consciousness is an statistically defined property (like temperature) is too far fetched for our current knowledge.

	▲	hardbass 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed thats the difficulty. I used to think potentially conscious AI systems are so far into the far future scifi that I never have to bother, but unfortunately real life forced me to think of these much sooner than I wanted. Its no longer quite a purely academic question now anymore due to the potentiality of current AI being conscious. One thing however we can be sure of, "supernatural" stuff is an extremely low to near impossible probability given current knowledge and the fact that history has always won the bet against supernaturalism throughout the centuries.