Dear js1138, you stipulate as if the matter you describe had been already validated. So please allow me to counter-stipulate on the same terms.
Consciousness is not unattached from the brain. Unless the brain is dead, of course. The brain is like a kind of geiger counter, recording the activity of neuronal firings, etc., etc. That is to say the brain is not the cause of the neuronal firings, etc., etc. It facilitates them, and can produce a read-out if properly hooked up to an EEG. Then we, the observer can look at the read-out, recognize patterns of activity, etc., etc. But we cannot say that the brain knows anything about that, or is "aware" of these activities.
Consciousness also includes unconscious states; dreaming is likely a good example of such. Consciousness also includes self-consciousness, which (apparently) is an attribute of humans only (as far as we know). But all living organisms -- definitely including Alamo-Girl's amoeba, which in the experiment was observed to "learn" the difference between india ink and a food source, so as not to mistake the former for the latter, and so "wouldn't be fooled again" -- possess some type of sentience, awareness -- and these are things that also belong to consciousness. So I agree with Alamo-Girl: even living organisms that do not have organized brains still have access to some form of consciousness.
And so I think that consciousness in all its forms (including dreaming) definitely belongs to the real world; for it is the distinctive, perhaps determinative, attribute of all living things in some form or fashion.
You said you thought A-G was trying to reduce biology to physics. As I'm somewhat aware of her thoughts in this matter, I'd hazard to say that what she's about is to rescue biology from physics -- in the sense that biology isn't reducible to the physical laws. Or to put it another way, living organisms have a physical basis, plus something else which is not physical. The latter is what makes them living. (Alamo-Girl, please correct the record if I've misrepresented your views here.)
You wrote: "Freeper tortoise has assurred us that AI researches have a handle on what needs to be done to simulate this in silicon, but adds the stipulation that we can't build the hardware yet...."
The operative word in this statement, it seems to me, is simulate. Obviously, before someone may "simulate" something, there must first be a something to simulate. That something, however, remains unaffected, whether the simulation is successful or not: Either way, it continues to be the something it is.
To stir the pot, in a related connection, a paraphrase from a novel-- "If I were to throw a rock at your head, and hit you in the eye, what would happen?"
"I should feel pain and perhaps see splintered light."
"Yet that would be the true operation of the rock."
Left out of your discussion of neuronal firings is what the brain is *thinking*, *perceiving*, or *doing* at a given point.
Some of the same neurons might be firing during such completely different activities as finishing a biology final, finishing a race, or sexual climax. Are the differences in the "experience" of the "self-aware" brain KNOWN to be reducible entirely to qualitative and quantitative differences in the neuronal transmissions? Or are the differences [however confidently] PRESUMED to be reducible?
But we cannot say that the brain knows anything about that, or is "aware" of these activities.
Unless the brain does not recognize them as individual events, but it DOES recognize, interpret, and form opionions--preferences--about the brain's own internal various states which are correlated with various combinations or forms of the neuronal activities...
Happiness may show up on the scan in one way, hunger or lust another. But (if our language is any indication) we are aware in our own way of certain states, which are differentiable by other means to the neurologist etc. Cheers!
I have to disagree. Water has properties that are not predictable from the properties of hydrogen and oxygen. Living things have properties that are not predictible from the properties of its constituent elements. There is quite a bit of mystery to be unraveled, but no reason to resort to magic. There is no reason to assume anything other than emergent properties.
The first reason for not making the assumption of supernatural activity is that there is no evidence for it. The second reason is that neuroscience is flourishing without it.
The radio receiver anology would have to assume that all animals that have brains also have souls, since there is no jarring discontinuity between the behavior of animal brains and the behavior of human brains. My college training is in special education. If you take the whole spectrum of human differences and capabilities, there is a pretty seamless transition with apes. There is not much you can say about the difference between the human mind and the mind of apes that applies to all humans.