Why a computer can never be conscious

You seem to be focused on proving computers have not yet attained consciousness. There is no argument there whatsoever. They have not. The question is whether they ever will. And to entirely write off the possibility at this early stage would require writing off advances in fields of science & technology that do not yet even exist.
How will you know when they do?
 
You seem to be focused on proving computers have not yet attained consciousness. There is no argument there whatsoever. They have not. The question is whether they ever will. And to entirely write off the possibility at this early stage would require writing off advances in fields of science & technology that do not yet even exist.

I must remember this argument when next debating with an atheist who says we can never prove God/the soul :)
 
How will you know when they do?

Firstly we would need to be able to accurately and thoroughly define consciousness. To do that we need to first exponentially increase our knowledge of the human brain. To give just one example of how much we still have to learn, a neuron in the human brain called the rosehip neuron was only discovered in 2018. That is last year. Naturally that does not mean that in 2017 it would have been impossible to ever discover the rosehip neuron. Just that we had not done so by 2017.
 
Well, there’s your answer.
Actually it doesn't answer anything except that we're able to forge ahead in leaps and bounds with technology but cannot solve a mystery relevant to how we think.
 
Actually it doesn't answer anything except that we're able to forge ahead in leaps and bounds with technology but cannot solve a mystery relevant to how we think.
But we haven't even solved the mystery why some people can't think yet.
 
Actually it doesn't answer anything except that we're able to forge ahead in leaps and bounds with technology but cannot solve a mystery relevant to how we think.

Cannot or have not?
 
Actually it doesn't answer anything except that we're able to forge ahead in leaps and bounds with technology but cannot solve a mystery relevant to how we think.

There’s not really a mystery. We know exactly how neural networks work. We just don’t have the technology to create one big enough.
 
I must remember this argument when next debating with an atheist who says we can never prove God/the soul :)

Just be careful using the argument when debating with someone from another religion as it might backfire since you can't write off the possibility that their religion/God might eventually be proven correct instead of your own.
 
I must remember this argument when next debating with an atheist who says we can never prove God/the soul :)

You must be running into some unusual atheists. Atheism isn't about proving that any particular supernatural entity alleged to exist is a fiction, nor for offshoots of those superstitions such as the soul. It's just the absence of belief in any of it.

You're almost as much of an atheist as any atheist on this forum. According to Wikipedia, there are 4,200 religions and spiritual traditions. You don't believe in 4,199 of them. Atheists are just one more than that.
 
You must be running into some unusual atheists. Atheism isn't about proving that any particular supernatural entity alleged to exist is a fiction, nor for offshoots of those superstitions such as the soul. It's just the absence of belief in any of it.

You're almost as much of an atheist as any atheist on this forum. According to Wikipedia, there are 4,200 religions and spiritual traditions. You don't believe in 4,199 of them. Atheists are just one more than that.

Yeah but atheism doesn't make any sense. It's not logical. You're stance is based from a point of ignorance. Agnosticism now that I can understand.
 
Yeah but atheism doesn't make any sense. It's not logical. You're stance is based from a point of ignorance. Agnosticism now that I can understand.
Are you an atheist or agnostic with regards to the tooth fairy?
 
Yeah but atheism doesn't make any sense. It's not logical. You're stance is based from a point of ignorance. Agnosticism now that I can understand.
Huh? How does atheism not make sense? You don't know about nor care about 99% of the 4,200 religions and spiritual traditions. You simply don't believe in them and the onus isn't on you to research them or disprove anything. You are 'ignorant' about almost all of them and always will be, and that fact is irrelevant anyway.

By not playing golf you're not an agolfer. It doesn't mean you want to fight golfers or for golf to stop existing. So even defining oneself as an atheist is stupid because it's simply about not caring to be labelled a theist of any description.
 
Make one program that is constantly analyzing something.
Make another program that analyzes the program that is analyzing something.

Voila, self-awareness. :p
 
Wrong argument...i'm no coder but all you need to do is to program enough "ifs - then" then you have enough "consciousness" you need.

High educated people are actually nothing more than a glorified computer. Their actions/outcomes can be accurately predicted based on the level of extensive training (education) he received. It is the uneducated that is not predictable, and because of the lack of education, not programmable.

You don't have to fully understand everything of the brain, all you need is information control to predict outcome. Humans are pretty predictable based on the information you give them. So instead of trying to go for computer consciousness, you just turn the human into a computer.
 
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