What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness
To me, David Chalmer is really overrated as a philosopher and so are his ideas about consciousness.<p>Essentially everything is an example of emergence and this is no different.  Yes we absolutely do need to have words like &quot;chair&quot; as a level of abstraction.  Yes we do need the word &quot;consciousness&quot; to talk about this quality&#x2F;ability humans have which is so hard to describe but encompasses self awareness and experience (both also emergent).<p>Underlying all these emergent phenomenon is always what Chalmers brushes off as easy.  What he&#x27;d probably describe as the world of matter&#x2F;energy and quantum physics.<p>Here&#x27;s a variation of a common thought experiment: Remove every atom from a person&#x27;s brain, one by one until they are clinically dead.  Somewhere along the way to death, that person is going to be right on the cusp of being a conscious human being. It wouldn&#x27;t be a single moment.  There would be a long period of removing atoms where observers could have endless debates about when the lights go out. Think of some very gradually going colorblind.  Just like a gradient of color blindness, there would be a gradient of consciousness. From normal levels, to octopus levels (not literally), to newborn baby levels, bug level, etc until death.<p>This makes it clear to me that consciousness truly is emergent from matter&#x2F;energy.  There&#x27;s no magic behind it, just mystery because we don&#x27;t understand it.