anon, do you agree with the idea that consciousness starts to develop due to the senses? At a certain point in its gestation, the human fetus can feel and hear, and it can see at birth, just not very well–it’s very nearsighted. It can see colors, but not all of them. But, because everything involved with sight is present at birth, it’s the fastest developed sense–a baby can discern objects 12-15 feet away by the time she’s 2-3mo old.
I’m probably just complicating things for you, but, if consciousness starts to develop in a fetus, doesn’t that result in every conscious mind being unique? A mind isn’t a computer, it hasn’t been programmed before birth. If, after birth, it is ‘programmed’, it’s developing its own program as it grows, based on its developing senses.
Of what, exactly, our senses are comprised, isn’t totally known–other than the electrochemicals in our bodies and brains. How those chemicals somehow change to give us sensation and what those changes may inspire in us may only be generally identifiable (sometime in the future)–because of our mind’s uniqueness. Consciousness is phenomenological, as is thought. A materialist wants to reduce it down to a structure when it may not be reducible.
This is why, imm, AI is a very long time in coming. Humans have created simple robots and supercomputers. I just don’t see how they can create a human brain.