Series of complicated bio-electrical interactions?
Vast numbers of connections, neurons firing together?
Even our limited attempts at neural networks are not very well understood, and that is just code running on well understood computer. A brain is way more connected and complicated than something like deep mind, even if you think of that stuff like a first order approximation. So if we cant easily do that, seems an actual brain with way more recurrence and structure is much harder.
I think there are experimental results though, we can look at an brain scan and nearly deduce what people are looking at, although don't quote me I would have to find the paper. Seems pretty physical.
To respond to another part of this, it doesn't matter if we can look at a brain scan and predict perfectly exactly what the scanned subject is thinking. That only answers the question of "how do thoughts occur" not the question "what are thoughts?"
We have no way of even constructing the concept that gets around this. "This brain state corresponds to these thoughts." Okay, but where/what are the thoughts? In order for something to corresponds to the thoughts, they must exist in some capacity, right? So long as consciousness exists at all, which anyone who experiences it can say with certainty that it does. If I drink a beer, I feel a certain way. Neurochemically, we understand exactly why this is happening. What we don't understand is how there are "ways to feel" in the first place.
Understanding how objects interact with one another doesn't answer the question of what those objects are; they just are. Understanding the effects of electromagnetic force doesn't answer the question of what electromagnetism is; it just is. With objects, we can actually break things down into a small number of basic components (particles) that depending on their organization make all objects. But these particles are already a thing with no reason; just an axiom we've been able to use to get a mostly logically consistent view of objects.
Consciousness, we have been totally unable to break down into anything. We can see evidence of it in others, and feel it in ourselves, and we can understand how to make it seem to go away, and also what seems to bring about certain effects in it's space (red, happy, warm, salty, etc.), but our understanding is not of those effects--it's only of how a certain material arrangement seems to bring them about.
Because the web application is only an emergent phenomenon once consciousness has already entered the equation. Without an observer, the website is nothing more than the sum of its parts; only we view it as something else. The CPU, machine code, all of the I/O mechanism, eventually just create an illuminated image on a screen that is only its emergent whole when viewed by a conscious observer who sees it that way.
Far from having an even remotely non-referential understanding of consciousness, we don't even have a non-referential understanding of the referent website as it exists in our perception--it just comes back to the same questions that a lot of physicalists seem to refuse to even acknowledge. I know that when I view this screen I see what I see as red, and I know that the material of my brain and the screen are responsible for that, but that does nothing to address what the referent red is in the first place.
How can consciousness be an emergent construct when emergent constructs are only identifiable as distinct from the sum of their parts by making use of consciousness?
Therefore complex interactions produce subjective feelings.
Where's the connection?
Do you understand that the concept of information is just .. anything at all? Literally the arrangement of atoms in a rock can be considered information. The flow of water in sewer pipes can also be considered information. Not only that, but information processing.
It's not information that _we_ are interested in, but it is information none the less.
Why would consciousness only arise from the signals traveling across the brain, but not from water flowing in pipes?
> I think there are experimental results though, we can look at an brain scan and nearly deduce what people are looking at
ok this is all well understood. The brain does information processing and we can sort of tell what's happening in it.
That's not the question at all.
Why does the information feel like something? That is the question.
Series of complicated bio-electrical interactions? Vast numbers of connections, neurons firing together?
Even our limited attempts at neural networks are not very well understood, and that is just code running on well understood computer. A brain is way more connected and complicated than something like deep mind, even if you think of that stuff like a first order approximation. So if we cant easily do that, seems an actual brain with way more recurrence and structure is much harder.
I think there are experimental results though, we can look at an brain scan and nearly deduce what people are looking at, although don't quote me I would have to find the paper. Seems pretty physical.