Commenting without reading the article, as is tradition, since it requires logging in to read. I don't think this follows. We have no idea how consciousness ha

Commenting without reading the article, as is tradition, since it requires logging in to read. I don't think this follows. We have no idea how consciousness happens. We can't even describe what it is without a bunch of vague handwaving. I know what it is because I have it. You presumably know because you have it. But we can't define it in a way that lets us ask the question "does X have consciousness?" in any sensible way. Certainly not in the way that we can ask "does X have mass?" There's a really common materialist theory that consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems with certain properties. I like this theory. It seems reasonable, although it's still frustratingly vague. But it is not synonymous with materialism. I would agree with the statement that "if consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems with certain properties, the United States is probably conscious." But that's not what the title of this paper says. Materialism would admit many other possibilities. Maybe it's an emergent property but there's a size limit, or a time limit. Maybe there's a special consciousness particle that hasn't yet been detected by physicists. Who knows, when you can't even ask the question properly, it's hard to come up with potential answers. I feel like the conversation around consciousness gets ahead of itself. It's too focused on how consciousness works. But first we need to know what it even is. Otherwise you're effectively asking the question, "How does Florb work?" Where everybody kind of has an idea of what Florb is but nobody can really define it.