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I don't see how the author can reconcile his (implied) belief that consciousness cannot be created with the entirely reasonable assertion that some beings are i

I don't see how the author can reconcile his (implied) belief that consciousness cannot be created with the entirely reasonable assertion that some beings are inherently more conscious than others. A fertilized egg, for example, contains little to no consciousness, but over time it develops a "full" human-level consciousness. Where does this additional consciousness spring from? Surely, if a being can become more conscious, then it stands to reason that there is some as-yet-unknown physical property or process that we can associate with consciousness. And once it has been identified, it can be replicated artificially.

andybak 11y ago
The correlation of consciousness in with certain physical structures doesn't necessarily mean it's created or even caused by them. This is where the distinction between 'intelligence' and 'consciousness' becomes crucial. The more we study the brain, the more we can identify things that are obviously the result of physical processes and the less remains to be explained by 'consciousness'. However the question becomes 'once thinking and intelligence is fully understood, does anything else remain?' This is why thought experiments about zombies and chinese rooms are interesting. It's about exploring what would be left out (if anything) once a full physical explanation had been achieved.