>Consciousness – whatever it may intrinsically be – is the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know for sure. > If that is the case, there is absolutely no

>Consciousness – whatever it may intrinsically be – is the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know for sure. > If that is the case, there is absolutely no sense in talking about creating consciousness, since consciousness is already there from the start. It is what there is. It can’t be created for it is that within which all creations unfold. > If something is fundamentally beyond all forms of experience, direct or indirect, it might as well not exist. Because all knowledge resides in consciousness, we cannot know what is supposedly outside consciousness; Just because there are limitations on our own ability to perceive the physical world does not mean that there is a fundamental limit on what can be perceived. For example, the Hubble space telescope can perceive light that is beyond both the ability of us to observe inside of our atmosphere and the wavelengths which we can see with our own eyes. >According to my system, reality unfolds in one stream of subjectivity that I call ‘mind-at-large.’ >As such, what we call ‘conscious entities’ are merely dissociated alters of mind-at-large. An image of that dissociation is a human body. >Therefore, our feeble attempts to engineer an entity with a private, subjective inner life similar to our own aren’t really attempts to create consciousness. Instead, they are attempts to induce dissociation in mind-at-large, so to create alters analogous to ourselves. After creating a veil that is unpierceable by human cognition, the author conveniently hides his metaphysical "mind-at-large" creation behind it. It is as if some great mind is doling out consciousness to each animal according to its share. Because we are but fragments, mere images of this great mind we can never hope to be able to recreate anything more than cheap reproductions. Sound familiar? > Going further down the chain of biological complexity, it isn’t unreasonable to infer that metabolism itself – that process common to all life – is the most basic image of dissociative processes in mind-at-large. Engineers design chemical processes that harness chemical energy broken up into individual steps to produce some useful product, just like metabolism does. Indeed, chemical engineers use enzymes in some of their steps. In fact, there is even work on creating artificial metabolisms. We are better at replicating this mind-at-large better than the author is aware. >Based on this understanding, do we have any reason whatsoever to believe that the mere mimicking of the information flow in human brains, no matter how accurate, will ever lead to a new dissociation of mind-at-large? The answer to this question can only be ‘yes’ if you think the kidney simulation can make the computer urinate. False equivalence much? Creation of a physical substance from thin air is impossible. However, given the right inputs, the Cloaca machine can create poop from food by simulating the digestive process. *edit - formatting