> An operating system isn't an emergent property of a hard drive. An operating system emerges out of the minds of the many programmers who work on it, out of th

> An operating system isn't an emergent property of a hard drive. An operating system emerges out of the minds of the many programmers who work on it, out of the interactions these programmers have with each other and with their users, and out of the society in which they live. It then gets installed on a hard drive by a human, after which it can function by interacting with the computer's hardware. Perhaps I am using the term "emergent property" incorrectly, but your argument does not seem to contradict my point. That the operating system exists because many programmers intentionally developed it while interacting with one another and society at large, and that the OS only functions when the drive is connected to a functioning computer is immaterial. Intelligent consciousness was crafted by evolution rather than human hands, and it requires the hardware of a human body to function (as far as we know) rather than a computer, but the result is the same, is it not? That is, under the right conditions, a unique property appears that was not readily apparent from the existing components. Incidentally: I should have said, "...an emergent property of the particular arrangement of bits on a hard drive" to be more precise, but I think you knew what I meant. > Just as an operating system is a separate entity that needs to be installed onto the computer for it to be able to work, it (in the view of the author) is plausible that consciousness is something distinct from the physical matter of the body and brain. Ok, consider the example of just the core components of a computer; CPU and RAM, and the hardware for them to communicate. This can be thought of as a very complex circuit from which the emergent property of computation arises when interpreted correctly. Without an understanding of clock timing, the CPU's instruction set architecture, binary and many other concepts, the ability to measure the voltages of various components does not make the large operation or organization apparent. Ultimately my point was that the author was incorrect in stating, "We can deduce the characteristics of all known emergent properties by examining their constituent elements", and I wanted to give an example of a system for which we would likely not understand the emergent property had we not built it ourselves. Although I agree with the author's point that we cannot be certain of the origin of consciousness, I disagree strongly with his certainty that it is not an emergent property.