All that I mean is that it's not a necessary conclusion. Some people (perhaps not you) seem to think that way.
Fair enough.
I have no reason to think that individual atoms are conscious to any extent in the absence of a system that involves, for instance, sense organs and a brain. It seems to me that the burden should be on those that think that they are.
Why do you think that sense organs and a brain are necessarily needed for a sort of consciousness? By the way, I'd rather use the word qualia, rather than conciousness, since I don't think particles have minds, and consciousness tends to imply a mind.
I agree that those advocating the panpsychism view have the burden. But it sounded like you were dismissing panpsychism, rather than merely saying that you have no reason to agree at the moment.
I don't claim to have a solution to the hard problem of consciousness. However, it seems to me that our experience of consciousness pertains to biological systems, and it makes sense that they are conscious due to their structure and function. What structure and function do atoms have individually to be conscious? It just seems like wishful thinking.
Why do you think qualia need to be created by a particular structure type? My point would be that qualia might be fundamental in some sense. So it's not that particles have qualia, but they they ARE qualia (or proto-qualia).
Why does it seem like wishful thinking? I can see why you say that, but it's not as if I really want that to be true. If current science can find the answer without a big change in thinking, that's good because it means we will probably get answers sooner.
But I think that all possibilities should be explored by science, so we don't needlessly get stuck because people aren't willing to think beyond our current comprehension of the science of the universe.
You are being overly reductionistic.
In what way is this a criticism? Saying what something is is bad?
Again, overly reductionistic.
What does that mean as a criticism? What has particles bumping around got to do with concious experience?
Life involves motion, yes, but it is self-generated, self-sustaining motion in a system that even works against entropy. Life is more than "just movement". There are emergent properties that can, for instance, disappear in death.
In what way is life more than just movement? I see nothing significant about being self-generated and self-sustaining. It's just another type of movement. Planets create and hold themselves together with their own gravity. That too could be called self-generated and self-sustaining.
Being self-generated and self-sustaining is just the movement of particles. It's just lumps of material being moved around.
Imagine this: a murderer is put on trial. His defense is that he has not harmed his dead victim in any way. The atoms in his body were moving, and they are still moving, just on different trajectories. Nothing was lost. Would you think that his argument is successful?
Whether atoms are moving isn't our definition of harm.
I'm not saying there isn't a difference between being dead and alive, just like there's a difference between a laptop being off or on, or a cup being on a table or the floor. But the physical difference in every case is just the placement of particles.
The experience of consciousness is qualia, however, that doesn't mean that metaphysically consciousness isn't (reductionistically speaking) a certain kind of movement within a system. Qualia do change after all, and that depends on the change of the state of neurons in the brain.
I agree that consciousness changes because the brain changes.
Life is an analogy to consciousness because both seem to be emergent properties of systems.
But life is just what particles do in everything else. Making a baby is just atoms moving into a particles structure.
Plus, it is difficult to understand just how consciousness works without considering sense organs and the brain.
Why? It's not as if brains have told us how consciousness works. This sounds like saying 'it's difficult to understand how a force can exist without arms or legs'. Particles produce forces, and they may be qualia, and that might simply be the nature of the universe.
Consider the whole field of brain science. Since this is what we are familiar with, it seems to me that the burden of evidence is on the shoulders of those who would claim that consciousness exists elsewhere, and that evidence just doesn't exist.
Yeah, I agree it there is no evidence for qualia outside of the brain... but then we don't even know how we would search for such a thing.
I'm saying that we should consider this as a possible solution, and consider (in the long term) figuring out how to defect consciousness directly.
Sorry for the length.
