If you think of a brain being an ants nest and neurons as the ants you can understand how seemingly complicated and coordinated actions can arise from what at first appears to be an uncontrolled mass of individual ants/neurons. Final actions, wether they be consciously decided or ratified as such after the potential has been reached can be compared to what chaos theory calls strange attractors, which is quite apt considering ant behaviour is governed by pheremone density which influences their behaviour and actions. Simplistically a dense scent of 'food this way' will attract the ant along the pheremone trail, hopefully to food. A dense scent of 'I'm taking out the trash' will put the ant into garbage-removal mode to clear rubbish from the nest. Too dense a scent is a negative influence, bringing a collapse in a given behaviour, much like a chaotic system can suddenly break from a stable state to an unpredictable state with little or no change in the initial state.

In this way we may be able to create an artificial intelligence by setting up the environment for a system of chaos or complexity and letting it run, probably controlled by a form of genetic algorythm which can breed a system which has usefull outputs.

nullasulus: Advancements continue to be made in many sciences, certainly in neurology and physics and otherwise.

Right. Lots of advancement that maps brains states to conscious states. But not one damn thing that explains what "blue" and "red" are as "qualia" experiences. "Blue is what you experience when your brain is in a certain state" doesn't explain what blue is.

If "blue" (i.e, states of consciousness) really is an intrinsic state of matter, then matter really is "magical" in a way that is way beyond current physical theories.

Chalmers thinks that consciousness may be a primary force or feature of nature.

Libet thus produced the first experimental support for the version of free will that Richard Gregory famously called "free won't". At first glance, the detection of a readiness potential before consciousness of the wish to act appears to bury free will: after all cortical activity leading to a movement is well under way before the subject makes what he thinks is a conscious decision to act.
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Libet does not interpret his work as proving free will a convenient fiction.
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[O]ne interpretation with significant experimental support is this: there exists a conscious cerebral activity whose role may be "blocking or vetoing the volitional process so that no actual motor action occurs", as Libet wrote in 1998.
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[This] reaffirms Sherrington's insight that "to refrain from an act is no less an act than to commit one": thus, "free won't".
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This kind of role for free will is actually in accord with religious and ethical strictures. These commonly advocate that you 'control yourself'. Most of the Ten Commandments are 'do not' orders.
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"Since the volitional process is initiated in the brain unconsciously, one cannot be held to feel guilty or sinful for simply having an urge or wish to do something asocial. But conscious control over the possible act is available, making people responsible for their actions.
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I, as an experimental scientist, a led to suggest that true free will is a [more accurate scientific description] than determinism."
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"Most neuroscientists shy away from my argument invoking free will and a mental field that are not encompassed by existing physical law."
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"It violates determinism, which makes them very uncomfortable. But physical laws were discovered as a result of the study of physical objects, not of subjective experience. Even if we had perfect knowledge of all the trillions of synaptic connections n a brain, of all the circuits which comprise it - even with all this, as we have learned from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle as well as chaos theory, you cannot predict what the brain will do."- Libet

Jeffrey Schwartz, The Mind And The Brain, pp. 307-12

here are a couple of places to start

http://www.christian-thinktank...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

hope that helps

Exodus 21:2 very clearly says you can keep a Hebrew as a slave, but must release him in the seventh year.

If some one signs a contract to give up his freedom to work for you and you release him after seven years it's not slavery it's indentured service.

I don't know how much history you know but this is exactly the arrangement that poor folks in Europe used to pay for the passage to America. I have ancestors that entered into this service voluntarily and would have never made it to the land of the free with out it.

Ah, so you have no problem with slavety as such, just "new world slavery".

No I'm against all forms of slavery and the new covenant prohibits it as well. Jesus came to free all slaves. luke 4:18

I just think it's important to that understand the brutal dehumanizing practice we think of when we think of slavery is not the practice that the Old Testament was regulating. To confuse the two is similar to confusing eugenics and Darwinism.

Well there are plenty of instances of the Israelites wiping out other tribes (ethnic cleansing I guess we weould call it nowadays).

The Israelites were no better and no worse than the surrounding people. This kind of red herring has absolutely nothing to do with the morality of Christianity. Christians are not Israelites and the Old Covenant is not the New.

So the man can sell himself to you, but not be a slave? What does that mean? My guess is that this requires the owner to treat Hebrew slaves well

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Please research indentured service and the different forms of slavery many of which still exist today it's not as simple as you think.

Peace

nullasalus: How can an organism with no self-consciousness have a subjective experience?

Self-consciousness appears to be largely limited to a few mammalian taxa (primates, dophins, elephants) and is believed to have evolved as a social adaptation, that is, the ability to see oneself as others see you. But many animals seem to have subjective experience, such as pain, love, hate, fear.

nullasalus: There'd be a big difference between objectively self-referential code, and a subjective experience.

Yes. That was my point.

We can easily imagine or construct self-referential AI. Being self-referential is not the "hard problem" of consciousness. The "hard problem" concerns the tangible nature of subjective experience. Even an organism without self-consciousness presumably has subjective experience.

How can an organism with no self-consciousness have a subjective experience? Sounds like panpsychism to me.

There'd be a big difference between objectively self-referential code, and a subjective experience.

Zachriel: The reason Gierer gives, the self-referential features of consciousness, is not a particularly strong argument that there exists a barrier to a valid scientific theory of mind.

nullasalus: But the argument you think is 'not particularly strong' is taken by some very smart people in the relevant to be downright herculean.

We can easily imagine or construct self-referential AI. Being self-referential is not the "hard problem" of consciousness. The "hard problem" concerns the tangible nature of subjective experience. Even an organism without self-consciousness presumably has subjective experience.

Sure. And we may never know what stars are made of. Meanwhile, advances continue to be made. The reason Gierer gives, the self-referential features of consciousness, is not a particularly strong argument that there exists a barrier to a valid scientific theory of mind.

Quite a number of philosophers and scientists (even some neurologists and psychologists) disagree. The subjective nature of consciousness - the fact that establishing correlation between it and third-person states still doesn't begin to explain that subjective experience itself - is quite a wall. Advancements continue to be made in many sciences, certainly in neurology and physics and otherwise.

I just picked up a course by Professor Robinson where he mentions that when it comes to consciousness itself, we're pretty much in the same position Aristotle was. I suppose you can take the Dennett 'There is no hard problem' approach, or the McGinn 'Okay, there's a hard problem and we may never solve it but surely it's physical' approach, or even the Chalmers 'There's a hard problem, it's not physical, but we can still advance science if we keep a few things in mind' approach. But the argument you think is 'not particularly strong' is taken by some very smart people in the relevant to be downright herculean.

Gierer: In particular self-referential features of consciousness, such as self-representations involved in strategic thought and dispositions, may not be resolvable in all their essential aspects by brain analysis. Assuming that such limitations exist, objective analysis by the methods of natural science cannot, in principle, fully encompass subjective, mental experience.

Sure. And we may never know what stars are made of. Meanwhile, advances continue to be made. The reason Gierer gives, the self-referential features of consciousness, is not a particularly strong argument that there exists a barrier to a valid scientific theory of mind.