Originally Posted By: Phaedrus
Looking at the Chinese Room thought experiment from Philosophy 101 we can surmise there's more to consciousness than just electrical activity.
The Chinese Room thought experiment is a bit of misdirection. None of the components of the room understand Chinese. The room as a whole understands Chinese. This is the Systems Reply, and although Searle has addressed it he doesn't really get it.

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Some scientists think there's a quantum element to it.
Notably Penrose. But he also is making some basic mistakes. He thinks humans can solve the Halting Problem, or to put it another way, that Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem applies to machines but not to humans. He's wrong.

I could argue these points at more length, but I don't think it's on-topic for this forum. Especially as we both agree that AI is probably possible, even if we disagree about the mechanisms it can or can't use.
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