Again AI

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 12.

According to one "'...school of thought, the mind is not completely algorithmic.'" (p. 163)

If an algorithm is a process that can be programmed to run automatically and unconsciously, then a mind is not an algorithm.

Dagny thinks that, if the mind has a material basis, then it should be possible to produce it artificially. (ibid.)

If, by "matter," we mean something like, e.g., "mechanically interacting particles with only the quantifiable properties of mass and volume," then it is impossible to understand how interactions between such particles could generate consciousness but that is because we have excluded any potential for consciousness from the concept of "matter" in the first place. A collection of voluminous masses can be fully described without ascribing any consciousness to it. If, however, "matter" includes mobile marine organisms not only interacting with their environments but also naturally selected for increasing sensitivity to environmental alterations, then it becomes less of a stretch to imagine that organismic sensitivity quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation.

There remains a qualitative difference between unconscious sensitivity and conscious sensation. A new property, consciousness, has emerged. Sensation is conscious sensitivity, which makes my phrase "conscious sensation" tautologous - but I use it to demarcate sensation from pre-conscious organismic responses. However, novelty is a feature of qualitative transformations as when two colors mixed together become a third color or when, within consciousness, one more apprehended datum increases comprehension, triggering an intuitive realization.

Guthrie points out that "material" is a weird concept, citing quantum mechanics. Again, if by "material," we mean just "solid," then quantum particles/waves/fields etc are not "material" in this limited sense. However, they remain "matter" in the philosophical sense. Philosophical "matter" is just whatever it is that pre-existed, and still exists independently of, emergent consciousness. What its nature is is not a conceptual/philosophical but an empirical/scientific question that might not have any final answer. Scientific answers are approximations.

Philosophical "matter" is also called "being" and as such is contrasted with consciousness. Can being become conscious? It has done. The only question is how.