Originally Posted by MythOfSisyphus

I dunno that there's any reasonable way to say that consciousness isn't a function of the brain. So are we've never found consciousness (ie a mind) anywhere but in a brain, if we can truly say we can "find it" at all. The fact that computers don't have sentience really has nothing to do with it; the bulk of AI researchers think that we will see conscious, sentient computers when computers become powerful enough.

Consciousness is actually pretty complicated; we all seem to understand what it is but it's slippery to define and difficult to really understand. Like a fish that has no framework to understand water, we really grapple with consciousness since it's the "medium" we exist in. Without it it's impossible to ponder it.

I think a good analogy is that consciousness is to the brain as light is to a bulb. Generated by the latter with no independent existence. Break the bulb and the light goes out- the light doesn't really "reside" in the bulb, it's created by the bulb. I don't think our soul "resides" in the brain; the mind is generated by the brain in a very complex way. It's software running on a wet computer.