The mainstream science and modern philosophy , both inspired by atheism, have an incoherent view of what consciousness is. They think that a series of gears cogs etc can bring about consciousne provided that it is 'complex enough'. With such a (mis)understanding, it is not a surprise that they are already at the second floor, wondering whether they can transfer the consciousness into acomputer. But here I will highlight that we have not yet built the basement, can a machine made of an array of mindless events be conscious? I don't think so!
What causes the lack of understanding of this otherwise simple property of 'consciousness' is caused by the fact that modern scientist is realy not interested with understanding such. What he want to do is to create a platform where they can argue that 'there is no evidence of the reality of anything related to ancient religions'. Defining 'science' in contrast to 'religion' has long out-leaved it purpose. It was good in those days when the 'pope' was on the pedestal, tumbling any view that is outside the orthodox church. At then, science was humble, religion was not. But now it is the scientist that sits squarely on the pedestal, dictating dogmas. So the insistence that 'this is religion' as a way to 'humiliate' is no longer that usefull and is even now counter-productive!
In order to remove all manner of 'God' from explanations of natural phenomena( so that they can have a point when they come back and insist: 'there is no scientific evidence of God'), a scientist is forced into an incoherent view! We must explain the world mechanically, so we may not ask 'what is this consciousness at work in the universe?' But then a daunting question arises when we now want to understand where our consciousness comes from! If we are nothing but an ensemble of the 'simple natural things' behaving in their 'simple', mechanical, unconscious way, how comes we are conscious at all? why cant the array of events and components remain as unconscious as the individual components? What does an addition of an extra cog into the system (to make it one cog more complex) has to do with consciousness, if the cog itself is not conscious?
So obviously our modern science 's approach is ridiculous and has no hope of ever leaving the ground! Infact the scientist is demanding that we approach consciousness in a way totally different in how we approach all other phenomena! Then they wonder why, unlike these other phenomena, consciousness is hopelessly difficult to understand! Usually, there is no way of understanding phenomenon B in terms of a combination of phenomena type A in such a way that phenomenon B does not throw any light in the understanding of phenomena A. The understanding of a complex phenomenon goes in both directions: 'top down' and 'bottom up'. Thus we can understand engine rotation as 'a directed explosive force in the burning fuel' or understand the explosion of fuel as 'the undirected motion'. This way, the engine is perfectly understandable because in every addition of necessary component, we can see what this component has to do with rotation.We can see what cylinder does to direct motion linearly and why a crank does to direct it rotationally. This is because we are not trying to deny 'motion' in each individual components' and then insist that only the entire engine can move but non of its components can!
Similarly, in order to understand 'consciousness', we must think of natural phenomena as to have a type of consciousness and that the complexity of the brain is there to merely diversify ciousiousness. Complexity does not produce consciousness. Indead complexity never 'produces' anything from thin air. It always just diversify something that is already in the components. Adding a car-burator to the engine never creats motion. It just makes the engine move in a particular way, different from how it moves in the engine without a carburator.
The next misunderstanding comes in inappropriately linking 'intelligence' with 'consciousness'. Combining this with the equaly perverted view that 'intelligence' is about 'auto-reprograming' It temps people to think that a computer is more approaching 'consciousness' than any other machine, eg a spanner does. It akso helps our uninspired scientist to 'see no evidence' of conciousness in natural phenomena. It is nothing of the sort! What a scientist looks for as 'evidence of consciousness' is actually the 'evidence' of what he calls it 'intelligence'. This is because to him, intelligence equals consciousness! But this is not the case. Consciousness comes about as a way of guiding an entity to 'do it the right way'. So yes, consciousness has something to do with intelligence but it does more than impart intelligence. It imparts the 'rightness' of all manner and is associated with intelligence only when the intelligence is 'the right thing' in question. We can similarly just swing the hand back an forth consciously or even do a stupid thing consciously and/ or 'intentionally'. So when looking for evidence of consciousness in natural phenomena, scientists should look for the more general 'evidence of doing it the right way' rather than 'evidence of intelligence'. The moon orbits the sun, for instance, 'the right way' in that 'an elliptical orbit is the wrong one for the moon'.
Finally we can come back to consciousness in machines but now having 'done the somersault correctly' to avoid landing on the head rather than on the feet. Becuse all natural phenomena have a type of consciousness, even machines might have them, but such consciousness will not be the one artificialy installed into the machine as if by a programmer. This also means that we cannot manipulate such a consciousness. We cannot 'imprison' it, 'punish' it or such. Or in short, such consciousness is not any different from the human consciousness in that it isn't created nor even understood by the programmers. It comes about from the fact that natural phenomena, as applied in the machine, inherently has a type of consciousness, and not because a programmer understands it and has intentionally created it. So since such 'machine consciousness' is no different from human consciousness, there is no need to worry that when it comes to 'machines that are conscious', some scientists will have the ability to manipulate consciousness at will. If they can't do it with humans, they can't do it in machines either!
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Ask: why do muscles MOVE? The answer is 'because movement is an intrinsic property of matter, present in all matter, and muscles are made of matter'.
Ask: why is the body warm? the answer is, again 'because warmth is a property in all matter'. Everything, from stones to gases can get warm.
In other words, we often understand why some property is there in a specific thing by simply thinking of everything as to have that property but maybe in a more un-manifest way. One thing sheds some light on everything else! Thus we understand why some metals are magnets by realizing that actually, everything is a magnet. It is only that the 'subatomic magnets' are not always aligned.
Now come to consciousness. If a property only fundamentally exists in specific ensemble of components, it is impossible to understand how it arises in that specific ensemble, as it demands 'creation ex-nihilo', defeating the very claim that the property is caused by the very components. We absolutely must be able to see how an atom, say in the brain, contributes to consciousness of the brain. To do so, an atom can never fail to have a consciousness-like property, or otherwise we can't see how the atom is contributing to the creation of consciousness in the brain.
Thus we now understand atoms in the light of consciousness, not just the vice-versa: attempt to understand consciousness in the light of atoms. Then some of 'mysteries of atoms' such as in quantum mechanics, eg atoms seeming to 'know' that they are being observed, becomes easier to understand.
Such a consciousness then, that somehow exists in everything, can be seen as 'the immanent God' out from which, we inherit our consciousness.
Thanks for entertaining unorthodoxed view!!☺