Carleas
I'm glad you brought this up, it's something we need to expand some, I think. I don't think the problem here is with language, but with identity. The difference between consciousness and an OS (or, the difference between consciousness and [i]everything[/i], really) is that it seems to be indivisible and always associated with identity. If you chop up a computer, and run it's different parts in different parts of the world, then you could say that's 20 different computers, or one computer all spread out, or whatever- it's really an arbitrary distinction, and some of it is based on language we use to describe things, as you say. However, if you do the same thing with my brain, it makes no sense to say "Those are all me" because there can only be one of me. If I am here in this chair thinking, I am not also over in China thinking- and I am not partially over in China thinking, either.
The other thing is that thinking is only encountered in consciousness. If you ran a portion of a brain in another place, and all tests indicated it was producing sophisticated thoughts, by accounts there would have to be a ‘someone’ - an I- having them, because that’s the only situation in which thoughts occur. Again, we could say that consciousness is somehow emergent and not dependent on brain activity indications of thought, but that’s hard for a materialist. By definition, any conscious act or instance of consciousness is ‘somebody’.
I don’t think there’s anything strange about the storage (organic or otherwise) of a memory lying in a ditch. What I’m saying is that if it’s properly stimulated to produce an act of remembering , then there’s a consciousness involved. Or rather, I think there’s probably not, but that materialism wouldn’t be able to account for that or prefer that explanation.
You're probably right, and I'm tempted to concede that side of the argument, but one final question: Making sense to [i]whom[/i]? If you run the tiniest portion of the brain with the memory on it, but the interpretation parts are nowhere to be had, in what way can you say the memory data isn't 'making sense'? Is there a person whom is failing to understand it?
When a computer interprets data, it's either from a foreign system, or it's changing that data (1's and 0's) into a form an end user can understand, right? I agree with you that aliens wouldn't be able to read our Word documents, but in the case of a brain, there are no aliens, foreign systems, or end users. All of that is self contained.