Cogito ergo sum.

I don't think so.

Oh what the heck. Let's get into it. This is one of my favorite questions to ponder.

What is consciousness? Are we merely chemical and mechanical reactions, or there is something more to us that makes us conscious?

Looking forward to hearing what you all think. We actually discussed it a little in our Hot Topics Podcast.

I think that we are more than a composite of chemicals and mechanical parts. To me, those things are what drive the physical body and don't account, for me atleast, where creativity comes from. How could a pile of chemicals invent something that's never been seen before. How could mechanical parts compose music? I also don't think that chemicals can account for emotions such as grief and love and joy.

Blogged about this today.

There are upwards of 100 trillion synaptic junctions in a human brain, all firing away in very subtle chemical reactions involving about 50 different neurotransmitter compounds. A pentium-class micrprocessor might have 100 million transistors, with only two discrete electrical levels, and it is considered a wondrous thing. What does that make us?

Complexity has a quality unto itself. We wonder at our purpose in the Universe, and we seek to know that which we cannot. How is that not divine?