I'm seeing a lot of fancy hand-waving: "Well, we 'Perceive' things because we are 'Conscious', we are conscious because we are 'Self-Aware', and we are 'Intelligent' because we can do things 'Independently'." Those words don't mean anything, they are just clap-trap from bored philosophers. I dare you to first define them and then prove that computers can't do them.

Nerdum, you should reread my previous post. Your argument is like saying "A PC is a computer and PC's have WinAmp, Macs don't have WinAmp, therefore, they aren't computers. I mentioned specific technical reason why we can't just send "array.Sort()" to our brains. Those technical differences are completely explainable in the context of the theory of Universal Computation. You have only proved that brains are different forms of computers, not that they aren't computers at all.

Schmidty, your analogy of calculators to super computers is false. Unless something is being specifically designed for AI, it's not going to move towards it. Most super-computers are running things like nuclear physics simulations, applications with little need for AI. The computational power of a super-computer compared to a human is still just a drop in the bucket. Difference in scale isn't the same as difference in inherent quality.

If your DNA didn't build your brain, you couldn't be intelligent either. You base your decisions off of reason rather than ignorance. You can trivially describe almost all of your intelligent daily decision making in words and rules. At what point does your brain become this fabled "independent" and "therefore" intelligent entity? How does determinism decrease intelligence?

What you are talking about is humans being able to respond to a very wide variety of situations. I am saying that computers can respond in the same intelligent way, just to a (currently) much smaller variety of situations.

There isn't a metaphysical property of awareness. Everything you are conscious of is a simplified version of the real thing. Therefore, all awareness is ultimately symbolic. Symbolic interaction is the only form of intelligence. Whether the rules for symbolic interaction were written by evolution, person experience, personal reflection on internal symbols, or a person writing code, the rules are just as effective. Why would you use anything but effectiveness as a measure of intelligence?