On Nov 21, 2008, at 9:01 AM, Jason Resch wrote: > What you described sounds very similar to a split brain patient I > saw on a documentary.
It might seem similar on the surface, but it's actually very different. The observers of the split-brain patient and the patient himself know that something is amiss. There is a real difference in his consciousness and his behavior. If cosmic rays randomly severed your corpus callosum right now, you would definitely notice a difference. (It's an empirical question whether or not you'd know it almost immediately, or if it would take a while for you to figure it out. I'm sure the neurologists and cognitive scientists already know the answer to that one.) At no point during the replacement of Alice's fully-functioning neurons with cosmic-ray stimulated neurons (or during the replacement of cosmic-ray neurons with no neurons at all) will Alice notice any difference in her consciousness. In principle, she cannot notice it, since every one of her full-functionally neurons always continues to do exactly what it would have done. This is a serious problem for the mechanistic view of consciousness. -- Kory --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
