--- On Wed, 3/3/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Jack Mallah <jackmal...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > For partial replacement scenarios, where part of a brain has
> > counterfactuals and the rest doesn't, see my partial brain paper:
> > http://cogprints.org/6321/
>
> I've finally come around to reading this paper. You may or may not be aware
> that there is a condition called Anton's syndrome in which some patients who
> are blind as a result of a lesion to their occipital cortex are unaware that
> they are blind. It is not a matter of denial: the patients honestly believe
> they have normal vision, and confabulate when asked to describe things placed
> in front of them. They are deluded about their qualia, in other words.
Interesting, Stathis. I hadn't heard of that before. Despite the superficial
similarity, though, it's very different from the partial brains I consider in
the paper.
> similarly in your paper where you consider a gradual removal of brain tissue.
> It would have to be very specific surgery to produce the sort of delusional
> state you describe.
I'm not sure if you overlooked it but the key condition in my paper is that the
inputs to the remaining brain are identical to what they would have been if the
whole brain were present. Thus, the neural activity in the partial brain is by
definition identical to what would have occured in the corresponding part of a
whole brain. It is of course grossly implausible that this could be done in
practice for a real biological brain (for one thing, you'd pretty much have to
know in advance the microscopic details of everything that would have gone on
in the removed part of the brain, or else guess and get incredibly lucky), but
it presents no difficulties in priciple for a digital simulation, and in any
case is a thought experiment.
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