On Jul 23, 2:35 am, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Jul 22, 6:25 pm, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > > >But that's contradicting your assumption that the "pegs" are transparent > >to the neural communication: > > >"If the living > >cells are able to talk to each other well through the prosthetic > >network, then functionality should be retained" > > Neurological functionality is retained but there are fewer and fewer > actual neurons to comprise the network, so the content of the > conversations are degraded, even though that degradation is preserved > with high fidelity.
Assuming replacement neurons aren;t functionally equivalent. > > Whatever neurons remain, even it it's only the afferent/efferent > >ones, they get exactly the same communication as if there were no "pegs" > >and the whole brain was neurons. > > Think of them like sock puppet/bots multiplying in a closed social > network. If you have 100 actual friends on a social network and their > accounts are progressively replaced by emulated accounts posting even > slightly unconvincing status updates, Why would "slightly unconvincing" fall under "exact funcitonal replacement"? >you rapidly lose interest in > those updates and either route around them, focusing on the > diminishing group of your original non-bots, or check out of the > network altogether. A neuron is more than it's communication. A > communicating peg cannot communicate feelings that it doesn't have, it > can only emulate computations that are based upon feeling correlates. > > >You're evading the point by changing examples. > > Not intentionally. It's just that example is built on fundamental > assumptions which I think are not only untrue, but buried in the gap > between our understanding of consciousness and our understanding of > everything else. IOW: yout think the Neurone Replacement Hypothesis doens't disprove your theory because you think your theory is correct. See the problem? > The assumption being that our consciousness must work > like everything else that our consciousness can examine objectively, > whereas my working assumption is to suppose that our consciousness > works in exactly the opposite way, and that opposition itself is > critically important and fundamental to any understanding of > consciousness. Observing our neurons behaviors is like chasing > billions of our tails, and assuming that their heads must be our head. > Replacing the tails alone doesn't make our head happen magically. The > neurons that we see are only the outer half of the neurons that we > are. The inside looks like our lives, our society, our evolution as > organisms. > > >It does raise in my mind an interesting pont though. These questions > >are usually considered in terms of replacing some part of the brain (a > >neuron, or a set of neurons) by an artificial device that implements the > >same input/output function. It then seems, absent some intellect > >vitale, that the behavior of that brain/person would be unchanged. But > >wouldn't it be likely that the person would suffer some slight > >impairment in learning/memory simply because the artificial device > >always computes the same function, whereas the biological neurons grow > >and change in response to stimuli. There is such a thing as machine learning. And those stimuli are external and > >cannot be forseen by the doctor. So what he needs to implant is not > >just a fixed function but a function that depends on the history of its > >inputs (i.e. a function with memory). > > Now you're getting closer to what I'm looking at. A flat model of a > neuron is not a neuron. It's a living thing. It has respiration. It > learns and grows. It's us. > > Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
