On Jul 24, 9:52 am, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > It sounds like you do believe that if the neurons in your visual > cortex are replaced you could become blind but not notice that > anything has changed and continue to behave normally. If this is so, > how do you know that you aren't actually blind now?
The definition of blindness in this context depends on how closely the replacement neurons resemble natural neurons and how they are integrated with the rest of the brain. There's a lot of possibilities for any variation. The visual sense could become dissociated from proprietary confirmation so that what you see could feel like you are watching an image which is separate from where the rest of you is, so that you lose the sense of looking through your own eyes. You could lose pattern coherence so that even though you can see patterns they don't organize themselves into meaningful information and there is no difference between seeing a picture and seeing the pixels or colored regions that make it up. You could lose all visual perception but be able to navigate the world through a kind of spontaneously available proprioceptive-kinesthetic memory which serves the function of vision as far as detecting optical phenomenon but does not render it visually. Zombie vision. If anyone asks me to read an eye chart, I can read it to them, but not because I'm able to see it, just because when I point my eyes over there I suddenly know the names of the letters and their positions by heart. We don't need awareness to detect optical light, just like we don't need awareness to digest food. Replace the visual cortex and maybe you just get cognitive results of visual information pre-digested. Or maybe you would get used to any differences in the visual qualia, and the rest of the brain would adapt to the prosthesis. Neurplasticity suggests that other regions of the brain could compensate, but you still need enough natural brain left to do the compensating. -- 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.
