On Tuesday, February 11, 2014 10:26:51 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: > > On 12 February 2014 05:21, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]<javascript:>> > wrote: > > > > > > On Monday, February 10, 2014 7:51:58 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: > >> > >> On 11 February 2014 11:23, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > >> >> Continuity and the idea that physical laws will be consistent in > >> >> different times and places are definitely assumptions. They could > turn > >> >> out to be false tomorrow. > >> > > >> > > >> > The possibility of continuity seems like it is implicit in almost > every > >> > kind > >> > of experience. A mouse has an expectation of continuity. The idea of > >> > physical laws though is a much more sophisticated intellectual > >> > construct. > >> > >> Arguably psychological continuity isn't real for either mice or > >> people. If you were destroyed last night and replaced with a copy the > >> today version of you would declare that he was continuous with the > >> yesterday version. I would say that's correct, the two versions are a > >> continuation of the same person, while you would presumably say that > >> it was a delusion. > > > > > > I don't think that my experience can be replaced with a copy though. > > So how would you know you were a copy?
It has nothing to do with whether or not I would know, it's because in my understanding, copying is not primitively real, but rather is a consequence of low level insensitivity. As awareness approaches the limits of its sensitivity, everything seems more and more the same. From an absolute perspective, awareness cannot be substituted, because substitution is the antithesis of awareness. > Here you are today, incredulous > about the story of your destruction last night, but we produce > witnesses and videotapes and whatever other proof you need. What are > you going to say to that? > Your question is "If you were wrong about awareness being non-transferable, would you still think you were right?". I'm not even sure what that fallacy is called...a loaded non-question? > > >> If it were possible to have a change in mental state without a change > >> in brain state that would be evidence that we don't think with our > >> brain. > > > > > > Some claim that NDEs are such changes, and that their experiences have > > occurred during periods without brain activity. Certainly there is > evidence > > that correlates decreased brain activity with increased perception with > > psilocybin uses, which would suggest at the very least that a one-to-one > > correspondence of mental to neurological activity is an > oversimplification. > > Obviously, since maximal brain activity occurs during an epileptic > fit, during which there may be no consciousness. > > > I would not deny that we think with our brain, in the sense that the > human > > experience of thought corresponds with the appearance of human brain > > activity, but that doesn't mean that our consciousness and experience of > > living is part of our brain or can be located through our brain. > > No, I would not use those terms. But I don't believe that an > experience can occur in the absence of all brain activity, for example > if the brain is frozen in liquid nitrogen. > I don't believe that either, but that doesn't mean that thought and feeling can be frozen. > > >> Why should different languages be comprehensible to different > >> cultures? > > > > > > Why should there be different languages? If neurons use the same > language to > > signal each other, why not humans also? > > Why are lakes different in shape if they all contain water? > The different shapes don't stop them from all being potentially connected. > > >> Different computer languages run on identical hardware and > >> are mutually incomprehensible. > > > > > > That's because we are designing the computer languages, not the > hardware. We > > want to use the hardware for different purposes, but if the hardware > itself > > were designing its own language, why would we expect multiple > incompatible > > designs? > > If computers developed in isolated groups and chose words randomly or > on the basis of environmental sounds, they would have different > languages. It would be incredible if they did not, like finding an > alien civilization where people spoke English. > Yet every human culture we find has DNA which speak the common language of human reproduction, despite all of the random regional mutations. Why not carry language on the genome? > >> And why should food and drugs have a > >> differential effect depending on native language? > > > > > > Because you are saying that language is identical to brain changes. Food > and > > drugs cause brain changes too, so we should expect conflicts. Drinking > > alcohol should have different effects for speakers of different > languages, > > and speaking different languages should alter the effects of different > > drugs. > > Not at all. Computers may have identical hardware but completely > different software. We could just as easily have identical software running on completely different hardware instead. > The software differences are still encoded as > physical differences in the computer, for example different electrical > charges at different physical locations on a memory chip. Similarly, > language is encoded differently in the fine structure of the synaptic > connections even if the brains belong to identical twins raised in > different countries. > The physical differences are only encoded as software if there is a human user who is interpreting it as meaningful. Without the user who cares about the difference, and for whom the software is designed to interface with, there is only unencoded physical differences in the computer. The same goes for the brain. Without us, the brain is just a complex piece of coral, storing and repeating meaningless configurations of electrical, molecular, and cellular interactions that have nothing to do with human consciousness. > >> There are drugs > >> which have the same effect on species as far apart as humans and > >> bacteria. > > > > > > Which is why I say that it should be the same case for language if it > was a > > product of brain change. There should be words with mean the same thing > on > > species as far apart as humans and bacteria, or at least as far apart as > > humans on the other side of the continent. > > Not at all. > Because? Craig > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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