On 24 February 2014 16:49, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2/23/2014 9:26 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> >> On 24 February 2014 11:45, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> On 23 February 2014 17:27, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> John Searle in one of his papers proposes that if our brain were being >>>> gradually replaced we would find ourselves losing qualia while declaring >>>> that everything was normal, and being unable to make any protest to the >>>> contrary. >>> >>> >>> Replaced with what though? I assume he must stipulate non-biological >>> components that supposedly replicate brain "function", although I would >>> guess that the idea of a substitution level hasn't occurred to him >>> explicitly. That said, the idea seems preposterous on its face. >> >> Replacement with computer chips, which he agrees is at least >> theoretically possible. >> >>>> This would imply that we think with something other than our brain, a >>>> soul >>>> equivalent, and that in certain situations the brain and this soul >>>> equivalent can become decoupled. >>> >>> >>> Yes it would seem to imply that. I'd never realised that Searle would >>> infer >>> anything like that on the basis of his so-called biological naturalism. >>> Mind >>> you, since he is at least implicitly a materialist, I never had much of a >>> clue what he meant in appealing to some unspecified non-functional >>> "causal >>> power" of the brain to produce consciousness. AFAIK he never elaborated >>> this >>> beyond a brute stipulation that this is how the brain can bypass his >>> no-semantics-from-syntax prohibition (something like the brain produces >>> consciousness like the liver produces bile). >> >> I found the quote, from Searle, J. 1992 The Rediscovery of Mind >> (Cambridge, Mass : The MIT Press, >> Bradford Books): >> >> "As the silicon is progressively implanted into your dwindling brain, you >> find that the area of your conscious experience is shrinking, but that >> this >> shows no effect on your external behavior. You find, to your total >> amazement, that you are indeed losing control of your external behavior. >> You find, for example, that when the doctors test your vision, you hear >> them say, "We are holding up a red object in front of you; please tell us >> what you see." You want to cry out, "I can't see anything. I'm going >> totally >> blind." But you hear your voice saying in a way that is completely out of >> your >> control, "I see a red object in front of me". > > > Greg Egan wrote a short story "The Jewel" on this theme. At maturity, before > one's brain starts to deteriorate, everyone has their brain replaces by a > "jewel" that encodes and functionally replaces their brain but which will > not deteriorate with age. Of course, in the story, the subject discovers he > is conscious but has no control over his body and he here's himself telling > people that he is conscious just as before and there's been no change. So > really the story idea is that the original consciousness loses control of > the body but continues to perceive and to think a narrative life story which > it remembers. Since everyone who has the operation to install a "jewel" > reports that it works perfectly, everyone continues to volunteer for the > replacement. > > Brent
That's possible if the "jewel" is an adjunct rather than a replacement, for otherwise what is doing the thinking if the original brain is gone? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
