On 2/23/2014 10:21 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
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?
?? Per the story, the "jewel" takes over all function, but the brain remains - just along
for the ride as it were. But no one reports this. It's like an unzombie - a being that
acts perfectly normally, but has an extra (? it's not clear in the story whether the
"jewel" is conscious) consciousness in the sense of an internal narrative.
Brent
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