On 24 February 2014 16:01, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Monday, February 24, 2014 9:21:15 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > >> On 24 February 2014 13:56, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Sure, but there is a difference between restoring damaged parts of a >>> living person's brain and putting parts synthetic brain parts and expecting >>> it to become a living person. >> >> >> I think we need to examine that assumption of difference more closely. >> ISTM that, if you can replace or restore any part of a living person's >> brain, that is in any significant way involved in consciousness, with a >> functional equivalent, this must directly contradict any contention that >> function cannot emulate consciousness. How could one escape that conclusion? >> > > Easily. If there is a reflection of the sun coming off a puddle of water, > and you can see that reflection on the wall as an interplay of light and > shadow, you can analyze that reflection mathematically and then recreate > the pattern of light using any number of methods (photography, lasers, > lenses and mirrors, etc). It can be demonstrated conclusively that dropping > a pebble in the puddle changes the reflection on the wall in the same way > that adding a mathematical description of a dropped pebble will change the > synthetic projection on the wall. > > Why then can't we say that lenses or photography create water? > > Well, if we didn't know for a fact that the only the original pattern is > related to something we call water and the sun, then we could say - we > would have to say that logically lenses do create water, and that water can > only be an image. > > Since we cannot deny our own experience, except by using our capacity to > understand and represent some aspect of our experience to logically > abstract a concept of experiential absence, then we should realize that > there is no possibility for any description within consciousness (such as > brains encountered by our body's examination of other bodies) to supersede > consciousness itself. Any mathematical description of what our brain does > or what our mind thinks that it does will always be superseded and > diagonalized by awareness itself. It's not a higher dimension, it is the > container of dimensionality itself. > You seem to be answering a different question. I thought it was a direct entailment of your theory that no part of the brain could be substituted purely functionally without affecting the consciousness of the person associated with that brain. Suppose such a substitution of part of my brain, along the lines discussed in the wiki, were actually made, and neither I nor any third party could tell the difference. Wouldn't that directly contradict your theory? If not, why not? David >> >> -- > 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. > -- 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.
