On Monday, February 24, 2014 11:43:28 AM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > > On 24 February 2014 16:01, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]<javascript:> > > 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 or what our mind thinks that it does will always be superseded and 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. >
No, I never said that at all. People have a whole hemisphere of their brain surgically removed and it doesn't affect their human capacities nearly to the extent that we might guess, and it doesn't affect their consciousness itself at all (they still wake up being themselves). > 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? > If a doctor amputates a patient's leg, but then put the foot back on the end of the wooden leg, and the foot worked so that neither the patient or anyone else could tell the difference, wouldn't that directly contradict the theory that wooden legs can't support real feet? Craig > > 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] <javascript:>. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]<javascript:> >> . >> 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.
