On Monday, February 24, 2014 12:16:26 PM UTC-5, David Nyman wrote: > > On 24 February 2014 16:59, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> 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). >> > > Well, removed is one thing and substituted is another. So to be clear, in > your theory would it be possible for me to have part of my brain > substituted digitally and not be aware of any difference? > > >> >>> 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? >> > > Well, the patient would notice that they no longer had any sensation > between their hip and their foot, I suppose, so no, it wouldn't contradict > that theory. >
No, they patient couldn't notice any difference. That's the conceit of the scenario - just as the conceit of your scenario is "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". I'm mirroring back to you the terms of your question so that you might see why the question is loaded. For this to be an adequate analogy, no relevant aspect of the patient's > pre-operative functional capabilities would be different. > Right. I am saying it wouldn't. Some how the wooden leg just feels like a real leg - maybe they have a brain injury in which the feeling of their right leg is mirrored on their left. > But my question is reasonable, isn't it? Perhaps you could just try to > answer my it directly without the use of analogies. > No, that's the point of the analogy, so you can see for yourself why the question is not reasonable. The question posed over and over to me here has been some variation of this same "But if the world didn't work the way that it does, wouldn't you have to agree that you were wrong and the world was right?" 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
