On Monday, May 11, 2015, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sun, May 10, 2015 at 06:33:56PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > > If there is a little hole in the movie, it is locally > > counterfactually correct, so consciousness remains, but what if the > > whole is bigger? And when consciousness would disappear? It has to > > disappear, even just with physical supervenience, but then we are > > back to fading qualia. > > > > I have never accepted the fading qualia argument. Subtracting links > from a network will at some point cause it to fall in two. Up to that > point, it is little different from the original network. After that > pointit is vastly improverished. This phenomenon goes by the name of > "percolation threshold". > > Similarly, with fading qualia, one would expect that at some point, > one adds the "straw that breaks the camel's back". Why should we not > expect the same with removing bits from the recording? After all, if > the original recording animated the whole brain, destroying part > of the recording will cause some neurons to misbehave. Eventually, the > system will be physically unable to support consciousness, but well > before every neuron is misbehaving. > It is possible that as brain tissue is replaced (with electronic circuits or whatever) there is no change in qualia until a certain threshold, then all of a sudden the qualia disappear. The threshold would probably have to be a quantum scale event, since even at the level of small molecules it is possible to perform partial replacement, resulting in the problem of partial zombies. So in order to avoid fading qualia and partial zombies you have to have something like this: consciousness survives brain tissue replacement until a certain electron in a certain atom changes orbital, at which point consciousness instantly vanishes but behaviour remains unchanged, resulting in a full zombie. -- 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/d/optout.
