> On 12 May 2015, at 8:25 am, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 10:51:18PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>> 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. > > It won't be a specific electron that will switch consciousness off > regardless of the order in which you remove parts, as you seem to be > implying here, but rather, in a specific sequence of removal of parts, > there will be one part that when removed causes the switching off.
The final straw would have to be indivisible, otherwise you could make a partial zombie by replacing half the straw. It would lead to a strange form of computationalism: you could replace say 40% of the brain without any problem, but go to 40.00000001% and consciousness gies off. > Under normal circumstances, quantum scale events should never cause > loss of consciousness, because there is sufficient redundancy in the > brain network, but they can cause macroscopic changes in brain > behaviour due to chaotic amplification. This is the source of > creativity, ISTM. > > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders > Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- > 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. -- 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.
