Chalmer's fading quailia argument <http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html> shows that if replacing a biological neuron with a functionally equivalent silicon neuron changed conscious perception, then it would lead to an absurdity, either: 1. quaila fade/change as silicon neurons gradually replace the biological ones, leading to a case where the quaila are being completely out of touch with the functional state of the brain. or 2. the replacement eventually leads to a sudden and complete loss of all quaila, but this suggests a single neuron, or even a few molecules of that neuron, when substituted, somehow completely determine the presence of quaila
His argument is convincing, but what happens when we replace neurons not with functionally identical ones, but with neurons that fire according to a RNG. In all but 1 case, the random firings of the neurons will result in completely different behaviors, but what about that 1 (immensely rare) case where the random neuron firings (by chance) equal the firing patterns of the substituted neurons. In this case, behavior as observed from the outside is identical. Brain patterns and activity are similar, but according to computationalism the consciousness is different, or perhaps a zombie (if all neurons are replaced with random firing neurons). Presume that the activity of neurons in the visual cortex is required for visual quaila, and that all neurons in the visual cortex are replaced with random firing neurons, which by chance, mimic the behavior of neurons when viewing an apple. Is this not an example of fading quaila, or quaila desynchronized from the brain state? Would this person feel that they are blind, or lack visual quaila, all the while not being able to express their deficiency? I used to think when Searle argued this exact same thing would occur when substituted functionally identical biological neurons with artificial neurons that it was completely ridiculous, for there would be no room in the functionally equivalent brain to support thoughts such as "help! I can't see, I am blind!" for the information content in the brain is identical when the neurons are functionally identical. But then how does this reconcile with fading quaila as the result of substituting randomly firing neurons? The computations are not the same, so presumably the consciousness is not the same. But also, the information content does not support knowing/believing/expressing/thinking something is wrong. If anything, the information content of this random brain is much less, but it seems the result is something where the quaila is out of sync with the global state of the brain. Can anyone else where shed some clarity on what they think happens, and how to explain it in the rare case of luckily working randomly firing neurons, when only partial substitutions of the neurons in a brain is performed? Jason -- 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.
