> On 21 Mar 2018, at 07:29, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 at 9:03 am, Brent Meeker <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > > On 3/20/2018 1:14 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> >> On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 at 6:34 am, Brent Meeker <[email protected] >> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> >> On 3/20/2018 3:58 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >>>> The interesting thing is that you can draw conclusions about consciousness >>>> without being able to define it or detect it. >>> I agree. >>> >>>> The claim is that IF an entity >>>> is conscious THEN its consciousness will be preserved if brain function is >>>> preserved despite changing the brain substrate. >>> Ok, this is computationalism. I also bet on computationalism, but I >>> think we must proceed with caution and not forget that we are just >>> assuming this to be true. Your thought experiment is convincing but is >>> not a proof. You do expose something that I agree with: that >>> non-computationalism sounds silly. >> >> But does it sound so silly if we propose substituting a completely different >> kind of computer, e.g. von Neumann architecture or one that just records >> everything instead of an episodic associative memory, for the brain. The >> Church-Turing conjecture says it can compute the same functions. But does >> it instantiate the same consciousness. My intuition is that it would be >> "conscious" but in some different way; for example by having the kind of >> memory you would have if you could review of a movie of any interval in your >> past. >> >> I think it would be conscious in the same way if you replaced neural tissue >> with a black box that interacted with the surrounding tissue in the same >> way. It doesn’t matter what is in the black box; it could even work by magic. > > Then why draw the line at "surrounding tissue". Why not the external > enivironment? > > Keep expanding the part that is replaced and you replace the whole brain and > the whole organism. > > Are you saying you can't imagine being "conscious" but in a different way? > > I think it is possible but I don’t think it could happen if my neurones were > replaced by a functionally equivalent component. If it’s functionally > equivalent, my behaviour would be unchanged, so I would have to communicate > that my consciousness had not changed. If, in fact, my consciousness had > changed, this means either I would not have noticed, in which case the idea > of consciousness loses meaning,
Why? It would be a case of anosognosia. Something like that happens with salvia: you lost all the memories, including the very idea of memories or that you are someone having memories. But you feel like you are what you have always have been. > or I would have noticed but been unable to communicate it, If you notice a change, you can communicate that you noticed a change, even if it is hard to spell it out. > from which point on my consciousness and my behaviour would become decoupled, > implying a type of substance dualism. OK. Bruno > -- > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list > <https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list>. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout > <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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
