On Wed, 28 Mar 2018 at 1:50 am, Lawrence Crowell < [email protected]> wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 27, 2018 at 7:21:00 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: > >> >> >> On 27 March 2018 at 09:35, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On 3/26/2018 3:19 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>> >>> >>> If you are not and never can be aware of it then in what sense is it >>> consciousness? >>> >>> >>> Depends on what you mean by "it". I can be aware of my consciousness, >>> without being aware that it is different than it was before; just as I can >>> be aware of my consciousness without knowing whether it is the same as >>> yours, or the same as some robot. >>> >> >> If I am given a brain implant to try out for a few days and I notice no >> difference with the implant (everything feels exactly the same if I switch >> it in or out of circuit), everyone I know agrees there is no change in me, >> and every test I do with the implant switched in or out of circuit yields >> the same results, then I think there would be no good reason to hesitate in >> saying yes to the implant. If the change it brings about is neither >> objectively nor subjectively obvious, it isn't a change. >> >> >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> > > This argument ignores scaling. With any network you can replace or change > nodes and connections on a small scale and the system remains largely > unchanged. At a certain critical number of such changes the properties of > the entire network system can rapidly change. > Yes, it is possible that this is the case. What this would mean is that that the observable behaviour of the system would stay unchanged as it is replaced from 0 to 100% and so would the consciousness for part of the way, but at a certain point, when a particular neurone is replaced, consciousness will suddenly flip on or off or change radically. And since neurones are themselves complex systems, within that neurone there will be a particular protein, or a particular atom in the protein which when replaced will lead to a flipping of consciousness, while all the time behaviour remains unchanged. It’s possible that in the last few minutes a cosmic ray has added a neutron to a crucial atom somewhere in your brain and this has radically changed your consciousness, but you don’t know it and neither does anyone else. I read the other day about this whole idea of brain uploading. The > neurophysiologists are largely rejecting this idea. > Why? > -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
