On 3/27/2018 10:19 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2018 at 1:50 am, Lawrence Crowell
<[email protected]
<mailto:[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.
I think you are overstating that and creating a strawman. Consciousness
under the influence of drugs for example can change radically, but not
"suddenly flip" with one more molecule of alcohol.
Brent
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
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