On Aug 10, 10:27 pm, Stathis Papaioannou <stath...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 1:20 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Not a good analogy since the US is not conscious as a single entity. How would we know? It's at least as much of a single entity as any computer. The brain is not conscious as a single entity either - we are not conscious of much of what we are doing, let along what our brain is doing. I don't accept the objection to the analogy and I think we should continue using it since it reveals the issues specific to understanding the difference between an entity of millions of quasi- autonomous living organisms and a logical template being executed mechanically. > Please explain what would you think would happen if you replaced part > of your brain with an unconscious component that interacted normally > with the surrounding neurons. Would you say "I feel different" or > would you say "I feel exactly the same as before"? Please explain why you want to keep coming back to this fallacious example. There is no such thing as a component which interacts 'normally' when you are talking about a living being. Yes, the natural part of the brain could notice the difference, but it would not necessarily notice, depending on how much of the brain was exchanges, what parts, for how long, how much that part is used by that person at that time, etc, but above all it would depend on how closely the replacement part resembled the original. As I have asserted repeatedly, there is no such thing as a replacement that is functionally identical to the original without it actually being the original. That there could be is a radically misinformed assumption about the nervous system and consciousness which attempts to reduce the subtlety of the issue to a simplistic logical rubric. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
