On 8/11/2011 8:50 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 3:24 AM, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 8/11/2011 7:14 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
In any case, I have made the thought experiment simpler by *assuming*
that the replacement component is mechanically equivalent to the
biological tissue. We can imagine that it is a black box animated by
God, who makes it tickle the surrounding neural tissue in exactly the
right way. I think installation of such a device would *necessarily*
preserve consciousness. What do you think?
Are you assuming that there is no "consciousness" in the black box?
That's the question: is it possible to make such a black box which
doesn't preserve consciousness?
If you mean preserve in the sense of "leave unchanged" I'd say it would
have to emulate the biological tissue at some low level (e.g. neurons or
lower) not just at the interface. If you mean preserve in the sense of
"not diminish" then I'd say probably not; just because I expect
evolution to have been fairly efficient and not provide a lot of
extraneous processing.
Brent
--
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.
