On Monday, October 1, 2012 11:08:44 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: > > On Mon, Oct 1, 2012 at 11:45 PM, Craig Weinberg > <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:>> > wrote: > > >> You're suggesting that even if one implant works as well as the > >> original, multiple implants would not. Is there a critical replacement > >> limit, 20% you feel normal but 21% you don't? How have you arrived at > >> this insight? > > > > > > If you have one brain tumor, you may still function. With multiple > tumors, > > you might not fare as well. Tumors function fine on some levels (they > are > > living cells successfully dividing) but not on others (they fail to stop > > dividing, perhaps because there is a diminished identification with the > > sense of the organ as a whole). > > > > Because we are 100% ignorant of any objective ontology of consciousness, > > there is no reason to assume that an implant can possibly function well > > enough to act as a replacement on all levels, unless possibly if the > implant > > was made of one's own stem cells (probably the best avenue to pursue). > > You're not really answering the question. The neural implants are > refined to the point where thousands of people are walking around with > them with no problem. Any objective or subjective test thrown at them > they pass. There are implants available for every part of the brain. > You're saying that if someone has 12 implants of the best possible > design they will be fine, but when they get 13 they will start to act > strangely.
They may or may not act strangely depending on who is defining what strange is. Think of how Alzheimers progresses. It's not like dementia can be detected from the first appearance of an amyloid plaque overgrowth. It would really be surprising if any brain change didn't follow this pattern. If you ingest n micrograms of LSD you are fine. If you ingest n+x micrograms, then you have a psychedelic experience lasting several hours. The model of the brain that you seem to assume is based on pure mechanistic assumption. It has no grounding in the physiological realities of what the brain actually is as a living organ. How can you know that this will happen? Because I understand what makes consciousness different from a machine. You're not just > saying here that it would be technically difficult, you're saying that > it would be *impossible* for the implants to work properly. So what > physical law that you know about and no-one else does would be broken? > The implants would work like proper implants, not like proper sub-persons. Implants have no experiences, therefore a collection of interconnected implants also have no experiences. If you have enough of a living person's brain left to be able to still be a person, then that person can learn to use prosthetic additions and implants to augment functionality or repair damage, but not replace the person themselves. There is no physical law that is broken, there is an assumption of equivalence which I am exposing as fallacious. Craig > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/5NYuIV4SOncJ. 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.
