On 24 February 2014 15:04, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote: > On 2/23/2014 4:57 PM, LizR wrote: > > >> But it raises the question, given complete amnesia and then growing up >> with different experiences and memories in what sense could you be the same >> person. I John Clark and Bruno's back and forth, the one thing they always >> agree on is that as soon as the M-man and the W-man open the transporter >> doors and see different scenes they are different people. >> > > Yes, it does of course raise this problem, and I agree with you that > this seems to stretch the definition of similarity to meaninglessness. For > this to mean anything, one really requires some way for one stream of > consciousness to segue into another, so that although the amnesia becomes > complete eventually, there is a transition between the two. Or perhaps each > stream of consciousness cycles back and forth between some tabula rasa > state (assuming any of this has any validity at all, of course). Of course > (as per the transporter) we also find ourselves in the position of > Heraclitus' man entering the river, of a person being in constant flux in > any case. This is a result of the idea of the brain being at some level a > digital computer (and probably of it being an analogue one too...). > > > For my analysis I'll invoke my favorite intuition pump, the AI Mars Rover.As > the Rover explores the terrain and learns things to enhance its > probability of mission success it fills its memory with things like "don't > try to cross those white patches" and "look for another rock that looks > like a donut". Now we can see what degrees of amnesia would mean. If just > the learned stuff were erased, as they would be blank on a second Rover, > then the Rover would be "the same" in terms of what it tried to do and how > it tried to do it, but it would be different in that it would develop > different memories and learn new tricks. You might say it had "the same > personality" as the other AI Rover. > > But then consider a more extreme case: Back a JPL they have a spare Rover > that's identical to those sent to Mars. But after the mission is over they > move the cpu and memory with the same general AI into an AI deep > submersible where they are connected to different sensors and controllers. > Then I'd say it had a different consciousness, based on my theory that > consciousness depends on how one perceives and acts on the environment. >
Yes. I think this is what might be called the standard view of consciousness, the sort that most people who think about this sort of thing think should exist, especially if the brain is like a computer (and assuming the consequences of comp don't follow from that assumption). I think some aspects would be "wired in" of course (that's equivalent to a genetic version of tuning the brain to interact with an expected environment) and some would be learned from experience. This is the view I have when I put my materialist hat on (This is certainly the view that I would take as read if I was writing a hard / cyberpunk SF novel, for example). -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
