On Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:13:22 AM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: > > On 26 February 2014 23:58, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:>> > wrote: > > > >> "The alien hand syndrome, as originally defined, was used to describe > >> cases involving anterior corpus callosal lesions producing involuntary > >> movement and a concomitant inability to distinguish the affected hand > from > >> an examiner's hand when these were placed in the patient's unaffected > hand. > >> In recent years, acceptable usage of the term has broadened > considerably, > >> and has been defined as involuntary movement occurring in the context > of > >> feelings of estrangement from or personification of the affected limb > or its > >> movements. Three varieties of alien hand syndrome have been reported, > >> involving lesions of the corpus callosum alone, the corpus callosum > plus > >> dominant medial frontal cortex, and posterior cortical/subcortical > areas. A > >> patient with posterior alien hand syndrome of vascular aetiology is > reported > >> and the findings are discussed in the light of a conceptualisation of > >> posterior alien hand syndrome as a disorder which may be less > associated > >> with specific focal neuropathology than are its callosal and > >> callosal-frontal counterparts." - > http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/68/1/83.full > > > > > > This kind of alienation from the function of a limb would seem to > contradict > > functionalism. If functionalism identifies consciousness with function, > then > > it would seem problematic that a functioning limb could be seen as > estranged > > from the personal awareness, is it is really no different from a zombie > in > > which the substitution level is set at the body level. There is no > damage to > > the arm, no difference between one arm and another, and yet, its is felt > to > > be outside of one's control and its sensations are felt not to be your > > sensations. > > > > This would be precisely the kind of estrangement that I would expect to > > encounter during a gradual replacement of the brain with any inorganic > > substitute. At the level at which food becomes non-food, so too would > the > > brain become non-brain, and any animation of the nervous system would > fail > > to be incorporated into personal awareness. The living brain could still > > learn to use the prosthetic, and ultimately imbue it with its own > > articulation and familiarity to a surprising extent, but it is a one way > > street and the prosthetic has no capacity to find the personal awareness > and > > merge with it. > > This example shows that if there is a lesion in the neural circuitry > it affects consciousness. If you fix the lesion such that the > circuitry works properly but the consciousness is affected (keeping > the environmental input constant) then that implies that consciousness > is generated by something other than the brain. >
Paying attention to the circuitry is a red herring. What I'm bringing up is how dissociation of functions identified with the self does not make sense for the functionalist view of consciousness. How do you give a program 'alien subroutine syndrome'? Why does the program make a distinction between the pure function of the subroutine and some feeling of belonging that is generated by something other than the program? Craig > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- 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.
