On Nov 21, 2008, at 9:01 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
> What you described sounds very similar to a split brain patient I
> saw on a documentary.
It might seem similar on the surface, but it's actually very
different. The observers of the split-brain patient and the patient
himself know that something is amiss. There is a real difference in
his consciousness and his behavior. If cosmic rays randomly severed
your corpus callosum right now, you would definitely notice a
difference. (It's an empirical question whether or not you'd know it
almost immediately, or if it would take a while for you to figure it
out. I'm sure the neurologists and cognitive scientists already know
the answer to that one.)
At no point during the replacement of Alice's fully-functioning
neurons with cosmic-ray stimulated neurons (or during the replacement
of cosmic-ray neurons with no neurons at all) will Alice notice any
difference in her consciousness. In principle, she cannot notice it,
since every one of her full-functionally neurons always continues to
do exactly what it would have done. This is a serious problem for the
mechanistic view of consciousness.
-- Kory
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Received on Fri Nov 21 2008 - 20:54:20 PST