5 ms·

The problem is that it's absolutely something you can sever from specific senses or specific parts of your body. If I were to go blind, I suspect I would be the

The problem is that it's absolutely something you can sever from specific senses or specific parts of your body. If I were to go blind, I suspect I would be the same person afterward (or at least no more different than I would be had I retained my sight). If I lost an arm, I'd still be me, just a me controlling one less arm. I guess my point is that if intelligence is really inseparable from the body, you'd expect that it would be impossible to keep a head alive without a body- not for any biological reasons, but because the patient would become abruptly...well I'd like to say braindead but apparently there's some other source of intelligence. And you can debate about whether a sci-fi "upload" of your brain is still you, but if you're going to say it wouldn't be able to think at all then you're the one proposing mind-body dualism. edit: Of course the obvious counterargument is that plenty of people get minor to moderate brain damage while plausibly remaining the same person. I don't think I'm willing to bite that bullet, so my best pitch is that "me" is as made up a category as every other, so we should expect some weirdness.

JohnFen 4y ago
> you'd expect that it would be impossible to keep a head alive without a body Is the head not part of the body? Here's an interesting reality -- there is no hard dividing line between where the brain stops and the rest of the body starts. It's a bit like trying to say where the atmosphere stops and space begins. And we have neural masses around the heart and stomach that engage in independent activity. Some neuroscientists argue that it's reasonable to say we have three brains.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  I'm afraid there's actually a fairly firm line. The neural masses around the gut (and to a much lesser extent heart) are entirely different in structure from the cerebral grey matter we know we think with. It is however consistent with the rest of the peripheral nervous system, because that's what it's a part of. Many of the neurons in the gut are simply sensory neurons doing no processing, and the rest aren't far from what you'd expect to coordinate the various systems. That's why even though every area of the brain has a cognitive deficit associated with its removal, there is nothing similar for the gut or heart (besides the obvious issues). Mere neurons do not a brain make.
  - lawrenceyan 4y ago
    Objects are not characterized by unchanging material substance. Objects are instead the holding together of causes and conditions, meaning that they’re characterized by duration / time.
    - ravi-delia 4y ago
      Assuming I understand what you're saying here, granted. But that doesn't make lead gold, and it doesn't make the large amount of neural mass in the gut a brain.
      - lawrenceyan 4y ago
        I actually agree with you mostly. You probably don't need the neurons in your gut to be your whole self. But the point was more to explore what "whole self" really even means. Technically your brain is composed of many modular components. What decides the line for things that have to be included to be you and things that can be excluded? Is it just the close proximity?
  - mharig 4y ago
    IIRC, the neural tissue around the gut is near identical to the brain tissue.
    - ravi-delia 4y ago
      Which bits? I don't have my old notes on hand (I've since switched to less useful and more fun fields), but as I recall the particular structure characteristic of the cortex (really the telencephalon overall) isn't found anywhere else. The gut isn't just sensory stuff, but neither is the eye. There's nontrivial processing done pre-brain in a number of places, but there's no reason to think that cognition is happening elsewhere. I'm not knocking the gut, and I totally get why some neuroscientists talk about its complexity. I actually did some in depth research on it a while back (my advisor had done some related work and I was considering writing a survey paper), and there's a lot of neat stuff going on. It reminded me a lot of early cybernetics peoples' dreams of future factories run by vats of bacteria or something. If you imagine all the various steps of the digestive process, and the production of various chemicals in carefully controlled amounts, you can see why you'd want some serious hardware. Not to mention that there are a large number of muscles which aren't consciously controlled and need to respond quickly to changing circumstances.
nkrisc 4y ago
> If I were to go blind, I suspect I would be the same person afterward (or at least no more different than I would be had I retained my sight). If I lost an arm, I'd still be me, just a me controlling one less arm. At risk of getting philosophical, you would not be the same person afterwards. You'd be You Without Sight, but you were You With Sight before you went blind. I wouldn't expect a drastic change (your taste in music or political views may not change), but I think is fair to say you would be changed somehow. I believe that who we are, as a person, is an emergent property of our entire body as well as our environment.
- djokkataja 4y ago
  If a person's identity is a property, is it measurable?
  - nkrisc 4y ago
    Perhaps as measurable as the quantum state of the universe itself. After all, “environment” includes the universe. So realistically, probably not. That’s why I felt it necessary to say “I believe.”
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  Look, I love getting philosophical. Really, I do. My friends are so used to it that when I enter a conversation with "Well you might say..." they immediately start throwing objects at my head. Let none say that Ravi has ever backed down from an opportunity to get jiggy with definitions. But. Are you 100% confident that the difference between me having a brilliant idea for a fun game with my laser pointer and the me 5 minutes later experiencing a clarity of hindsight my natural vision will never again supply me is remotely comparable to the difference between, say, me and you? Or even me two years in the future? There is obviously a working definition of "same person" here! Like listen, you can absolutely say that we aren't the same person in the morning that we were before going to bed the previous night. Or going through anesthesia. Or forming new memories, or existing at all as the persisting pattern of our bodies churns through the atoms momentarily instantiating it. No man steps in the same river twice, yada yada yada. But the article is not making a philosophical argument about what the self truly is. It is positing (or raising the question in an annoyingly leading way, whatever) that intelligence is embodied definitionally. Like literally impossible without specifically the meat grubbers evolution endowed you and I with. There is absolutely no way to go from "we are all one universe" to "no machine learning system will ever be truly intelligent until it's within my chosen specialty of robotics", which is what 14 roboticists said in unison when Times interviewed them. So even if we need to invent new words for the sense in which I am the xchnople as a blind me, so you can keep "same" for whatever you're using it for, there's really no way in which it can swing the question of whether a body is required for specific, empirical aspects of cognition.
mharig 4y ago
Even losing a finger can result in heavy phantom pain. I have a friend who losed a part of his leg, and he complained for many years about pain. I think if you separate all peripheral nerve connections from the brain, it will shut down immediately.
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  But that's all the more evidence of cognition in the absence of physicality. Phantom pain is a result of signals leaking from adjacent areas of the brain to the ones which once handled senses originating from that region of the body. And you sure enough feel something, because you don't feel with your fingers. You feel, and indeed experience every other sense, only in your brain.
  - mharig 4y ago
    Yes. There are two different questions: Can a brain be constructed in a rather isolated state? Can a natural brain survive when separated from its periphery? I think the second is not possible. The first may be possible, but not in the near future.
    - ravi-delia 4y ago
      Oh granted. Maybe head transplants are on the table, but certainly a brain without a peripheral nervous system filling it with data would go into shock immediately. Even if not, there isn't a less pleasant experience I could imagine.

JohnFen 4y ago

> you'd expect that it would be impossible to keep a head alive without a body Is the head not part of the body? Here's an interesting reality -- there is no hard dividing line between where the brain stops and the rest of the body starts. It's a bit like trying to say where the atmosphere stops and space begins. And we have neural masses around the heart and stomach that engage in independent activity. Some neuroscientists argue that it's reasonable to say we have three brains.

ravi-delia 4y ago
I'm afraid there's actually a fairly firm line. The neural masses around the gut (and to a much lesser extent heart) are entirely different in structure from the cerebral grey matter we know we think with. It is however consistent with the rest of the peripheral nervous system, because that's what it's a part of. Many of the neurons in the gut are simply sensory neurons doing no processing, and the rest aren't far from what you'd expect to coordinate the various systems. That's why even though every area of the brain has a cognitive deficit associated with its removal, there is nothing similar for the gut or heart (besides the obvious issues). Mere neurons do not a brain make.
- lawrenceyan 4y ago
  Objects are not characterized by unchanging material substance. Objects are instead the holding together of causes and conditions, meaning that they’re characterized by duration / time.
  - ravi-delia 4y ago
    Assuming I understand what you're saying here, granted. But that doesn't make lead gold, and it doesn't make the large amount of neural mass in the gut a brain.
    - lawrenceyan 4y ago
      I actually agree with you mostly. You probably don't need the neurons in your gut to be your whole self. But the point was more to explore what "whole self" really even means. Technically your brain is composed of many modular components. What decides the line for things that have to be included to be you and things that can be excluded? Is it just the close proximity?
- mharig 4y ago
  IIRC, the neural tissue around the gut is near identical to the brain tissue.
  - ravi-delia 4y ago
    Which bits? I don't have my old notes on hand (I've since switched to less useful and more fun fields), but as I recall the particular structure characteristic of the cortex (really the telencephalon overall) isn't found anywhere else. The gut isn't just sensory stuff, but neither is the eye. There's nontrivial processing done pre-brain in a number of places, but there's no reason to think that cognition is happening elsewhere. I'm not knocking the gut, and I totally get why some neuroscientists talk about its complexity. I actually did some in depth research on it a while back (my advisor had done some related work and I was considering writing a survey paper), and there's a lot of neat stuff going on. It reminded me a lot of early cybernetics peoples' dreams of future factories run by vats of bacteria or something. If you imagine all the various steps of the digestive process, and the production of various chemicals in carefully controlled amounts, you can see why you'd want some serious hardware. Not to mention that there are a large number of muscles which aren't consciously controlled and need to respond quickly to changing circumstances.

nkrisc 4y ago

> If I were to go blind, I suspect I would be the same person afterward (or at least no more different than I would be had I retained my sight). If I lost an arm, I'd still be me, just a me controlling one less arm. At risk of getting philosophical, you would not be the same person afterwards. You'd be You Without Sight, but you were You With Sight before you went blind. I wouldn't expect a drastic change (your taste in music or political views may not change), but I think is fair to say you would be changed somehow. I believe that who we are, as a person, is an emergent property of our entire body as well as our environment.

djokkataja 4y ago
If a person's identity is a property, is it measurable?
- nkrisc 4y ago
  Perhaps as measurable as the quantum state of the universe itself. After all, “environment” includes the universe. So realistically, probably not. That’s why I felt it necessary to say “I believe.”
ravi-delia 4y ago
Look, I love getting philosophical. Really, I do. My friends are so used to it that when I enter a conversation with "Well you might say..." they immediately start throwing objects at my head. Let none say that Ravi has ever backed down from an opportunity to get jiggy with definitions. But. Are you 100% confident that the difference between me having a brilliant idea for a fun game with my laser pointer and the me 5 minutes later experiencing a clarity of hindsight my natural vision will never again supply me is remotely comparable to the difference between, say, me and you? Or even me two years in the future? There is obviously a working definition of "same person" here! Like listen, you can absolutely say that we aren't the same person in the morning that we were before going to bed the previous night. Or going through anesthesia. Or forming new memories, or existing at all as the persisting pattern of our bodies churns through the atoms momentarily instantiating it. No man steps in the same river twice, yada yada yada. But the article is not making a philosophical argument about what the self truly is. It is positing (or raising the question in an annoyingly leading way, whatever) that intelligence is embodied definitionally. Like literally impossible without specifically the meat grubbers evolution endowed you and I with. There is absolutely no way to go from "we are all one universe" to "no machine learning system will ever be truly intelligent until it's within my chosen specialty of robotics", which is what 14 roboticists said in unison when Times interviewed them. So even if we need to invent new words for the sense in which I am the xchnople as a blind me, so you can keep "same" for whatever you're using it for, there's really no way in which it can swing the question of whether a body is required for specific, empirical aspects of cognition.

mharig 4y ago

Even losing a finger can result in heavy phantom pain. I have a friend who losed a part of his leg, and he complained for many years about pain. I think if you separate all peripheral nerve connections from the brain, it will shut down immediately.

ravi-delia 4y ago
But that's all the more evidence of cognition in the absence of physicality. Phantom pain is a result of signals leaking from adjacent areas of the brain to the ones which once handled senses originating from that region of the body. And you sure enough feel something, because you don't feel with your fingers. You feel, and indeed experience every other sense, only in your brain.
- mharig 4y ago
  Yes. There are two different questions: Can a brain be constructed in a rather isolated state? Can a natural brain survive when separated from its periphery? I think the second is not possible. The first may be possible, but not in the near future.
  - ravi-delia 4y ago
    Oh granted. Maybe head transplants are on the table, but certainly a brain without a peripheral nervous system filling it with data would go into shock immediately. Even if not, there isn't a less pleasant experience I could imagine.