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I don't quite get your arguments about requiring us to be "external" to reality to be able to understand brain. First of all, I don't see why you can't study so

I don't quite get your arguments about requiring us to be "external" to reality to be able to understand brain. First of all, I don't see why you can't study something of which you are a part of. Secondly, even if you accept this supposition, Alice is external to Bob and Bob is external to Alice, so Alice could study Bob's brain and Bob can study Alice's brain. > We can't perceive the "roads not taken" in terms of development, nor can we know if there is "something we're missing" in terms of understanding the brain. What do you mean "we can't"? Of course we do know that "something is missing", because we can't build a good predictive theory of how consciousness work. > Self includes the body, which implies that merely copying the brain, no matter how perfectly, is not an accurate copy. So you consider a person with an amputated arm a different person, not just the same person, who just can't use their arm anymore?

keiferski 3y ago
1. Both Alice and Bob are together in the world. Neither is external to the world itself. My argument is that whatever knowledge we have of the brain, it is almost certainly incomplete, as we only know what we can observe empirically. Ergo, we can't have a complete picture of the brain and therefore can't copy it. 2. Evolution has taken us down certain perceptual pathways. We don't know what other pathways exist. They are "unknown unknowns." Ergo, again, we can't have a complete picture of the brain, so we can't have a perfect copy of it. 3. That's not really a good counterexample to the point I'm making, which is that the act of embodiment is intertwined with the concept of the Self. The idea that the Self developed independently of the body is false. So again, if we were to copy the brain and put it in a digital environment, it would not be a copy of the person, nor would it remain the same, as it no longer has a body. Patterns of thought would change, concepts of Self would change. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/ All of these are just various ways of saying that you could not make a 100% digital copy of a flesh-and-blood human being. It would not be the same person.
- eterevsky 3y ago
  1. I think most traditional approaches to epistemology disagree with you. 2. Doesn't the same logic apply to basically everything else? It doesn't rely on any specific properties of the brain. 3. Replace an arm by a car. Would a person sitting at the steering wheel of a car be different from the same person outside of it? If no, then what's the salient difference between an arm and a car?
- paulluuk 3y ago
  But then what's the difference between a brain and, say, a rock, in this case? Both exist in this world, and neither is external. Can we therefore not understand or do a full simulation of a rock? Not being sarcastic here, genuinely curious what you think and why. edit: Oh, I think I understand a bit more now: we're not talking about creating a simulation of "a brain", but a simulation of a specific brain, and whether that's still the same "person" as the original person the brain belonged to. That's a very different discussion.

keiferski 3y ago

1. Both Alice and Bob are together in the world. Neither is external to the world itself. My argument is that whatever knowledge we have of the brain, it is almost certainly incomplete, as we only know what we can observe empirically. Ergo, we can't have a complete picture of the brain and therefore can't copy it. 2. Evolution has taken us down certain perceptual pathways. We don't know what other pathways exist. They are "unknown unknowns." Ergo, again, we can't have a complete picture of the brain, so we can't have a perfect copy of it. 3. That's not really a good counterexample to the point I'm making, which is that the act of embodiment is intertwined with the concept of the Self. The idea that the Self developed independently of the body is false. So again, if we were to copy the brain and put it in a digital environment, it would not be a copy of the person, nor would it remain the same, as it no longer has a body. Patterns of thought would change, concepts of Self would change. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/ All of these are just various ways of saying that you could not make a 100% digital copy of a flesh-and-blood human being. It would not be the same person.

eterevsky 3y ago
1. I think most traditional approaches to epistemology disagree with you. 2. Doesn't the same logic apply to basically everything else? It doesn't rely on any specific properties of the brain. 3. Replace an arm by a car. Would a person sitting at the steering wheel of a car be different from the same person outside of it? If no, then what's the salient difference between an arm and a car?
paulluuk 3y ago
But then what's the difference between a brain and, say, a rock, in this case? Both exist in this world, and neither is external. Can we therefore not understand or do a full simulation of a rock? Not being sarcastic here, genuinely curious what you think and why. edit: Oh, I think I understand a bit more now: we're not talking about creating a simulation of "a brain", but a simulation of a specific brain, and whether that's still the same "person" as the original person the brain belonged to. That's a very different discussion.