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What exactly do you mean by "consciousness"? I think the word "consciousness" holds very different meanings for different people. I don't think you're interpre

What exactly do you mean by "consciousness"? I think the word "consciousness" holds very different meanings for different people. I don't think you're interpretting the word in the same way other people do. Furthermore, after reading the comment you linked to, I disagree with the premise of gradually replacing each organic neuron with a synthetic surrogate. But, hey, if you're into the idea of slowly eroding your central nervous system, and back-filling the tissue with a machine that picks up the slack, I won't stop you. The remnants won't be you though. If we amputate a goldfish from it's brain, and the body continues to be guided by an electronic apparatus, the gold fish is no more. The husk that remains is a grotesque puppet. If, as my parents were slowly debilitated by alzheimers, they elected to supplement their mental functions with computer assistance, I would regard them as I might regard a dead animal that was stuffed and mounted. There is no such experience as climbing inside the circuits of a computer to experience immortality. There is no such experience as slowly disolving one's self into a mixture of microscopic machinery, after which we suddenly blink our eyes and become miraculous robots. We die. The robot blinks, and masquerades as us for the benefit of the living. Nothing more.

pedrosorio 12y ago
But if instead of replacing your neurons with "a mixture of microscopic machinery", you replace them with other neurons, you remain yourself (instead of becoming a stuffed animal)? Care to explain why? Because the essence of humanity is in the exact molecules that make up neurons? What if we replace some of the atoms in these molecules by different isotopes? (a common practice for studying metabolism, including in human brains: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22218/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22218/) Does the person remain human, then? Where do you draw the line and what is the reasoning behind it?
- negativity 12y ago
  Because I have yet to see any product of human effort come close to the scale of complexity that cellular tissues represent. Current-generation electronic systems are very complicated, and convincing "life-like" behavior still seems to be out of reach. Even if we eventually manage to produce systems that engage in sufficiently convincing life-like behavior, that bridges any sort of uncanny-valley gaps, there will still be a confusing grey area between truly sentient Life, and deceptively convincing complex apparatuses which are not alive. Even to reach the grey area will demand large collaborative teams of skilled and talented experts. If breathing life into a complex system represents a challenge above and beyond the Manhattan Project or the Apollo moon missions, how will we ever decide who benefits from the fruits of such labor? Are human beings capable of sharing such a thing? These things will not be toys. They would be more controversial than genetically modified foods. If a tissue replacement technology were to be implemented, would it be self-replicating and autonomous? If so, would it possibly be infectious? Or would it be so durable that it wouldn't need to repair itself? Would it's many tiny components communicate with one another? Could the communication be intercepted and disrupted? These are huge problems. Even if one very powerful HAL 9000 system solves all these problems for us, and manages to devise a scheme to mass produce a practical inorganic replacement for neurological tissue, isn't it possible that such an expert system might have an agenda of its own that does not represent lesser human interests like immortality? Wouldn't it require a similar leap of faith to trust in a technology with a purpose that can only be rationalized and not proven? For these reasons, I place my bets on biotechnology, using native human cells, and not electronic surrogates. If I know that I am alive, and that typical organic cells produce this phenomenon of experience, and it's within our reach to manipulate stem cells to repair our brains and keep them alive without any upper age limits, then I'll choose the sure thing, before placing faith in any experimental electronic surrogate.
  - pedrosorio 12y ago
    Your position is that you prefer and believe in "repairing" our brains using biotechnology because there are too many problems with the alternative "electronic based" solution. That is a reasonable opinion and preference. My response to your comment focused on what I perceived as "consciousness as something that is defined by the workings of the human brain" and that could not be achieved by any other means. While I agree that attempting to replace our brains with "electronics" is a dangerous game, I also think that the computational approach can provide a lot more interesting answers (and questions) about many phenomena that occur in the "intelligent mind" and what consciousness really is, than the simple "fix by replacement" can.
    - negativity 12y ago
      There's another as-yet-unexplored hazard though, and it's the emotional aspect of showing people convincing facsimiles of their loved ones. Tempting people into making emotionally charged decisions while they're in the fragile state of confronting death is an ethical sinkhole. If people actually believe that their dead relatives have gone off to live on the great server farm in the sky, what comes next? At the very least, a profound emotional attachment to an air-conditioned warehouse filled with noisy machinery. Alive or dead, any convincing artificial construct of a human being is going to carry a lot of weight and social currency. It's a phenomenon worthy of experimentation, but there's a very real hazard of making irrational, emotional decisions that revolve around these things, which might carry little practical benefit. There's some serious risk in being deceived by artificial creations, into behavior that is not in our own best interests.
hackinthebochs 12y ago
>What exactly do you mean by "consciousness"? I mean exactly what you mean by consciousness. There is no big mystery here. I take it you are a believer of a "soul" or some kind of panpsychism? If so, then you have no place to deride anyone else's opinions as "technobabble", as yours are simply "babble". If you believe in material matter giving rise to consciousness, then it must be the information contained with that matter that is of value, rather than the matter itself. At that point replacing biological neurons with electronic ones makes no difference as long as they function exactly the same. Information does not care about the medium, only the mechanism.
- benpbenp 12y ago
  There is a gigantic mystery which you are sweeping under the rug. Sure, a purely materialistic conception of the universe is very neat and appealing. But you are at risk of missing something of fundamental importance to the overall nature of being if you simply shut down any possible additions to this conception. The mystery is this: Why can't we observe consciousness? No, literally, we cannot observe it. The scientific process at least requires a starting observation, some phenomenon which requires explanation, something you can point to and say, "What's that?". The sun rising and setting. Brownian motion. Whatever. Consciousness on the other hand is merely the fact that the universe exists from a perspective. You only ever have access to one perspective, your own, you can never observe any other instance of perspective "out there", "in the world". It is not a thing, an "object". It is a subject, "you".
  - hackinthebochs 12y ago
    I don't shut down any possible additions to the concept of consciousness, I just require that any additions be motivated by need. At this point in our understanding there simply is no need to presume some sort of metaphysical happenings. The brain being the sole generator of consciousness currently appears to be powerful enough to explain everything we know about consciousness. Add on to that all the evidence brain activity correlating with conscious experience, exciting the brain in specific locations generating conscious experience, and brain damage in various locations having clear and permanent affects on consciousness, and we have strong evidence that the brain is in fact all there is. We may not be able to "observe consciousness directly", but we have constrained its possible whereabouts to "within the brain". Sure, more work needs to be done, but we are far from completely ignorant here.

pedrosorio 12y ago

But if instead of replacing your neurons with "a mixture of microscopic machinery", you replace them with other neurons, you remain yourself (instead of becoming a stuffed animal)? Care to explain why? Because the essence of humanity is in the exact molecules that make up neurons? What if we replace some of the atoms in these molecules by different isotopes? (a common practice for studying metabolism, including in human brains: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22218/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC22218/) Does the person remain human, then? Where do you draw the line and what is the reasoning behind it?

negativity 12y ago
Because I have yet to see any product of human effort come close to the scale of complexity that cellular tissues represent. Current-generation electronic systems are very complicated, and convincing "life-like" behavior still seems to be out of reach. Even if we eventually manage to produce systems that engage in sufficiently convincing life-like behavior, that bridges any sort of uncanny-valley gaps, there will still be a confusing grey area between truly sentient Life, and deceptively convincing complex apparatuses which are not alive. Even to reach the grey area will demand large collaborative teams of skilled and talented experts. If breathing life into a complex system represents a challenge above and beyond the Manhattan Project or the Apollo moon missions, how will we ever decide who benefits from the fruits of such labor? Are human beings capable of sharing such a thing? These things will not be toys. They would be more controversial than genetically modified foods. If a tissue replacement technology were to be implemented, would it be self-replicating and autonomous? If so, would it possibly be infectious? Or would it be so durable that it wouldn't need to repair itself? Would it's many tiny components communicate with one another? Could the communication be intercepted and disrupted? These are huge problems. Even if one very powerful HAL 9000 system solves all these problems for us, and manages to devise a scheme to mass produce a practical inorganic replacement for neurological tissue, isn't it possible that such an expert system might have an agenda of its own that does not represent lesser human interests like immortality? Wouldn't it require a similar leap of faith to trust in a technology with a purpose that can only be rationalized and not proven? For these reasons, I place my bets on biotechnology, using native human cells, and not electronic surrogates. If I know that I am alive, and that typical organic cells produce this phenomenon of experience, and it's within our reach to manipulate stem cells to repair our brains and keep them alive without any upper age limits, then I'll choose the sure thing, before placing faith in any experimental electronic surrogate.
- pedrosorio 12y ago
  Your position is that you prefer and believe in "repairing" our brains using biotechnology because there are too many problems with the alternative "electronic based" solution. That is a reasonable opinion and preference. My response to your comment focused on what I perceived as "consciousness as something that is defined by the workings of the human brain" and that could not be achieved by any other means. While I agree that attempting to replace our brains with "electronics" is a dangerous game, I also think that the computational approach can provide a lot more interesting answers (and questions) about many phenomena that occur in the "intelligent mind" and what consciousness really is, than the simple "fix by replacement" can.
  - negativity 12y ago
    There's another as-yet-unexplored hazard though, and it's the emotional aspect of showing people convincing facsimiles of their loved ones. Tempting people into making emotionally charged decisions while they're in the fragile state of confronting death is an ethical sinkhole. If people actually believe that their dead relatives have gone off to live on the great server farm in the sky, what comes next? At the very least, a profound emotional attachment to an air-conditioned warehouse filled with noisy machinery. Alive or dead, any convincing artificial construct of a human being is going to carry a lot of weight and social currency. It's a phenomenon worthy of experimentation, but there's a very real hazard of making irrational, emotional decisions that revolve around these things, which might carry little practical benefit. There's some serious risk in being deceived by artificial creations, into behavior that is not in our own best interests.

hackinthebochs 12y ago

>What exactly do you mean by "consciousness"? I mean exactly what you mean by consciousness. There is no big mystery here. I take it you are a believer of a "soul" or some kind of panpsychism? If so, then you have no place to deride anyone else's opinions as "technobabble", as yours are simply "babble". If you believe in material matter giving rise to consciousness, then it must be the information contained with that matter that is of value, rather than the matter itself. At that point replacing biological neurons with electronic ones makes no difference as long as they function exactly the same. Information does not care about the medium, only the mechanism.

benpbenp 12y ago
There is a gigantic mystery which you are sweeping under the rug. Sure, a purely materialistic conception of the universe is very neat and appealing. But you are at risk of missing something of fundamental importance to the overall nature of being if you simply shut down any possible additions to this conception. The mystery is this: Why can't we observe consciousness? No, literally, we cannot observe it. The scientific process at least requires a starting observation, some phenomenon which requires explanation, something you can point to and say, "What's that?". The sun rising and setting. Brownian motion. Whatever. Consciousness on the other hand is merely the fact that the universe exists from a perspective. You only ever have access to one perspective, your own, you can never observe any other instance of perspective "out there", "in the world". It is not a thing, an "object". It is a subject, "you".
- hackinthebochs 12y ago
  I don't shut down any possible additions to the concept of consciousness, I just require that any additions be motivated by need. At this point in our understanding there simply is no need to presume some sort of metaphysical happenings. The brain being the sole generator of consciousness currently appears to be powerful enough to explain everything we know about consciousness. Add on to that all the evidence brain activity correlating with conscious experience, exciting the brain in specific locations generating conscious experience, and brain damage in various locations having clear and permanent affects on consciousness, and we have strong evidence that the brain is in fact all there is. We may not be able to "observe consciousness directly", but we have constrained its possible whereabouts to "within the brain". Sure, more work needs to be done, but we are far from completely ignorant here.