What's your best guess explanation for how consciousness exists for a given person?
And based on that explanation what do you think it would therefore take to be able to isolate, transplant, capture, preserve or restore it, and how it might be possible to somehow measure the success of that (if you think it can be done).
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I'm the only one that's real.
The rest of you are just robots.
>What's your best guess explanation for how consciousness exists for a given person?
It just do because neurons and electricity and sheeiit.
>And based on that explanation what do you think it would therefore take to be able to isolate, transplant, capture, preserve or restore it, and how it might be possible to somehow measure the success of that (if you think it can be done).
You put da brain in the thing and Frankenstein that muhfuka.
Synapses n shit.
Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon. You cannot capture, let alone preserve it.
Prove to me that I'm a robot. I fooled captcha; I can certainly fool you.
It's the current state of brain. Simply capture the locations of atoms and restore that in someone else's brain.
I'd say consciousness is something like the mingling of our senses with other facilities (memory, emotion, abstraction, subconscious, unconscious brain/body processes etc.). Given that, I think those approaches that treat preserving consciousness as a mere storage problem are destined to fail. Simply storing memories is not enough, and even if one were to combine that with a pain/pleasure/abstraction feedback system to form some kind of consciousness, there are countless other aspects of the brain and its biology that go into forming a 'person'.
In the near future, I'd put most stock into efforts that seek to preserve the brain itself... Or clone it at a very detailed level; since we are not just 'consciousness' or memory alone. I think it will be quite awhile before we have non-biological analogues to all that goes on in a brain.
this. desu. no other theory makes sense.
>brain
To focus only on the brain is to ignore many other organs that influence our state of mind and our thoughts. For example the digestive system plays a huge role on how we feel and what we think.
How do you get around the copy problem? If you can clone a brain in extreme detail at the atomic level, there's nothing to stop you just producing two copies of the brain once you have the blueprint.
You could create a second person of you with the same brain down to the tiniest detail, yet when that person steps out of the cloning tube I don't see how that changes anything for the integrity of your own consciousness standing there seeing it.
If they are different people when you've copied all the atoms that would imply the difference of their consciousness emerges at a subatomic level, and that the existence of consciousness might eventually be down at the quantum level and can't be destroyed or copied any more than energy can.
It's not a problem. There could be multiple people with the same consciousnesses
Well, what's your goal?
If you're referring to the continuity problem, and wouldn't view a perfect copy as a solution to your own demise (I agree), then all the more reason to focus on preserving the original brain.
They would become different people immediately, by virtue of both different perspectives and different variables acting upon them. It might be a small difference at first, but that's not the point. The subatomic underlies everything, so if you can't copy the subatomic state you're not likely to have an accurate copy of a complex system. I see no compelling reason to think of consciousness as low-level subatomic as opposed to a high-level result of complex brain structures which rely on subatomic processes. You're also mythologizing consciousness here... It is not only consciousness that makes a person or would make copies diverge.
Agreed, but the brain is what allows us to feel, think and have consciousness... So the focus is valid.
There is no "copy problem."
Everything you're describing about the "problem" of two copies existing at the same time having two different perspectives is already applicable to the situation of you at 10 minutes ago having a different perspective from you at 5 minutes ago. There's never any real continuity to begin with other than proximity in space and time. The different moments of brain activity aren't tied together by anything that could ever be carried over or not carried over to a copy. The copies scenario just makes what was already the case (that there's no real continuity mechanism making brain activity over time to either be or not be part of a "self") more obvious by introducing circumstances you aren't used to in everyday life ordinarily. By introducing unusual situations like having two identical people around at the same time you can sometimes trick people into thinking more critically about how things work than they normally do, and that's the case here. You fell for the continuity meme while accepting it in ordinary situations, but began to see through it when thinking about it with the unusual situation of copied brains.
Conciousness as I believe you mean it -- memories, opinions, thoughts; personality in short -- is due to one's genetically constructed neural network and the influences of (and reactions to) the the environment.
If the correct neural firing could be replicated, that is, the corresponding neurons have the correct connections for a given time in a person's life (these connections are always changing), then I'd say that would fit the bill.
Yeah it's whatever schizophrenia is except most people can relatively control how detached from reality they are.
There's a certain level of consciousness associated to any physical structure. Advanced consciousness like ourselves is an emergent phenomenon of those forces, formed by the brain's physical structure. That's it, really.
This user half gets it. Indeed, there's no more or less identity stored between copies than different momentary versions of a self. But if all momentary versions of a self were not tied to each other in any way, nothing you do would matter to "you" because you only exist for an infinitesimal amount of time and then somebody else takes over. If you believe that and feel it's accurate, you should have no problem of killing yourself right here and now. Instead, I think it's more applicable that identity is preserved at least for some time through personality and memories, that's "you".
note to self: there's a pretty strong case for a continuous "me" existing, since when I look back at past me, we're pretty similar. it's not the feeling of continuity that defines a persistent self, it's the sameness of the me that exists across time periods. either that holds or I'll just kms, but all signs point to it being true
I'm not conscious, take that you conscious faggots.