Re: Cryonics and uploading as leaps of faith?

From: Steve (steve@multisell.com)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2003 - 07:23:30 MDT

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    Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 06:28:29 +1000
    From: "Brett Paatsch" <paatschb@optusnet.com.au>
    Subject: Re: Cryonics and uploading as leaps of faith?

    Giu1i0 Pri5c0 writes:

    > Of course it is correct that we do not yet know as much as
    > we should on brain and consciousness. At the same time
    > the point that I am trying to make is independent of a
    > particular mechanism of consciousness:
    >
    > Brett:
    > > Because I don't *know* enough about how my consciousness
    > > and the experience of self-hood manifests to assume that it can
    > > persist completely decoupled from a matter substrate for any
    > > length of time. My current thinking is no substrate means no
    > > conscious processing (or unconscious processing either). No
    > > consciousness process means no self concept process. In short
    > > I assume that no brain means a discontinuation of me because it
    > > seems prudent to do so.

    I think this whole 'uploading' notion is a complete fallacy.
    Consciusness is an evolved process that has taken millenia, and
    only occurs in living e-1 organisms. The illusion of a 'self' separate
    from the backdrop of the rest of the universe is a trick of nature
    caused by the brain constructing a phantom primal eye (from
    neural information) concurrent with the neural information of
    the external or internally generated sense-data.

    Agreed, a massively distributed parallel silicon network could
    represent data, but it's evolution - - designed and not
    embryionically recapitulated -- does not include a phantom
    primal sensor(gan). The chemical reactions of REM are not
    present in the silicion case, so no dreams, or waking dream
    that is conscious awareness (see Globus' Real-Time hypothesis).
    Content, but no self-referential form. SORRY FOLKS.

    Steve Nichols
    Posthuman Organisation
    http://members.ebay.co.uk/aboutme/multisel/

     



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