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