From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2003 - 17:22:57 MDT
Emlyn wrote:
>
> How about this: "I" is that piece of me, as an entity, that
> experiences. I exclude all information processing components from
> this, although they are undoubtedly required to be present. I feel
> like there is something left over that can be termed "I" (and which
> is somehow pivotal), but I also know that that can't be the case.
>
### What if you keep removing your brain piece by piece - first the
occipital cortex (losing the ability to imagine shape and color), then
parietal cortex (losing the sense of space and location in space), then
prefrontal and parietal language cortex (losing the stream of
consciousness), then temporal cortex (losing images of sound), then
olfactory cortex (losing the imagination of smell), then the insula (losing
a sense of your body), then..., well, would there be anything left? Even if
you still have your motor cortex, your prefrontal executive areas, the
hippocampi and basal ganglia, even the moral reasoning cortex in the frontal
pole, would there be anything subjectively existent?
I rather think that "I" is a side effect of certain information flows, maybe
even atemporal states of mathematical entities. Our particular flavor of
I-ness depends on the particulars of our brains, but as long as there is
information processing of some level of complexity, there is a subjective
experience. As Jeff wrote, something exists, and this is all I can be sure
of, assuming that nobody asks exactly what is something as opposed to
everything or nothing, and what it means to exist, or not to exist.
Rafal
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