inspiration for this was taken from another thread... the immortality one
Just say that if the world was like the one from "The Ghost in the Shell" anime and you could transfer everything from your brain to an electronic medium and have no organic mind at all whatsoever... do you think that you would still be "alive"???
what i'm getting at... is do you think that at that point your mind would just be a computer program or do you think that "YOU" would still be "YOU"... maybe if I, Sonatavarius, were to undergo such an operation then maybe what would be left would only be a perfect duplicate of my personality and life experiences... or maybe "I" would still exist... in a potentially "immortal" state.
bear with me... its a hard subject to write out in a fully comprehendable way. even to myself.
What i'm thinking is that there might possibly be a way someday to copy your brain... but i find it hard that there could be a "download" of sorts so that your essence left the brain tissue and entered a cyber medium...
i mean we would call it a download... but in reality... do you die with your brain or would you live on
i'm treating the body as i would a coma patient or a brain dead patient... once the brain goes its no longer that person laying there.. its just the body or shell (that's an arguable point, but that's my stance)
a more easily comprehensible version of the topic is this... as you get old... similar to electronic organs (pacemakers or fully electronic hearts)... you have the technology to replace diminishing parts of your brain with hardware (electronics)... eventually there is not any part of your brain that is organic. Its only metal and plastic parts. would that person be "alive" or would they truly be dead with a cyber duplicate taking its place?
:-/... i know this was very convoluted. I hope that my point got across somewhere in there.
of course this would all be speculation so any and all opinions relevant to the topic are acceptable answers...
i think this topic falls under this forum b/c it may have religious arguments... it would be a very huge world event if this were to happen... and i'm sure it would be very political... etc
Our bodies already go through a process of replacement, as old cells die new ones take there place. Just because the cells in your body aren't the ones they were a decade ago does that mean you are actually dead now with just an organic duplicate taking your place? If not then why would replacing this organic material with synthetic material that can perfectly duplicate the functions of the organic material be any different?
does that mean you are actually dead now with just an organic duplicate taking your place?
No because many things stay the same like bones and....oh wait. that's it. @OP: I doubt you could turn/convert someones brain into a download/upload/etc as people are their bodies. We would not be the same species as our entire thought process' are learnt from outside influence, even new ideas. However scientists have already constructed a self learning computer, could that computer learn emotions? Could it. Become a computer human? No, it couldn't as instincts are only truly learned through physical being (eg the fight or flight response). hmmm. Silly reference here but do you remember the matrix? Downloading your brain and imprinting your consciousness into a digital world.
I don't know where i'm going with this. Bye *runs off*
It depends on how you would define "alive". But, I think it would be a duplicate. It would be better if you get to transfer your brain into the cyber medium.
We would not be the same species as our entire thought process' are learnt from outside influence, even new ideas. However scientists have already constructed a self learning computer, could that computer learn emotions? Could it. Become a computer human? No, it couldn't as instincts are only truly learned through physical being (eg the fight or flight response).
But the thought process, ability to learn, and instincts are all processes of the brain. If you had a synthetic neuron preforming the same functions of an organic neuron what would be the difference other then one is organic while the other is not? Since the brain is just made up of such neurons then what would be the difference between a brain made up of organic neurons and a brain made up of synthetic neurons, other then one is organic while the other is not?
I just read a book today that dealt with this issue. Scarily coincidental. It was entitled 'The Android's Dream' by John Scalzi. (Yes I accidentally got it instead of 'Do androids dream of electric sheep'. ~Spoiler Alert~ In the book, the protagonist uploads his deceased friends eighteen year old mind. They apparently performed brain scans illegally when they were younger. The data collected from the futuristic brain scans was uploaded to a computer. In the book, the character shares exactly the same knowledge and traits he had at the age of 18. He eventually learns from his surroundings however and becomes a super-computer capable of virtually anything. Pun intended.
I would be interested to see whether the biological formation of the brain actually equates to knowledge or experiences or if they are developed and stored via another complex path. I dunno. Enlighten me.
I would be interested to see whether the biological formation of the brain actually equates to knowledge or experiences or if they are developed and stored via another complex path. I dunno. Enlighten me.
Knowledge and experience are just stored memories. Memories are just the processes of the brain. If you could identically duplicate an organic brain then the processes in the duplicate should be the same as the original.
As I see it, just copying your brain is nothing more than copying your brain. Your own consciousness still stays in the old brain and the new one is just a perfect copy, but still a new consciousness. So that would not be an option.
Now, if you exchange the brain cells gradually, meaning exchanging the dead ones by new synthetic ones, I think as long as the function stays exactly the same there's no difference, just as Mage said. If you say
what i'm getting at... is do you think that at that point your mind would just be a computer program or do you think that "YOU" would still be "YOU"...
I'd just answer that now we are just organic "computer programs"; as long as the fucntions of the nerves is the same, as long as your brain isn't completely changed, you stay yourself.
What I would ask myself is, if there are only synthetic neurons left, and let's say they just fulfill their function without changing themselves, wouldn't that mean that we would be unable to learn? If the brain stays in a status quo, there also isn't any change in our personality and our abilities. I think these synthetic neurons should be able, just like real neurons, to duplicate, to grow, or to degenerate to leave place for others. Without this there wouldn't be a real purpose for doing this except mere self-preservation.
I can only talk to what I know, so my post will be limited to the philosophical commitments for those who answer 'yes' to the OP. First off, to clarify the question. Whatever the sufficient and necessary conditions for "you" to remain "you" during a transfer like this, it seems necessary that consciousness (whatever it is) must also be transferable. This implies, as Mage suggested, an physicalist interpretation of mental states. For the physicalist, mental states are identical to brain states. What this means is that, for any given mental state, it is realizable only through a particular physical structure and is completely constituted by that physical structure (i.e. the brain). And already we have a serious problem - perhaps even a contradiction (not sure, though, I'd have to think about this more). One of the major objections to physicalism is the notion of multiple realizability. This is the idea that organisms with significantly different features from our own can still realize certain mental states. But physicalism can't really explain this phenomenon in any philosophically interesting way. Consequently, if the physical structure of this electronic media is different from our own brain, it would follow from physicalism that our mental states would not be realizable by some other physical structure. One response here would be to suggest that other organisms have mental states, but these states are different somehow from our own because they arise from different physical structures. But notice this response does nothing to the multiple realizability objection. If the physical structure of the medium is different from our own brain, then it would follow from this response that our mental states would also be different.
Even if some scientist made an exact copy of my brain for this transference, it's unclear what physicalism would have to say about this. These two brains (my brain and the exact copy), no matter how similar, are not identical. That's just simple logic. So if two physical structures are not identical, there's a worry that the mental states they produce would also not be identical. On the physicalist account, then, I see no motivation for the claim that our identity would be retained through a procedure like this.
Another response along these lines would by functionalism. And while functionalism gets out of some worries on the physicalist account, it has its own problems. I can go into it if anyone cares, but I'll leave this at it is. I've killed the past like 5 threads I've posted in, so I don't want to just be talking to no one :P
It depends on your definition of living, is it having brain function? or being in a human body etc. I think you may be able to still think but you might end up having to relearn everything from the beginning.
you might end up having to relearn everything from the beginning.
I think that brings up another good point. I don't know exactly how memories are coded with in the brain, but it seems like there's much more to them than something that could be converted into raw information. And I feel like I bring this up every time I talk about human intelligence, but it's worth mentioning again, I suppose: A consequence of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is that we are able to comprehend statements that anything based on a logical system cannot process. The upshot is, there are certain features of human intelligence (i.e., ratiocination)that are irreducible into raw data.
Am I the only one who immediately thought of highdeas.com when I saw this post? I will now leave this thread and not post in this one unless I have something productive.
