mechanics of consciousness

[padren]

I wasn't sure if this should go in metaphysics, philosophy, or here. I chose here, because I am trying to speculate and understand more, from a scientific/physics friendly standpoint, the nature of consciousness and specifically potentially transference and duplication of an instance of conscious awareness.

 

 

Some of the ideas that have been kicked around in other threads include the idea of achieving effective immortality by transferring yourself to a machine in a "Ghost in the Shell" fashion.

 

While I think with the right technology you can tranfer a person's personality completely to a synthetic system, I am skeptical that the "consciousness" would be able to transfer too.

 

I am really not sure how to even think about consciousness, other than I am glad to be conscious, and that if I personally experience the motions of death, that will be the last experience that I effectively have.

 

If my body was dying, and I am downloaded to an prostetic body, who experiences dying in that hospital bed while I am out running around in the prostetic? I have to assume the "me" who was there before the prostetic was activated, would be the one that dies in the bed.

 

 

While I can skeptically accept consciousness as an illusion created by the circumstances of mental data accumulation and thought, I still would never accept sacrificing it (ie, dying prematurely) to extend my personality's existance.

 

I am mostly curious what people think about consciousness, personality, individuality, death, and transference.

[the tree]

I really don't think that consiousness can be an illision because tricking something into thinking that it's thinking, when it's not thinking just doesn't make sense to me.

 

I don't think that it's posisible to move consiousness from one place to another like you describe because it cannot be isolated.

 

To use an incredibly nerdy analogy:

If you look at all the code on the world wide web, you can find some markup and you can find some scripting, you can find stuff in this character encoding and that character encoding. What you would struggle to do is find any AJAX.

AJAX is a stupid meaningless buzzword that refers to any combination of any XML, JS and and any server-side language, in a certain way that no-one has bothered to define. I can tell AJAX when I see it but I couldn't isolate it from non-AJAX and I certainly couldn't identify it systematically because for AJAX to be AJAX it involves the whole site, the server and the client.

In much the same way, consiousness involves the whole body and it's surroundings (I think).

[Xyph]

While I think it's rather obvious that consciousness can be computerised by now, I do understand your fears about transference to a computerised substrate from a biological one for those that aren't brought into being within such a substrate (ie, AIs).

 

It's quite a scary thought that having finished having your consciousness copied, you could awake once more in a state of immobile confusion in your decrepit, biological body, just in time to slip into death - although I am confident that your transferred self would awake with a sense of relief and wonder that it didn't end up experiencing such a thing.

 

A destructive copy would be most desirable, I suppose - with near-instantaneous copy and activation combined with erasure of the original. Of course, there may still be some worry that you won't be the same consciousness, but in this case I think it's more analogous to not being the same consciousness from one moment to the next - was the consciousness that you felt a few hours ago the same consciousness you feel now? Are people who are revived from apparent cessation of brain activity the same consciousness? I would say yes, for all intents and purposes, but am also, admittedly (and irrationally, I admit) a little unnerved by the idea of such a change of substrate.

 

 

Continuity is probably the key, though - the most satisfactory transference, I expect, would be a gradual destructive copy with communication between the two substrates maintained as the copy occurs. The process would be divided into individual neuron-clusters (or, even better, individual neurons - but possibly, a bit cruder, observably divided parts of the brain) and as each cluster was transferred to the computerised substrate and activated, the biological one would be deactivated and the computerised one would be purposefully handicapped to limit it to biological speed. Through some technological means, communication would be maintained so the computer parts acted as a part of the brain. I'm not sure how this would be done - perhaps some form of nanotech, or other insertions into the brain.

 

Anyway, the process would continue until the entire contents of the brain were transferred. This would probably be the least disconcerting method because there would be no sense of discontinuity, or sudden transitions of thought-style, and once you were safely computerised the bio-emulating handicaps could be removed, allowing a gradual immersion into the new environment.

 

I think such a desire is probably quite irrational. But nonetheless, if I had a choice, the decentralised nature of consciousness would lead me to prefer a transference of substrate such as the one I've detailed above.

[bascule]

The question of whether a copied consciousness (namely a destructively copied consciousness) bears any kind of emergent connection to the original is an unanswerable one, without a precise, scientific definition of the emergence process.

 

We can imagine your entire neural structure, down to the very last connection, being non-destructively scanned soma by soma, axon by axon, dendrite by dendrite, with nanomachines. The resulting data could then be turned into a mathematical model of your consciousness and executed inside of a computer. In this case, we imagine "you" the human coexisting side by side with "you" in the computer, somewhat like Max Headroom. In this case, it seems like the copy and the original are two different entities.

 

However, we can also imagine quantum teleportation where your original quantum state is destroyed but passes partly by entanglement and partly by some other process of (luminal/subluminal) information transferrence to another destination, where the state information gleaned through the destructive transferrence process is recombined with the resulting entangled state at the destination, resulting in... you again. (if quantum teleportation is remotely applicable to something like a human) In this case, since the state information is transferred rather than copied, wouldn't it seem like you would still be "you"?

[memenaut_06]

There's nothing special about the mind! It's just emergent result from many, many neurons (that individually follow basic rules.)

 

The mind is software (running on the 'brain' hardware). And since mind is basically an information-processing machine, the same process should be possible on computer hardware... with enough computing power.

 

Two minds can even inhabit one brain, like in split-brain individuals. Since mind isn't located in a single place, different parts of the brain run their own programs. It takes the the frontal cortex of each hemisphere to coordinate all these areas (like an "operating system" program).

 

One mind can also be copied to two places. BUT, from the point that it recieves unique experiences, it will have a life of its own.

 

So if I made 'replica' of myself and stabbed him with a sharp dagger, I wouldn't feel it... but HE would!

 

That would be great, if you could make replicas... Imagine making a replica of yourself and battling to the death just for entertainment? You wouldn't lose anything, since he's just a replica.

 

But why constrain yourself to just one body? Imagine taking control of an entire hive of yourselves!

 

Each body willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Each one as just an appendage of the great super-organism... It will be like a techno-communist dystopia...