Then sensory stimuli would be not be necessity. How is information encoded in the brain?
The sensory stimuli would be necessary for the original encoding.
The sensory stimuli is still a necessity. I was only agreeing that an exact duplicate of a brain would have the memories already encoded into it, not everything else.
This only makes sense if you don’t want the two copies to diverge - which is going to happen anyway. Stimuli are stateless, so any stimuli in the past that were not captured in a memory are don’t cares.
If you want the two copies of the consciousness to not diverge, you’d have to arrange to have the same sense organs and provide both copies with the same stimuli, which is more or less impossible.
But this experiment doesn’t transfer consciousness, it copies it, since the original brain will still be there - assuming the copying process is non-destructive, that is.
What else is there? Transfer assumes there is something to transfer. If consciousness is an emergent property of the brain, build an exact duplicate of the brain and you get an exact duplicate of the consciousness - with no spinning machines transferring stuff, like in Star Trek, necessary.
I agree. I said as much upthread - that new sensory input would immediately “corrupt the original files,” (although your own word “diverge” is probably more accurate).
Good point. And even if the original is destroyed, it’s still a copy, not a transfer.
Agreed on transference, but the duplicate would only be an exact duplicate at the first instant it goes on line. At that point, new sensory stimuli (not to mention the immediate encoding of new memories not present in the original brain) would cause it to diverege from the original and become a new, separate consciousness altogether.
And this is yet another strike against the soul. Souls have to be in some sense immutable, since they last for eternity, which consciousness and personality change with inputs and time. Soul believers have to tell us whether this experiment replicates the soul, or creates a new and different soul. Interesting problem.
The simple solution is to measure the souls in both brains by…by…
Could a religionist please step in and tell us how one measures a soul, please?
With one of these.
You’re a heel. 
You evidently missed by creosote bush comparison to the soul, and the idea that our personalities, all the things that make us distinct individuals, are the mortal aspect and do not persist beyond life.
How can anyone be so sure that a soul must function any particular way at all, while simultaneously denying that it could possibly exist?
There are shenanigans afoot.
How can anyone postulate they exist when there is exactly zero evidence for it and it defies everything we know about physics?
A very interesting and controversial problem.
Which is easily solved if one stipulates that souls do not exist.
Stoid, I’m going to be as polite as possible, here. I’m not just trying to dig at you, but you can’t expect us to answer questions about the “soul” until you define what it is. As it stands, that’s just a nonsense word.
That’s what makes it so controversial.
You could know without anyone else knowing. But then how could you know? What is consciousness when you take out the concept of time? When there is multiple consciousness, multiple personality through time?
No. You are suggesting that something that flies in the face of the evidence that we do have. You are doing it with no evidence. That’s simply a worthless argument.
Suggesting that maybe, *somehow *we will *someday *have the technology to explain the thing you have no evidence for is beyond weak.
I suspect the only reason you are arguing for a soul is that you really, really, want one. There is nothing whatsoever that suggests that one exists. Your wants and reality bear no necessary overlap. I really, really want a Dark Angel era Jessica Alba love robot, should I argue that one exists?
To sum up, no evidence for a soul. No problem it solves. Sometimes you need to just accept that what you really, really want isn’t the way the universe works. It sucks to face a universe with no immortality, but wanting it isn’t enough a reason to pretend it exists.