Fascinating subject for a newbie like me! Going back to what Half Man Half Wit was saying about an artificial brain: “after having my whole brain replaced, to me, I’d still be me – i.e. subjectively, there wouldn’t be any difference.” - I must dissent: for starters, the original “me” would still be existent as it had only been replicated by the engineering. Secondly, as has been said elsewhere, what makes up the conscious (subjective) “me” includes all manner of experiences of which only the original “me” could have retained the memory and the associations.
Even if you extended the whole concept to one that is able to engineer an exact copy of a particular brain (including all the stuff above mentioned, and more), then it is still not going to be the original “me” as, apart from anything else, it will occupy different space.
Also, any remembrances or associations with anything relating to the physical body of the original “me” must surely cause the artificial “me” to become perplexed, as it has no other parts, and never had.
For the artificial “me” this would constitute a recipe for stress, anxiety, worry… all things that we try to avoid. I can envisage a whole new branch of psychotherapy opening up…
Unfortunately an apparent “evil” action like that does not entail lack of consciousness.
Generally number of cortical neurons is (somewhat) associated with discretionary (as opposed to knee-jerk) behaviour, and the assumption is generally made that discretionary behaviours are correlated with consciousness.
We cannot actually classify actions as conscious or otherwise yet though (for certain), apart from our own behaviours.
This is generally what people assume but as a software developer myself (that has worked in AI), I am skeptical.
There are plenty of things that the brain does that we can simulate in crude form. So as computers get more powerful, perhaps we’ll be able to make passable similes of these brain functions.
But when it comes to things like qualia, we don’t even know where to start yet.
That is my position too, but it is not problem-free.
It leads to the question of what the other entity is lacking.
Clearly it is not causally connected to your past, but nowhere else in physics does that distinction matter, why is consciousness special here?
Or consider cryogenic suspension. If we can one day bring people back to life from such suspension, is that the same person?
Consciousness has some REALLY weird implications when you start getting into some thought experiments.
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We have proof that humans can live with half a brain (both left and right), meaning that consciousness is a property that isn’t localized in any particular half but emergent from the collective sum of the processes. So if we were to cut your brain in half and plant one half into an empty body, what would “you” feel? Technically speaking, “you’d” be living both lives at the same time, just disconnected from each other.
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If teleporters worked by killing the original and creating a duplicate, there’d be no way to tell. The duplicate would feel like he just survived teleportation because he has all the same memories, feelings, mannerisms, etc – but the old one would experience death.
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So, if consciousness is located in the brain, how do you account for atom swap? Over time our atoms are in constant flux, replacing themselves with old. The atoms that make up your body now did not make up your body years ago. So is it possible for the teleported duplicate to be “you”? If we removed your brain at time 0 and replaced it with an exact duplicate built from external atoms by time t, how is this any different from your brain slowly replacing cells from time 0 to t and ending up in the same state?
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Why were you born you and not someone else?
If you’re a materialist like me, you have answers to these questions, but I thought I’d give others some food for thought.
The way I look at it is the brain does not create consciousness at all but allows your consciousness to sense the physical world. Using the mars rover analogy, the brain is just the rover’s electronics while the thoughts and consciousness are back on earth - the movie avatar is such a analogy also.
I also somewhat believe it goes beyond that and it is possible that the brain can and does control the physical world.
It may be difficult to define consciousness, but let’s assume it involves volition, emotion, introspection and self-awareness. Now imagine a very complex physical computer (for definiteness, the brain of H. sapiens). Suppose it is complex enough to experience volition, emotion, introspection and self-awareness. Presto! It’s “conscious” by definition. If you argue that consciousness has a non-physical “spiritual” component, I argue back that that a sufficiently complex physical computer will have the illusion of such a “spiritual” consciousness, and that that “illusion” is as real as the real thing!
This glosses over one controversy. Even accepting that volition, emotion and even introspection are physical aspects of computation, self-awareness may seem to merit special status. Self-awareness is unnecessary for intelligence or creativity – poets and inventors report that they create subconsciously – and few species other than man seem to be self-aware. However, I’m not sure there’s a qualitative difference between awareness of one’s environment and awareness of one’s own mind’s working (though language and individualism may be a prerequisite for the latter).
Self-awareness can probably be given a functional analysis, so I don’t think it’s fundamentally a big deal. (It’s a difficult problem, but not a hard problem like as in Philosophy hard. 
Myself, I continually vascilate between thinking that qualia (the “what-it’s-like”-ness of sensations) present an important puzzle for the study of consciousness, and on the other hand thinking there’s no puzzle at all.
That’s sort of how I feel about it. When our self-awareness is compared to an insect, it seems impossible to explain, almost magical. But if it’s looked at as a product of evolution in which the mechanism for processing sensory information is gradually built up step by step from a simple life form, it seems more like a natural outcome, like, “Well, wha’d ya expect?”
P-zombies
Except that p-zombies weren’t the result. Conscious, self-aware beings were.
Alarm clocks.
Are you saying alarm clocks, and imaginary zombies, are subject to the same forces of evolution that life is?
It sounds like you misunderstood – he wasn’t talking about making a copy, but replacing the original, bit by bit.
If consciousness is an information process like a program running on a computer, then its should be possible to copy it, as long as the entire system is copied to sufficient fidelity. If you are playing Mass Effect on one computer then switch to another, transferring all your scores and history, you are still playing the same game. In short there is a causal connection in this case.
Whether humans could ever be copied to sufficient fidelity is a question for another thread. But the question ‘is human consciousness a running’ program’ is directly relevant to this thread.
The answer seems to be a qualified ‘yes’; consciousness is a running program, running on an analog rather than digital computer, and a program that can radically affect the substrate which it runs on. The computer in this case is the whole body, not just the brain, and this would be a devilishly difficult thing to copy or to emulate.
Differentiation causes consciousness. The primal differentiation is energy flowing in energy, in closed circuitry, that there be something to move out of the way and fill in behind. In turn the matrix of energy is differentiated, therefore energy is conscious, and better known as God. Dr. Hugh Everett found that for every possibility there is a probability timeline. The mathematics of quantum physics must take this into consideration to work. Dr. Lisa Randall defined that direction through the variously bent timespaces to be the fifth dimension. It is obvious that that direction through the probability timelines, sideways in time, is the sixth dimension. Energy “can neither be created nor destroyed” - First Law of Thermodynamics. Energy is omnipresent, and, as you now know, conscious, and better known as God. There are things God can’t do. God can’t become nonexistent. God cannot change His nature. God is present in past, present, and future, and all the probability timelines thereof. Everything possible is there, and God can’t change them. It is all part of His inevitable manifestation. If we were energy (God) we could never sleep. Technically, we are only information, perishable by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But, if over 50% of your brain believes anything possible, the strong thought will draw you, by inductive resonance, to the timeline where it is reality. Google lahunken to read about ways to increase your percentage of brain use for stronger thoughts to get what you want.
Some people have made the mistake of seeing Shunt’s work as a load of rubbish about railway timetables, but clever people like me, who talk loudly in restaurants, see this as a deliberate ambiguity, a plea for understanding in a mechanized world. The points are frozen, the beast is dead. What is the difference? What indeed is the point? The point is frozen, the beast is late out of Paddington. The point is taken. If La Fontaine’s elk would spurn Tom Jones the engine must be our head, the dining car our esophagus, the guard’s van our left lung, the cattle truck our shins, the first-class compartment the piece of skin at the nape of the neck and the level crossing an electric elk called Simon. The clarity is devastating. But where is the ambiguity? It’s over there in a box. Shunt is saying the 8:15 from Gillingham when in reality he means the 8:13 from Gillingham. The train is the same only the time is altered. Ecce homo, ergo elk. La Fontaine knew his sister and knew her bloody well. The point is taken, the beast is moulting, the fluff gets up your nose. The illusion is complete; it is reality, the reality is illusion and the ambiguity is the only truth. But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the box? No there isn’t room, the ambiguity has put on weight. The point is taken, the elk is dead, the beast stops at Swindon, Chabrol stops at nothing, I’m having treatment and La Fontaine can get knotted
Stranger
Integration causes headaches.
We have conscience when we sense things and make decisions based on it. That makes us different from AI because AI rely on IF… Then… programming.
We make decisions whatever we want to in response and it can be from ignorance or educated guess.
However, AI can be programming to “remember” past stimulation and act upon it. We, on the other hand, are a forgetful lot.
I assume you mean consciousness, and the underlying mechanism makes no difference.
I agree our consciousness is the way it is because we can’t program the underlying mechanism in the way it can be done on a computer, and there’s a certain amount of processing based on emotional response instead of reason. But just consider that AI consciousness won’t be so limited.
I have to say that’s one of the more … entertaining … zombie revivals I’ve seen recently.
Welcome to the Straight Dope, Lahunken. This thread is somewhat of a zombie (older, inactive thread). If you’d like to discuss the topic with posters who are more active, feel free to start another thread, I’m going to close this one.
In addition, we tend to frown on self promotion, like, ‘google my name and go to my website’ type things. If you have things to discuss on this board, feel free to do so.
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