X-Message-Number: 21353
Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2003 00:11:49 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Subjective Not Necessarily Private

Robert Ettinger writes:

>We can potentially determine which physical phenomena constitute qualia by
>correlating features of various types of brain scans with verbal reporting
>(of numbers of similar subjects in a variety of situations), by correlating
>suspect scan features with other brain features known to be associated with
>feeling either as input or output--and possibly one day by a kind of
>electronic mental telepathy, so that observers actually share the experience.
>It is just not true that subjective experience is necessarily totally
>private.

Well, I never said it was, and in fact I have had in mind all along some 
scenario like the above, in which subjective experiences can be correlated 
with the known functioning of certain parts of the brain. (Indeed, some 
progress is being made in this direction, through such means as fMRI, and 
it is very exciting, though we still have a long way to go.) If we *did* 
fully elucidate how the brain makes consciousness, *then* we might make an 
artificial system that does similar things, though not using natural brain 
tissue, or anything closely resembling it. But it still might simulate a 
natural brain in its various parts, down to a fairly deep level, and it too 
might seem to be conscious by reasonable tests. Though we could certainly 
prove it was not real wetware, could we, in any reasonable sense, prove it 
was not conscious? What if, at a deep enough level, it was "only crunching 
bits"? To me this would not, in and of itself, preclude accepting it as 
conscious.

Mike

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21353