X-Message-Number: 25617 Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 07:54:26 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #25609 - #25616 For Bob Ettinger: You will note in the latest issue of PERIASTRON an article about consciousness. It's the last of the articles in a bigger issue than normal, and looks at what studies of brain damage and disorders of sleep (sleepwalking is the simplest such disorder) tell us about consciousness. Basically this work tells us the brain centers that must be active in order for us to be conscious (several papers used fMRI to work such things out, but doing so with disorders of sleep becomes difficult for practical reasons). I am point out here that consciousness, and by implication its survival through good or bad cryonic suspensions, has been and is examined by using our technology for understanding brains. Unless you wish to argue that it's a metaphysical phenomenon, we're coming to understand how it works. I will add that other neuroscientists, too, think that some computer people identify computers with brains, an identification which to them looks highly unlikely. Because our brains store memories in the configuration of their circuits, we cannot expect to simply load a program onto a computer, however large and fast, and get it to work like we do. I personally am in favor of computers, but just think that we aren't computers at all, to the extent that I doubt that theories of Turing devices will apply to brains when we come to understand fully how they work --- not that such understanding looks infinitely far away. (Do I think that we can make artificial brains working like ours? Yes, but that doesn't mean that we can do so just with computers of any kind). This is intended as a friendly commentary on your recent Cryonet comments. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25617