RE: Mind is the brain?
March 16, 2016 at 2:26 am
(This post was last modified: March 16, 2016 at 2:27 am by JuliaL.)
(March 16, 2016 at 12:48 am)bennyboy Wrote:
Now, in the case of people, this is a very easy assumption to make. But what happens when androids smile and breath? Now (1) is out the window and it turns out that all along you may not really have been studying the salient feature of mind: the existence of an agent capable of experiencing qualia. OR we may extend human rights to androids, eventually allow ourselves to be extinguished as a species, and never know whether those replacing us actually can experience or are just philosophical zombies. And all this because when we see a smile, we assume a mind.
I expect the investigation and proof that brain correlates of consciousness actually do produce consciousness will follow similar lines to those seen in the study of the germ theory of disease.
If you are familiar with Koch's postulates? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch's_postulates
Even now, it is possible to deny on a similar philosophical basis that microbes cause certain diseases, but few do.
We have instruments of sufficient resolution and sensitivity to show causal pathways from health to death with specific damage being done by specific organisms.
In the investigation of consciousness, the tools are still pretty crude and the data is coarsely granular, but getting better.
Eventually, we should be able to simulate, in Von Neumann architecture, Turing complete machines every structure, every event, chemical or quantal, of a brain.
This is not certain proof of monism, but then again, Hume showed that we can't prove Newton was right with billiard balls either.
At some point, you just have to give in and admit, the ghost is the machine.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat? 
