Brain substitution loses awareness (to Crevier)

X-Message-Number: 11754
Date: Sat, 15 May 1999 00:11:02 -0400
From: Brook Norton <>
Subject: Brain substitution loses awareness (to Crevier)

Relevance to cryonics: Uploading your mind to a computer is an option
often considered by cryonicists as acceptable.  The following arguement
says you may not survive an upload and so must have your biological brain
repaired.  

 

Daniel Crevier writes: >> I think I have proven my point by considering
that it would in principle be possible to upload a brain piecewise, and
let at each step the subject verify the accuracy of the simulation and the
integrity of his/her consciousness. To which Robert Ettinger replied that
since computers can't be conscious,   

 

consciousness would be lost somewhere in the process.   

 

If you believe that Mr. Ettinger, you have to explain away a major para-
dox, which is the following. We said that we could replace a piece of the


brain by a simulation with the same input-output properties. It's pretty
hard to argue against that, since what happens in any part of the brain
are physical processes, and a computer can simulate 

any physical process. Now if we can do it for a piece of the brain, we can
do it for the whole brain: just do it for all the pieces, connect the
resulting simulations together, and voilà. >>  

I'd like to take a crack at this "major paradox".  I think that if you
start replacing the brain in pieces, you also decrease awareness in pieces
until you end up with an unaware zombie.  The reasoning goes like this.  

Since awareness is an odd thing indeed I think it instructive to draw a
more familiar analogy.  First, we CAN say that awareness is 1) dynamic, 2)
more or less self-contained (contrary to Donaldson's assertion that it
must interact with the environment), and 3) an emergent phenomenon, that
is, even though none of the neurons are themselves aware, they combine to
form an awareness (amazing).  Now consider an analogy that has features
1), 2), and 3).  Consider a 6-inch steel rod, floating in space and
oscillating in a bending mode like: (  ) (  ) (  ) (  ) (  ) (  ), back
and forth and back and forth.  The beam is 1) dynamic, 2) self-contained
(oscillating in a vacuum), and 3) it has the emergent property of
oscillation.  The individual atoms don't bend back and forth, but taken
together you get a beam that oscillates.  Oscillation is analagous to
awareness.  

Now put a powerful computer simulation on a stationary chip, floating near
the steel rod.  First, the chip simulates every subatomic particle in the


first inch of the rod.  The first inch of steel is removed and discarded.
 

At the bare end of the rod, a micro-retro-rocket is connected to each bare
steel atom so that the simulation has a way to interact with the rod and
transfer the simulated forces to the rod.  The chip simulates the every
atomic motion in the discarded inch of steel and sends, via light signals,
the proper commands to the retro-rockets so that they produce perfect
reaction forces and the remaining five inches of rod can't tell the first


inch was ever removed and those five inches continue to oscillate
normally.  

But now there is less oscillation... only five inches worth.  The computer
has a perfectly running simulation that can predict exactly how a six-inch
rod would oscillate, but the chip itself does not oscillate.  

Now continue to remove one inch of rod at a time while simultaneously
adding one more inch to the simulation.  Do this until the entire rod is
discarded and you are left with a stationary chip running a perfect
simulation of an oscillating six-inch rod.  The chip is not oscillating. 


The chip can predict exactly how a six-inch rod would oscillate, but the
chip simply does not oscillate itself.  It has lost this emergent
property.  

Say that after the rod was completely removed, the sim keeps driving the
retro rockets to trace out the motion of the rod end.  If we were to put a
motion sensor against this plane of retro rockets, our sensor would report
that it has detected motion which exactly matches an oscillating six-inch


steel rod.  Should we therefore conclude that the rod really exists?  No,


because closer examination with different sensors  would show only retro
rockets and no oscillating rod.  So switching now to a person who's brain


was replaced bit by bit with a sim chip.... This person would appear aware
from the outside... would hold a normal conversation... would do EXACTLY
what the original person would have done.  But its a zombie.  A closer
look with x-ray would show that the brain was gone... a chip in its
place... no awareness being generated.  

Brook  

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