X-Message-Number: 22310
From: 
Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 16:49:24 EDT
Subject: brain components

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Mike Perry mentions the artificial hippocampus under development, and writes 
in part:

> More generally, the use of artificial brain components, or 
> outright uploading of the personality elements into some sort of 
> programmable device, could be a fast track to physical immortality,

Most of the brain is just housekeeping or ancillary elements, including 

cognitive functions, ordinary memory, and the kind of "memory" that constitutes

habit or personality. But the essence of being, as far as I can figure, is in 
the 
mechanism of subjectivity or the nature of qualia, the anatomy and physiology 
of feeling. Nothing can substitute in ALL respects for a hydrogen atom, and 
probably nothing can substitute in all respects, or in the essential respect, 
for an organic basis of feeling.

Robert Ettinger

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