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

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