X-Message-Number: 32939
From: Daniel Crevier <>
References: <>
Subject: Progressive uploading
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:21:55 -0400

In posting 32932, 2Arcturus writes the following comment to my arguement 
that partial uploading followed by no loss of consciousness would be an 
objective demonstration of the survival of consciousness in the process:

> Of course, anti-uploaders might back up their argument and argue that the
> primary visual cortex, while interfacing with the part of the brain that 
> gives
> rise to conscious, is not the part of the brain that gives rise to
> consciousness.
>
> The trouble with extending the experiment to include more and more of the 
> brain
> would be that anti-uploaders would say that at some (undefined) point, the
> crucial part of the brain that supports consciousness would get swapped 
> out with
> a device that merely supports a "philosophical zombie"/p-zombie. They 
> might say
> - well, the subject is reporting being consciousness, but that is just the
> p-zombie glibly misrepresenting itself as being conscious.

You're right, they probably would say something like that. This reminds me 
of theological debates of yore where unexplained natural phenomena (stars, 
lightning, etc...) were presented as miracles proving the existence of God. 
As science advanced, more and more of these received natural explanations 
and proponents of the miraculous explanation had to retrench to an ever 
shrinking territory.

Moravec's original formulation of the progressive uploading experiment might 
provide a counter to the objection above.  It you do the digitization 
progressively, say neuron by neuron, and the patients never report any loss 
of consciousness, then to be unfelt, the transition from true consciousness 
to p-zombie misrepresentation has to occur suddenly, when one critical 
neuron is digitized. Otherwise, as the digitization starts encroaching on 
the critical brain area where consciousness really resides, the patients 
would report disturbances in their consciousness. Surely this critical area 
has to be larger than a single neuron! 

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