X-Message-Number: 8020 Date: Tue, 08 Apr 97 12:44:27 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #8014 - #8016 Robin Hanson wrote (#8014), > The lack of interest by most scientists in cryonics may thus perhaps > be explained by their placing a low value on the potential benefit of > revival, rather than on their placing an especially low probability on > this possibility (say <5%). This low value on revival is a new thing. > Cryonics offers the possibility of extended life in a state of mental alertness. This ought to be considered a great benefit to anyone of a scientific bent whose life is taken up with creative pursuits. Such a person, if not a believer in the supernatural, would presumably see that they had little to lose to arrange to be frozen, and possibly very much to gain. So this negative response--that revival would not be worth it--is really baffling, especially because it seems to reflect a change in views over 80 years (1916-1996). I wonder if it is even accounted for by the terror management theory that seems to explain much of the negative response to cryonics from the public at large. Bob Ettinger wrote (#8015), > Mike Perry (#8009-8013) says certain things that seem somewhat inconsistent > to me. > > In #8009 he says we can experiment to locate the seat of feeling, and > mentions the conjecture that it is in the midbrain-thalamic reticular > formation. But then in #8010 the thrust of his discussion is that > consciousness may be a matter of degree, and that a dim level of > consciousness might be ascribed to simple, goal-seeking automata such as Grey > Walter's turtles. > > These two notions do not fit well together. If the mammalian brain has a > definite seat of feeling--whether localized or distributed in the brain or > its functions--then the rest of the brain and its functions (most of it) is > presumably outside of feeling, or more or less independent of it. And if most > of the human brain is unfeeling, then surely we have no reason to ascribe > feeling to a simple automaton. > One way to resolve the apparent inconsistency is to think about what "agent" is involved. Suppose, as a thought experiment, that the brain of a person (not necessarily human, but a conscious being) is divided into regions A and B that correspond to different entities or "agents." This person communicates in English, and generally behaves and functions enough like a human that its consciousness can be tested in much the same way--plus we have advanced technology as needed. It is found that (1) region A is always active when the person is conscious, (2) when A is inactive the person is never conscious, and (3) A is the smallest possible region of the brain with these properties. So A, to all appearances, is the "seat of consciousness." By analysis, though, it is found that B is very much like A, except that B *only* communicates with A. When A is inactive, B may be active, but it has no "hookup" with the outside world and its activity is not normally apparent. In effect B is a fully conscious entity in its own right, but it is not the "person" that is represented in A. A uses B as a "slave"--with no direct awareness of any "feelings" B may have. I'm no expert on the human brain, but it seems possible it could have regions like B. I've heard of certain creative people who can "work" on problems when they are not consciously aware of what they are doing, and they find answers. Perhaps they have "B-regions" that are actually conscious, to some degree, but it isn't "their" consciousness. Following this train of thought, we might imagine that much or all of the body's CNS is capable of consciousness to some extent, yet it isn't the "seat of consciousness" to the person who inhabits that body. In fact, there is an interesting conjecture in *The Hedonistic Neuron* (A. Harry Klopf, Hemisphere, 1982) along these lines. After hypothesizing that the midbrain-thalamic reticular formation (MTRF) is the seat of consciousness, the author goes on to say (p. 53): "The other brain structures probably experience pleasure and pain but, apparently, the nature of psychic fields is such that those fields associated with other brain structures do not significantly interact with the psychic field of the MTRF. Thus, we are no more aware of the psychic field associated with our own cortex, for example, than we are of the psychic field associated with someone else's cortex." It seems then that this "psychic field" is more-or-less what I have called an "agent." To Thomas Donaldson, re #8016: I could imagine a future in which we are very much more advanced than we are today, with many things in our "repertoire" that might be as incomprehensible to us now, say, as nuclear physics is to a frog. And indeed, I hope we are much more advanced--the prospect seems exciting. It is possble then, that our present mathematics and learning in general will have long since been forgotten, discarded, and yes, even permanently lost--but all this seems unlikely. For one thing I think that there are certain things in our mathematics (integer arithmetic, computable functions, etc) that will be of continuing usefulness no matter how advanced we become. Second, even if these things should lose their primary usefulness, they will still have historical interest, and knowledge of them will be maintained for that reason alone. By analogy, we still maintain detailed information on Greek and Roman mythology, though we no longer believe these myths. Now, suppose we go further in our speculation and allow that future posthumans will also find no use for human historical information, and so will even discard that. If that is allowed, then effectively we are dead meat because what are our personal details except human historical information of a certain type? So really our very survival--as posthuman continuers of our present selves--depends on historical information (certain information at any rate) being regarded as valuable enough to be preserved indefinitely. As for me, I have fond memories of learning and doing math, that I hope will survive in my posthuman period; this definitely includes comprehension of what I was doing! If I should change my mind later and want to discard these things, you could raise the question whether it is still "me." Mike Perry http://www.alcor.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8020