From: Russell Wallace (russell.wallace@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Jan 26 2006 - 15:11:35 MST
On 1/26/06, Phillip Huggan <cdnprodigy@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> A devastating criticism to the pattern view is that it hypothesizes a
> perfect copy. If we assume consciousness must emerge from a physical brain
> (qualifying an upload computer as a brain), there is no such thing as an
> identical copy of anything in the universe without invoking very extreme
> quantum environments that may be out of the reach of any upload machine.
>
They're also out of reach of the brain - solution phase at body temperature
is one of the worst environments for preserving quantum coherence - so if
consciousness depended on that, our lifespans would be measured in
picoseconds.
None of the views are perfectly falsifiable. That is a function of
> consciousness not uploading procedures. I would book up on physics for a
> few years and then question the engineers of the upload machine. If they
> could describe an actual physical process where the chemical, EM, and
> computational features of brains are ported and p! reserved in the new
> substrate, I would be satisfied with that.
>
What if they said "no, we preserve the computational features only, the
chemical and electromagnetic features are deliberately discarded as
irrelevant to consciousness" and the uploaded person said "yeah, and I'm
still conscious so that proves they're right"?
- Russell
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