[extropy-chat] Tommy (Was: Consciousness is a process in multi-dimensional time!)

[ben]

Anna Tylor wrote:
> If I couldn't see, hear, touch, taste, smell or speak,
> wouldn't I simply just exist but know nothing?

My guess is that if you were born unable to see, hear, etc., then you
would never develop a consciousness in the first place. There would be
no 'you' to exist.

On the other hand, if you were suddenly rendered incapable of seeing
etc., then it probably wouldn't be long before you went comatose.
We know that a brain deprived of sensory input starts to invent it's own
input, but i don't know how long that could be sustained without any
actual physical input from the real world. I think it would gradually
fade away, resulting in coma.

If the deprivation of senses was permanent, the comatose state would be
too. I suppose this would be "existing but knowing nothing", in a sense,
but probably not what you meant, as the 'you' - your consciousness -
would be non-existent.

An interesting (gruesome, but interesting) question is: what would
happen if someone had all their sensory inputs severed (say because of
some freak injury - yeah, i know, that would be all but impossible), but
they were kept on life support for a number of years, then a future
neural interface technology was used to reconnect them to the world?
What would happen? Would they awake from their coma, more-or less the
same person as before, or would they be a gibbering idiot? Or perhaps
they would simply remain in the coma, having lost the capacity to
process any inputs?


In any case, "existing but knowing nothing" doesn't seem possible, when
applied to a person. The nearest thing to it would probably be a state
of deep meditation, of the type where you 'still your thoughts'.

ben