[ExI] Brains, Computers, AI and Uploading

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2010/1/25 Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:

> I think we can and should consider consciousness reducible epistemically to its neurological substrate, and in this respect we should consider it no different from digestion. When we come to know every possible fact about the brain and nervous system, we will then know everything we can or need know about consciousness. This epistemic reducibility does not however imply ontological reducibility.

Well, it might. If we know enough about digestion we might be able to
digest food by artificial means. We haven't made a gut, but we've
carried out digestion. Ultimately, we might make an artificial gut
with programmed nanomachinery that can be installed in patients with
inflammatory bowel disease, for example. Again, it would not be actual
biological gut, but as long as it worked properly no-one would say
that it didn't really digest food but only pretended to do so.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou