[ExI] [Exl] Digital Consciousness

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Gordon <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ### Let me ask you this:
>
>> Blind persons with cortical vision implants claim to see things..
> <snip>
>
>> Would you perhaps claim that the seat of qualia is the cortex, not the
>> primitive subcortical nuclei substituted by digital signal processing?
>
> That seems reasonable to me. Some neuroscientists are working on identifying
> the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) and I believe they involve a
> large swath of neurons in the cortex.
>
>> But, what if in a few years some researchers produce implants capable
>> of correcting cortical blindness, caused by damage to the occipital
>> cortex?
>
> Digital implants can certainly stimulate the experience of qualia in the
> NCC, but so too can electrical shocks or any other external stimulus. I do
> not believe such implants can themselves have or embody conscious experience
> of qualia.

But if the implants are in the supposed NCC and the subject behaves
just the same, what would that tell you?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou