<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px;">Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp@gmail.com> wrote;</span><br></div><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br></span></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><span><font face="Arial" size="2">></font></span><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;">> Digital implants can certainly stimulate the experience of qualia in the</span><br></div><div style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif;"><div style="font-family: 'times
new roman', 'new york', times, serif;"><div class="y_msg_container"><font size="3">>> NCC, but so too can electrical shocks or any other external stimulus. I do</font><br><font size="3">>> not believe such implants can themselves have or embody conscious experience</font><br><font size="3">>> of qualia.</font><br><br><font size="3">>But if the implants are in the supposed NCC and the subject behaves</font><br><font size="3">>just the same, what would that tell you?</font><br><br><font size="3">I believe that if we replaced all the neurons in the NCC with digital implants, the victim of our evil experiment would become comatose. I think something is happening in those parts of the brain that correlate to consciousness that is not equivalent to digital processing. It's a biological process, perhaps electro-chemical in nature, and although we might be able to describe it digitally, and build digital implants using that description
as a blueprint, the implants themselves would fail as they are different sort of thing than the biological processes they describe. Just as a digital simulation of a house is not a house in which you can actually live, a digital simulation of the NCC is not the NCC. The map is not the territory when the map is intrinsically digital and the territory is not.</font></div><div class="y_msg_container"><font size="3"><br></font></div><div class="y_msg_container"><font size="3">However, in answer to your question: if the subject were to behave just the same, that would tell me that I was wrong, that humans are </font><font size="3">digital computers, and that I should reconsider my philosophy. :)</font><br></div><div class="y_msg_container" style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br></div><div class="y_msg_container" style="font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size:
12pt;">Gordon</div> </div> </div> </div></body></html>