Lifelong quadriplegics are perfectly capable of love, right?
As a living being in need of emotional comfort and who would die quite easily, it would be extremely useful to express love to motivate care and indeed excessively so. A digital construct of the same brain would have immediately different concerns, e.g. less need for love and caring, more to switch to a different body, etc.
Substrate matters massively. More on this below.
Again, an perfect ideal whole-brain-emulation is a particularly straightforward case. A perfect emulation of my brain would have the same values as me, right?
Nope! This is a very common and yet widespread error, which I suppose comes from the idea that the mind comes from the brain. But even casually, we can tell that this isn’t true: would a copy of you, for example, still be recognizably you if put on a steady drip of cocaine? Or would it still be you if you were permanently ingesting alcohol? Both would result in a variation of you that is significantly different, despite otherwise identical brain. Your values would likely have shifted then, too. Your brain is identical—only the inputs to it have changed.
The key here is that the self is always a dynamic construct of the environment and a multiplicity of factors. The “you” in a culture of cannibalism will likely have different values than a “you” in a culture of Shakers, to add to it.
The values of someone who is a digital construct who doesn’t die and doesn’t need to reproduce very much will be very different from a biological creature that needs emotional comfort, values trust in an enviromment of social deception, holds heroism in high regard due to the fragility of life, and needs to cooperate with other like minds.
Is it theoretically possible? If you replicate all biological conditions to a digital construct, perhaps but its fundamentally not intrinsic to the substrate, where digital substrate entails perfect copying via mechanical processes, while biology entails dynamic agentic cells in coordination and much more variability in process. Its like trying to use a hammer to be a screwdriver.
The concept of the holobiont goes much deeper into this and is a significant reason why I think any discussion of digital copying is the equivalent of a shadowy undead mockery than anything else, since it fails to account for the fundamental co-evolutions that build up an “organism.”
Nope! This is a very common and yet widespread error, which I suppose comes from the idea that the mind comes from the brain. But even casually, we can tell that this isn’t true: would a copy of you, for example, still be recognizably you if put on a steady drip of cocaine? Or would it still be you if you were permanently ingesting alcohol? Both would result in a variation of you that is significantly different, despite otherwise identical brain. Your values would likely have shifted then, too. Your brain is identical—only the inputs to it have changed.
Cocaine and alcohol obviously affect brain functioning, right? That’s how they have the effects that they have. I am baffled that you could possibly see psychoactive drugs like those as evidence against the idea that the mind comes from the brain—from my perspective, it’s strong evidence for that idea.
From my perspective, you might as well have said: “There is a myth that torque comes from the car engine, but even casually, we can tell that this isn’t true: would an engine still produce the same torque if I toss it into the ocean? That would result in a torque that is significantly different, despite otherwise identical engine.”
(Note: If you respond, I’ll read what you write, but I’m not planning to carry on this conversation, sorry.)
Its not a myth, but an oversimplification which makes the original thesis much less useful. The mind, as we are care about, is a product and phenomenon of the entire environment it is in, as well as the values we can expect it to espouse.
It would indeed be akin to taking an engine, putting it in another environment like the ocean and expecting the similar phenomenon of torque to rise from it.
As a living being in need of emotional comfort and who would die quite easily, it would be extremely useful to express love to motivate care and indeed excessively so. A digital construct of the same brain would have immediately different concerns, e.g. less need for love and caring, more to switch to a different body, etc.
Substrate matters massively. More on this below.
Nope! This is a very common and yet widespread error, which I suppose comes from the idea that the mind comes from the brain. But even casually, we can tell that this isn’t true: would a copy of you, for example, still be recognizably you if put on a steady drip of cocaine? Or would it still be you if you were permanently ingesting alcohol? Both would result in a variation of you that is significantly different, despite otherwise identical brain. Your values would likely have shifted then, too. Your brain is identical—only the inputs to it have changed.
In essence, the mind is the entire body, e.g.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/body-sense/202205/the-fiction-mind-body-separation
There is evidence that even organ transplants affect memory and mood.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306987719307145#:~:text=Neuroplasticity is one of the,at the time of transplantation.
The key here is that the self is always a dynamic construct of the environment and a multiplicity of factors. The “you” in a culture of cannibalism will likely have different values than a “you” in a culture of Shakers, to add to it.
The values of someone who is a digital construct who doesn’t die and doesn’t need to reproduce very much will be very different from a biological creature that needs emotional comfort, values trust in an enviromment of social deception, holds heroism in high regard due to the fragility of life, and needs to cooperate with other like minds.
Is it theoretically possible? If you replicate all biological conditions to a digital construct, perhaps but its fundamentally not intrinsic to the substrate, where digital substrate entails perfect copying via mechanical processes, while biology entails dynamic agentic cells in coordination and much more variability in process. Its like trying to use a hammer to be a screwdriver.
The concept of the holobiont goes much deeper into this and is a significant reason why I think any discussion of digital copying is the equivalent of a shadowy undead mockery than anything else, since it fails to account for the fundamental co-evolutions that build up an “organism.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holobiont
In life, holobionts do change and alter, but its much more like evolutional extensions and molding by degree. Mechanism just tromps over it by fiat.
Cocaine and alcohol obviously affect brain functioning, right? That’s how they have the effects that they have. I am baffled that you could possibly see psychoactive drugs like those as evidence against the idea that the mind comes from the brain—from my perspective, it’s strong evidence for that idea.
From my perspective, you might as well have said: “There is a myth that torque comes from the car engine, but even casually, we can tell that this isn’t true: would an engine still produce the same torque if I toss it into the ocean? That would result in a torque that is significantly different, despite otherwise identical engine.”
(Note: If you respond, I’ll read what you write, but I’m not planning to carry on this conversation, sorry.)
Its not a myth, but an oversimplification which makes the original thesis much less useful. The mind, as we are care about, is a product and phenomenon of the entire environment it is in, as well as the values we can expect it to espouse.
It would indeed be akin to taking an engine, putting it in another environment like the ocean and expecting the similar phenomenon of torque to rise from it.