It’s a very interesting point you make because we normally think of our experience as so fundamentally separate from others. Just to contemplate conjoined twins accessing one anothers’ experiences but not have identical experiences really bends the heck out of our normal way of considering mind.
Why is it, do you think, that we have this kind of default way of thinking about mind as Cartesian in the first place? Where did that even come from?
I imagine that shared bodies with shared experiences are difficult to coordinate. If you have two bodies with two brains, they can go on two different places, do two different things in parallel. If you have one body, it can only be at one place and do one thing, but it’s perfectly coordinated. One-and-half body with one-and-half brain seems to have all disadvantages of one body, but much worse coordination. Thus evolution selects for separate bodies, each with one mind. (We have two hemispheres, and we may be unconsciously thinking about multiple things in parallel, but we have one consciousness which decides the general course of action.)
We might try looking for counter-examples in nature. Octopi seem to be smart, and they have a nervous system less centralized than humans. They still have a central brain, but most of their neurons are in arms. I wonder whether that means something, other than that movement of an octopus arm is more difficult (has more degrees of freedom) than movement of a human limb.
Yeah right. There is something about existing within a spatial world that makes it reasonable to have a bunch of bodies operating somewhat independently. The laws of physics seem to be local, and they also place limits on communication across space, and for this reason you get, I suppose, localized independent consciousness.
It just looks that’s what worked in evolution—to have independent organisms, each carrying its own brain. And the brain happens to have the richest information processing and integration, compared to information processing between the brains.
I don’t know what would be necessary to have a more “joined” existence. Mushrooms seem to be able to form bigger structures, but they didn’t have an environment complex enough to require the evolution of brains.
Basically, without mind-uploading, you really can’t safely merge minds, nor can you edit them very well. You also can’t put a brain in a new body without destroying it.
This the simplification of a separate mind works very well.
It’s a very interesting point you make because we normally think of our experience as so fundamentally separate from others. Just to contemplate conjoined twins accessing one anothers’ experiences but not have identical experiences really bends the heck out of our normal way of considering mind.
Why is it, do you think, that we have this kind of default way of thinking about mind as Cartesian in the first place? Where did that even come from?
I imagine that shared bodies with shared experiences are difficult to coordinate. If you have two bodies with two brains, they can go on two different places, do two different things in parallel. If you have one body, it can only be at one place and do one thing, but it’s perfectly coordinated. One-and-half body with one-and-half brain seems to have all disadvantages of one body, but much worse coordination. Thus evolution selects for separate bodies, each with one mind. (We have two hemispheres, and we may be unconsciously thinking about multiple things in parallel, but we have one consciousness which decides the general course of action.)
We might try looking for counter-examples in nature. Octopi seem to be smart, and they have a nervous system less centralized than humans. They still have a central brain, but most of their neurons are in arms. I wonder whether that means something, other than that movement of an octopus arm is more difficult (has more degrees of freedom) than movement of a human limb.
Yeah right. There is something about existing within a spatial world that makes it reasonable to have a bunch of bodies operating somewhat independently. The laws of physics seem to be local, and they also place limits on communication across space, and for this reason you get, I suppose, localized independent consciousness.
It seems that we just never had any situations that would challenge this way of thinking (those twins are an exception).
This Cartesian simplification almost always works, so it seems like it’s just the way the world is at its core.
This. It’s why things like mind-uploading get so weird, so fast. We won’t have to deal with now, but later that’s a problem.
Agreed, but what is it about the structure of the world that made it the case that this Cartesian simplification works so much of the time?
It just looks that’s what worked in evolution—to have independent organisms, each carrying its own brain. And the brain happens to have the richest information processing and integration, compared to information processing between the brains.
I don’t know what would be necessary to have a more “joined” existence. Mushrooms seem to be able to form bigger structures, but they didn’t have an environment complex enough to require the evolution of brains.
Basically, without mind-uploading, you really can’t safely merge minds, nor can you edit them very well. You also can’t put a brain in a new body without destroying it.
This the simplification of a separate mind works very well.