Born to do Math 93 – Critique of IC (1)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/22
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about the review of IC by others?
Rick Rosner: You could do a Star Trek transporter to duplicate the brain, as with our brain, that has a mind. You could have a model of somebody’s mind by having their brain. We do not know how the mind is in there.
But here is their brain, the brain is the copy of their brain which also contains their mind, so do what you will with it. That’s a terrible model of the mind, because you have not done any digging as to how the mind comes out of the brain or results from the brain – and what that model might be.
At the very least, you can model via duplication of a brain. A better model would be to come up with a mathematical system that shows how the information in the mind is expressing that information, contains the information in an understandable and analyzable way.
You can also take the brain, the duplicate brain so you don’t kill the person and then scan the brain slice by slice in 3D. You can take inventory of the synapses and dendritic connections to say, “Now, I have a huge document that has an exhaustive linking of which synapses are linked to what other ones and, somewhere, in there is the mind.”
Again, it is a crappy model. Because it provides no analysis or insight into what the mind actually contains. Eventually, as we develop a more sophisticated understanding of consciousness and information, we will be able to come up with a model of an informational map of each instance of consciousness.
It would at a minimum be possible to do it. It would allow us to look in the consciousness and understand what that consciousness is experiencing. You have three things. You have the brain. It is the hardware. You have the mind.
It isn’t exactly the software, but it is a manifestation or an experiential manifestation of what is going on in the hardware. You have this third thing. It would be an informational map of consciousness that allows third parties to understand what is being experienced in consciousness based on the information contained within consciousness.
Independent of the hardware and supported by the hardware; you don’t need to take the hardware expressly into account to understand the contents of consciousness. You could argue that this kind of two or three part deal is also what is going on with the universe.
That in everyday life we are aware two of three parts we’ve talked about. We are aware of what is in our minds. That our brains exist in a material world. That we would not have the material world to support our minds now.
20 years ago, people were either religious or more Cartesian. Either there is this magic stuff supported by God, or is this stuff in a magical realm. Now, 200 years later, people think our consciousness lives in and is entirely supported by our brains.
There is no magical extra thing. Consciousness is a pure product of the material world.
[End of recorded material]
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 