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One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

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Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#31

Post by jstanley »

selcuka wrote: post #26
ssfrr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say I walk into a machine, and then I walk out, and also an exact duplicate walks out of a nearby chamber. My assumption is that we’d both feel like “me”. One of us would have the experience of walking into the machine and walking out again, and the other would have the experience of walking into the machine and being teleported into the other chamber. Im probably lacking in imagination, or the relevant background, b…

> My assumption is that we’d both feel like “me”. You assume that both would feel like you, but there is no way you can prove it. The other can be a philosophical zombie [1] for all you know. Would the "current you" feel any different after the duplication? Most people, including me, would find this counterintuitive. What happens if the other you travels to the other end of the world? What would you see? The question…

> Would you call the replica "I"?

Both of the replicas would refer to themselves as "I", but neither would refer to the other as "I".

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#32

Post by jstanley »

MailleQuiMaille wrote: post #13
jstanley wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If consciousness doesn't arise from the brain, it seems to be suspiciously well correlated with the brain. I think consciousness arises from the brain.

"If the music I dance to doesn't arise from the radio, it seems to be suspiciously well correlated with the radio. I think the music I dance arises from the radio."

Postulate 1: The music is created by the radio in the form of sound waves, the end.

Postulate 2: The music was played by a band in the form of sound waves, some time in the past. The band recorded their music on to some storage medium so that it could be transmitted to the future. In the present, the storage medium is connected up to a piece of equipment that turns the recorded signal into some invisible power transmission that spreads throughout space in a way you can't experience directly with any of your natural senses. The radio however can sense these invisible power transmissions and can turn them back into audio that sounds like what the band played in the past. So we're saying that it is possible to create music in the form of sound waves (that's what the band did), and it is possible for the radio to output sound waves that sound like music (that's what the radio does), but the radio is curiously not the thing that is producing music and instead we have an enormous system of technology transmitting the music across space and time.

You'd need an awful lot of evidence to convince me that postulate 2 is true and postulate 1 is false.

On the one hand you have "consciousness can be created, and it is created by the brain". On the other hand you have "consciousness can be created, and it is created somewhere, but it's not created by the brain, instead it is created somewhere else and there is a system of consciousness transmission that gets it into the brain".

There's just no reason to prefer the second explanation. It is a more complicated story.

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#33

Post by cognaitiv »

at_a_remove wrote: post #9
Hacker_Yogi wrote: post #6

I disagree with Steven Pinker’s claim that consciousness arises from the brain. This perspective fails to establish that the brain produces consciousness, as it relies on the mistaken assumption that "mind" and "consciousness" are interchangeable. While brain activity may influence the mind, consciousness itself could be a more fundamental aspect of reality. Rather than generating consciousness, the brain might funct…

I cannot see how one might perform an experiment to determine which concept is correct. As with most things which are unfalsifiable, the idea can be amusing for a bit but is ultimately not useful to the extent that you can do anything about it. You cannot serve tea from Russell's Teapot.

If the brain is a receiver, information transfer could happen non-locally and the tea might be telepathy, precognition, or remote viewing. In the split brain example, demonstrating an ability to coordinate between hemispheres in ways not predicted by neural separation might challenge the physical origin of consciousness as with the chicken and shovel anecdote.

Experiments demonstrating an external source of consciousness would be very interesting.

Not a teapot in this case!

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#34

Post by selcuka »

jstanley wrote: post #30
selcuka wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think consciousness arises from the brain. I tend to agree, but it doesn't fully explain Benj Hellie's vertiginous question [1]. Everyone seems to have brains, but for some reason only I am me. If we were able to make an atom-by-atom accurate replica of your brain (and optionally your body, too), with all the memories intact, would you suddenly start seeing the world from two different pair of eyes at the same ti…

I feel like this is just a totally stupid question. The brain has inputs, internal processing, and outputs. The conscious experience happens within the internal processing. If you make a second copy, then that second copy will also have conscious experience, but it won't share any inputs or outputs or internal state with the first copy. If you were to duplicate your computer, would the second computer share a filesys…

When you replace "I" with "it" (as in your example with computers) the question becomes meaningless and stupid. As an outside observer both computers are the same, as they act exactly the same way, therefore there is no question. That is actually the "egalitarian" view in Benj Hellie's paper [1]:

> The ‘god’s eye’ point of view taken in setting up the egalitarian metaphysics does not correspond to my ‘embedded’ point of view ‘from here’, staring out at a certain computer screen.

The vertiginous question (or Nagel's Hard Problem [2] to a degree: Why does physical brain activity produce a first-person perspective at all?) is about the subjectivity of consciousness. I see the world through my eyes, therefore there is only one "I" while there are infinitely many others.

The duplication example was something I made up to explain the concept, but to reiterate, if I could make a perfect copy of me, why would I still see the world from the first copy's eyes and not the second, if the physical structure of the brain defines "me"? What stops my consciousness from migrating from the first body to the second, or both bodies from having the same consciousness? Again, this question is meaningless when we are talking about others. It is a "why am I me" question and cannot be rephrased as "why person X is not person Y".

Obviously we don't have the capacity to replicate ourselves, but I, as a conscious being, instinctively know (or think) that I am always unique, regardless of how many exact copies I make.

As I mentioned in another comment, I don't have a formal education on philosophy, so I am probably doing a terrible job trying to explain it. This question really makes sense when it clicks, so I suggest you to read it from a more qualified person's explanation.

[1] http://individual.utoronto.ca/benj/ae.pdf

[2] https://consc.net/papers/facing.pdf

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#35

Post by selcuka »

trescenzi wrote: post #24
selcuka wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how this refutes physicalism. Maybe it doesn't and there is a plausible explanation, that's why it has been an unanswered question. But it's definitely an astonishing question. You instincitively say that even if you duplicate the whole system "you" would remain as "you" (or "I", from your point of view), and the replica would be someone else. In this context you claim that there is a new conscio…

Oh yes if the question is if the duplicate is also _me_ then I understand the concern. That’s a much more complicated question. But when it comes to perspective it’s easy to answer. Which I guess is literally what the wiki page says it makes more sense as you state it though. Thanks for the additional explanation. I have read a good deal from Nagel to Chalmers and somehow missed this particular question.

> I have read a good deal from Nagel to Chalmers and somehow missed this particular question.

Chalmers' "Hard Problem" is very similar, although not exactly the same. My understanding is that it asks "why is there something called consciousness at all", as in, a robot doesn't have the notion of "I", but for some reason we do. The question is hard because it is hard to explain it only by our brains being more complex than a robot's CPU. Hellie's question is "why am I me and not someone else".

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#36

Post by jstanley »

selcuka wrote: post #34
jstanley wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is just a totally stupid question. The brain has inputs, internal processing, and outputs. The conscious experience happens within the internal processing. If you make a second copy, then that second copy will also have conscious experience, but it won't share any inputs or outputs or internal state with the first copy. If you were to duplicate your computer, would the second computer share a filesys…

When you replace "I" with "it" (as in your example with computers) the question becomes meaningless and stupid. As an outside observer both computers are the same, as they act exactly the same way, therefore there is no question. That is actually the "egalitarian" view in Benj Hellie's paper [1]: > The ‘god’s eye’ point of view taken in setting up the egalitarian metaphysics does not correspond to my ‘embedded’ point…

> Why does physical brain activity produce a first-person perspective at all?

I agree that this question is mysterious and fascinating, I just don't think the question of forking your consciousness bears on it at all.

The fact that first-person perspective exists is probably the fact that I am most grateful for out of all the facts that have ever been facts.

But I don't have any difficulty imagining forking myself into 2 copies that have a shared past and different futures.

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#37

Post by maksimur »

polishdude20 wrote: post #29
kristiandupont wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like GP, I feel that I might be imagining imagination here, but I really don't follow what this is supposed to reveal. >Would you call the replica "I"? The two would start out identical and immediately start to diverge like twins. They would share memories and personality but not experience? What am I missing here?

I too don't get what's being missed.

I understand what the author means, though I struggle to express it as well. The best I can come up with is this: What defines I? Is it separated from "I" and if so how? Or does I merely appears that way because our perspective is informed by our limited being?

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#38

Post by MailleQuiMaille »

dbtc wrote: post #14
MailleQuiMaille wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If the music I dance to doesn't arise from the radio, it seems to be suspiciously well correlated with the radio. I think the music I dance arises from the radio."

Well, it must all come from a singularity some time before the Big Bang. Yet, when I turn the radio on, music really does seem to come out of it. And when I turn the radio off, the music stops (for me, but not for you). Without the radio there is no sound, but the radio needs a signal. Does the radio make the music? Quite an interesting metaphor.

Yes ! I like it even more when you consider the brainwaves that deal with...frequency...hmm...

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#39

Post by [deleted] »

jstanley wrote: post #32
MailleQuiMaille wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If the music I dance to doesn't arise from the radio, it seems to be suspiciously well correlated with the radio. I think the music I dance arises from the radio."

Postulate 1: The music is created by the radio in the form of sound waves, the end. Postulate 2: The music was played by a band in the form of sound waves, some time in the past. The band recorded their music on to some storage medium so that it could be transmitted to the future. In the present, the storage medium is connected up to a piece of equipment that turns the recorded signal into some invisible power transm…

[deleted]

Re: One Head, Two Brains: The origins of split-brain research (2015)

#40

Post by nuancebydefault »

The fact that the explaining part of the brain fills in any blanks in a creative manner (you need the shovel to clean the chicken shed), reminds me to some replies of LLMs.

I once provided an LLM the riddle of the goat, cabbage and wolf, and changed the rules a bit. I prompted that the wolf was allergic to goats (and hence would not eat them). Still the llm insisted on not leaving them together on the same river bank, because the wolf would otherwise sneeze and scare the goat away.

My conclusion was that the llm solved the riddle using prior knowledge plus creativity, instead of clever reasoning.

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