Addressing the immortality wing of the Transhumanist cult
Inside the cult of transhumanism lay the cult of machine-aided immortality. They think that they could somehow transfer their consciousness into a machine and live forever that way
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If you complete the above link it will take you to a news story where they have just made artificial neurons in silicon.
assuming like for like doctrine, if two neurons behave identically then it doesn't matter what they are made of for the system they are part of.
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How do you guarantee exhaustiveness of functional models in the light of scientific underdetermination?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-underdetermination/
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For a crude, non-technical example, let's take the case of two people who do exactly the same things but with slightly different motives or attitudes. These differences could be so subtle as to be practically undetectable. One person could be doing something out of the goodness of his heart, while the other wants to appear charitable to others, or even appear charitable to himself in a form of self-deception. The two men would appear to be functionally identical when placed under normal observation.
Psychological events may be even more underdetermined than purported physiological "causal chains".
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"They are functionally identical, therefore they are identical"
There are two presuppositions that are not justified.
One, the supposition of functional identity, since there is no guarentee of exhaustiveness of functional models (as per my previous question which was unanswered, "How do you guarantee exhaustiveness of functional models in the light of scientific underdetermination?")
Two, the supposition that functional identity is identity. The Chinese Room demonstration already shows that to be false- A Chinese Room is not a Chinese speaker.
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Same as two disease and drug free samples of O negative blood are functionally identical if you're giving someone a blood transfusion, but not if you're investigating a crime scene.
The chinese room has nothing to do with the discussion at hand as it is an exploration of a system as a whole, not as a component of a system. It is with components of systems that functional identity comes in.
does it matter if you use a titanium or steel scalpel when doing surgery? Does it matter if you're driving a skoda or a ford to the shops?
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Invalid parallel
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I don't know which one to hope for.
But, just to make myself clear, humans are an organic machine made up of components called organs, which are themselves made up of components called cells. I have been talking about a specific component called the brain and it's components which are a specialised type of cell called a neuron.
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Besides, there is no exhaustive functional accounts of the mind. For the third time, where is the guarantee of an exhaustive account?
There's no exhaustive account of how even one neuron in the brain acts in relation to the rest. You speak as if figuring out the brain is the job of figuring out one neuron... As if neural science is down to the science of one neuron.
Neural science is what? The study of the nervous SYSTEM
...so yes, REALLY.
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Don't forget that the brain is complex because it has billions of simple components connected to each other, each component having tens of thousands of connections to other components. Each neuron is actually relatively simple to understand, and we already have a good understanding of how they work individually.
edit: oh and how many edits did you need to do in such a short space of time?
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"Perform all of the functions"
You can't. There is no exhaustive account of its function. For the FOURTH time, I ask you this, where is the guarantee of an exhaustive account?
(what does how I put my thoughts together in a post have anything to do with the contents of my argument? Are you going to attack my thought process too? Do all thinkers get their thinking together in one draft?)
You're saying that you could just look at one tree to understand the forest. You know how the old saying goes, right?
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No, as a forest is a collection of diverse trees and other plant life so you'd need to understand the interactions between all of those to understand the forest. However you could quite happily understand a single tree and replace that single tree with an artificial tree that replicates the function of the examined tree. But a better analogy would be can you understand a tree by examining only a leaf - and the answer is yes as a leaf can grow into a tree if treated correctly.
(and the reason for the single post is that you don't end up with people posting before you've finished writing your own post)
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Those links, as well your points, all are gross simplification of the issue.
In your terrible parallel, how exactly does "a pipe" reroute all the water once it goes missing? How exactly does an entire network of "pipes" work together in a different way once one "way of waterworking" isn't possible anymore? How exactly does any of those experiments replicate the migration of cognitive functions in a damaged brain, or the migration of functions of ANY brain?
That, is why one neuron's "function" could not be determined by looking at one of them. This is why neuro science is a study of the nervous system as a whole.
Again, until you acknowledge the systematic nature of neural science there is nothing further for us to discuss.
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