[MURG] Cortex activty

[Joseph J. Strout]

At 7:39 AM -0700 9/25/03, digfarenough wrote:

>That would definitely be proof that a low level animal could be 
>simulated. The thing about Nanosystems is that you can't really 
>argue with it if the calculations work out right.

But people did argue with it, for quite a while.  It's only recently 
that that has died down and the idea of molecular manufacturing has 
become generally accepted.  And even so, there is a lot of 
disagreement about what exactly it will allow us to do.  Even 
"Nanosystems" includes a lot of hand-waving.

>  But what are you going to write in a book on uploading that will 
>convince dualist people that the brain causes the mind and there is 
>nothing else?

Nothing will convince a dualist, but I don't think that's a major 
problem; there aren't many dualists in the neuroscience and computer 
science communities (and these are the two areas where most of the 
research needs to be done).

>  You can be a monist philosophically and intuitively, but until 
>science firmly closes the book on the mind/brain question, then, 
>indeed, it's still an open question.

That book has been firmly closed for a while now.  There is no part 
of the mind which is not affected by some region of the brain -- and 
in most cases, we know what that region is and roughly how it 
interacts with the other regions.

>  Of course, I'd say you can pretty safely assume monism and go from 
>that, but that right there leaves you open to critics.

But not critics that anyone we care about, will care about.

Cheers,
- Joe

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