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Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

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146 I HOW THE MIND WORKS• What if we took that program and trained a large number of people,say, <strong>the</strong> population of China, to hold in mind <strong>the</strong> data and act out <strong>the</strong>steps? Would <strong>the</strong>re be one gigantic consciousness hovering overt China,separate from <strong>the</strong> consciousnesses of <strong>the</strong> billion individuals? If <strong>the</strong>y wereimplementing <strong>the</strong> brain state for agonizing pain, would <strong>the</strong>re be someentity that really was in pain, even if every citizen was cheerful and ligh<strong>the</strong>arted?• Suppose <strong>the</strong> visual receiving area at <strong>the</strong> back of your brain was surgicallysevered from <strong>the</strong> rest and remained alive in your skull, receivinginput from <strong>the</strong> eyes. By every behavioral measure you are blind. Is <strong>the</strong>rea mute but fully aware visual consciousness sealed off in <strong>the</strong> back of yourhead? What if it was removed and kept alive in a dish?• Might your experience of red be <strong>the</strong> same as my experience ofgreen? Sure, you might label grass as "green" and tomatoes as "red," justas I do, but perhaps you actually see <strong>the</strong> grass as having <strong>the</strong> color that Iwould describe, if I were in your shoes, as red.• Could <strong>the</strong>re be zombies? That is, could <strong>the</strong>re be an android riggedup to act as intelligently and as emotionally as you and me, but in which<strong>the</strong>re is "no one home" who is actually feeling or seeing anything? <strong>How</strong> doI know that you're not a zombie?• If someone could download <strong>the</strong> state of my brain and duplicate it inano<strong>the</strong>r collection of molecules, would it have my consciousness? Ifsomeone destroyed <strong>the</strong> original, but <strong>the</strong> duplicate continued to live mylife and think my thoughts and feel my feelings, would I have been murdered?Was Captain Kirk snuffed out and replaced by a twin every timehe stepped into <strong>the</strong> transporter room?i• What is it like to be a bat? Do beetles enjoy sex? Does a wormscream silently when a fisherman impales it on a hook?• Surgeons replace one of your neurons with a microchip that duplicatesits input-output functions. You feel and behave exactly as before.Then <strong>the</strong>y replace a second one, and a third one, and so on, until moreand more of your brain becomes silicon. Since each microchip doesexactly what <strong>the</strong> neuron did, your behavior and memory never change.Do you even notice <strong>the</strong> difference? Does it feel like dying? Is some o<strong>the</strong>rconscious entity moving in with you?Beats <strong>the</strong> heck out of me! I have some prejudices, but no idea of howto begin to look for a defensible answer. And nei<strong>the</strong>r does anyone else.The computational <strong>the</strong>ory of mind offers no insight; nei<strong>the</strong>r does any

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