To sidetrack a little bit, do you know about the scientist that is actively implanting computer chips into his brain and is now considered to be the world's first bionic man? He is doing this, so he says, in preparation for the day when robots with advanced AI might take over the world. Each one-millimeter chip implant has some 50,000 transistors and 3,000 or so capacitors. He is able to transmit signals from his brain over the internet as he moves his hand to activate the same function in a robotic hand halfway around the world.
Yes, I agree with you. Scientists are trying to bridge this gap, but will they? Nevertheless, it is not the same as human consciousness, and my position is that we are hardwired through our extensive neuron-axon network, and this and this alone is responsible for human consciousness. And how can that be duplicated in a AI? You can copy and imitate it but.....well, I don't know.
Perplexity: I need to apologize. Posting the analogous articles about zombies adds fruit to this thread's discussion forum and gives us more to think about and consider.
Now, back to what I think. As was posted before:
Theoryofrelativity said:
JOSEPH LEDOUX
Neuroscientist, New York University; Author, The Synaptic Self
I believe that animals have feelings and other states of consciousness, but neither I, nor anyone else, has been able to prove it. We can't even prove that other people are conscious, much less other animals. In the case of other people, though, we at least can have a little confidence since all people have brains with the same basic configurations. But as soon as we turn to other species and start asking questions about feelings, and consciousness in general, we are in risky territory because the hardware is different.
There are two aspects of brain hardware that make it difficult for us to generalize from our personal subjective experiences to the experiences of other animals. One is the fact that the circuits most often associated with human consciousness involve the lateral prefrontal cortex (via its role in working memory and executive control functions). This broad zone is much more highly developed in people than in other primates, and whether it exists at all in non-primates is questionable. So certainly for those aspects of consciousness that depend on the prefrontal cortex, including aspects that allow us to know who we are and to make plans and decisions, there is reason to believe that even other primates might be different than people. The other aspect of the brain that differs dramatically is that humans have natural language. Because so much of human experience is tied up with language, consciousness is often said to depend on language. If so, then most other animals are ruled out of the consciousness game. But even if consciousness doesn't depend on language, language certainly changes consciousness so that whatever consciousness another animal has it is likely to differ from most of our states of consciousness.
I don't have any problem understanding consciousness from a purely mechanistic point-of-view like the above. The cerebrum is the "seat of intelligence." Through the extensive neural network of billions of neurons in the reticular formations (the net) that extends from parts of the brainstem, through the thalamus, relaying them on to the cerebral cortex, we have a conscious awareness of the activities of the aforementioned functions by way of the cerebrum's somatosensory association area that integrates it all together to give us a thought process. This also gives us memory and consciousness. Consciousness can evolve much in the same way as evolution has evolved us from simple prokaryotes to homo sapiens.
In the brain stem, the reticular formations in the medulla oblongonta, the pons, the midbrain and the diencephalon relay motor and sensory impulses and these impulses function in consciousness and arousal. We know this from CAT, PET and MRI scans and the wavelengths, particularly the beta waves that show the mental activities, by EEGs (electroencephalograms). There are primary impulse input areas and secondary sensory association areas and the cerebral cortex's "common integrative area" puts it all together to form thoughts and consciousness. I have absolutely no problem understanding multiple levels of consciousness this way.
Basic "perceptions" of touch-feeling, temperature sensations, and pain are already percepted in the thalamus even before the impulses are relayed to the cerebrum. The cerebrum consists of folded layers. Conceptionally, I have no problem imagining that the inner white matter integrates all these perceptions, while the much larger outer layers of gray matter surrounding it acts as consciousness - layer upon layer: consciousness upon consciousness This is how the brain increases during embryonic development, and consciousness increases too.
It would be interesting to know if a person who had a lobotomy still had as much consciousness as before he had the lobotomy. I would think not. I would think that after a lobotomy it would be more difficult to integrate the whole from the seperated left and right hemispheres than when they were connected together, and isn't this what we found to have happened to the people who had lobotomies in the 50's for serious mental problems?
