Isn't that a copout? It is like the brain in the vat hypothesis or the simulation hypothesis. No way to test and then it is intellectual wankery. Consciousness on the other hand may be something we can replicate in the future and it doesn't look like a question in the category of "what happened before the big bang"
How will we know when we've replicated it?
I don't think this is my opinion, it's just a fudge that I'd accept.
Yeah I agree with this. Every time a subject along these lines comes up I am reminded of a David Mitchell rant on Mock the Week about the superstition regarding what happens to your body after you're dead.
With cryonics coming up big time, this won't hold up.
Yeah cryonics is a valid reason for not donating organs obviously, but applies to a minute proportion of the population at the moment.
Is it though? Last I heard they still didn't have a way of preserving the brain without injuring it.
Yeah that was the last I heard as well. Hypothetically though it could be a valid reason if perfected.
The word "may" is doing an incredible amount of work here.
Yep. To answer the question of whether a created "consciousness" actually is a consciousness requires answering a set of questions and defining concepts in a way that can't be done in a lab using trial-and-error. Which is fine, because science isn't meant to be able to answer everything.
You do realize only the doctors who are cutting you up will see that?
Yes, it's for them. Or maybe the students/researchers who're using my beautiful body as a cadaver.
People thinking that the areas they work in are worth working in is bias of the highest order.
Yeah I dunno. I feel like we know exactly what happens, as others have said. To tediously spell out the obvious case again: you're an organism, what you think of as "you", your consciousness, is an illusion brought about by various physical processes in your body, particularly in your brain. When you die those things cease, and so do "you". I don't think there's much real debate about those things. Of course some people feel differently, but those people have been established to be incorrect, in my mind. Anyway even if you did believe your consciousness survived death, your body clearly doesn't. Ask someone who works in a morgue what happens to bodies after death, it's nothing transcendental. You don't have to accept the prior that your consciousness is part of a physical process really.
hypothesing, theorizing based on observable evidence and testing out those theories or hypotheses is what we can do right now...that in itself constitutes an immense body of work so i don't know why it warrants a "all we can do" as if the whole idea limits us in some way...the only thing that limits any of us is how far we can expand our mind to the possibilities...with the caveat that every theory doesn't have a sound/rational basis nor are all theories testable or even worthy of being tested...
That's a perfectly fine breakdown of the physical processes behind consciousness and death. I wasn't arguing against them. I find the bold pretty crazy but like I said, people are entitled to their strange beliefs. My only principle is that no one's been able to conclusively show that that's all there is to this whole life business.
