Random832 comments on HP:MOR and the Radio Fallacy - Less Wrong

22 Post author: RichardChappell 21 July 2012 07:55PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 23 July 2012 10:41:53PM 10 points [-]

I endorse this refinement. What brain damage demonstrates is not dependency of talking on the brain, but that the complex computations of thought can be damaged in internal detail by damaging a specific brain part, whereupon its outputs to other parts of thought are damaged. This is strong evidence that the brain is doing the internal computations of thought; it is part of the inner process producing thoughts. The radio hypothesis, in which the output is produced elsewhere and received, decisively fails at that point.

We could suppose that you had a hundred soul-parts, all of which can only communicate with each other through brain-area radio transceivers which receive a call from one soul-part, and then retransmit it to another. But leaving out the epicycleness of this idea, the degree to which it contradicts the intuitive notion of a soul, and its, if you'll pardon the phrase, sheer stupidity, the end result would still be that destroying the brain leaves the soul incapable of thought. You're not likely to find a remotely reasonable hypothesis, even in the Methodsverse where magic abounds, by which the internal parts of a thinking computation can be damaged by damaging the brain, and yet removing the whole brain leaves the soul capable of internal thinking.

Comment author: Random832 30 July 2012 04:47:00PM *  -1 points [-]

You're not likely to find a remotely reasonable hypothesis, even in the Methodsverse where magic abounds, by which the internal parts of a thinking computation can be damaged by damaging the brain, and yet removing the whole brain leaves the soul capable of internal thinking.

Has your hypothesis that thought remains possible after the whole brain has been removed, in fact, been tested?

EDIT: I read your post as meaning that the "fact" that thought remains possible after a brain has been removed [to be cryo-frozen, for instance] was evidence against a soul.