Not all theories of consciousness are created equal: a reply to Robert Lawrence Kuhn's recent article in Skeptic Magazine [Link]

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I found this article on the Brain Preservation Foundation's blog that covers a lot of common theories of consciousness and shows how they kinna miss the point when it comes to determining if certain folks should or should not upload our brains if given the opportunity.

Hence I see no reason to agree with Kuhn’s pessimistic conclusions about uploading even assuming his eccentric taxonomy of theories of consciousness is correct. What I want to focus on in the reminder of this blog is challenging the assumption that the best approach to consciousness is tabulating lists of possible theories of consciousness and assuming they each deserve equal consideration (much like the recent trend in covering politics to give equal time to each position regardless of any empirical relevant considerations). Many of the theories of consciousness on Kuhn’s list, while reasonable in the past, are now known to be false based on our best current understanding of neuroscience and physics (specifically, I am referring to theories that require mental causation or mental substances). Among the remaining theories, some of them are much more plausible than others.

http://www.brainpreservation.org/not-all-theories-of-consciousness-are-created-equal-a-reply-to-robert-lawrence-kuhns-recent-article-in-skeptic-magazine/

Hence I see no reason to agree with Kuhn’s pessimistic conclusions about uploading even assuming his eccentric taxonomy of theories of consciousness is correct. What I want to focus on in the reminder of this blog is challenging the assumption that the best approach to consciousness is tabulating lists of possible theories of consciousness and assuming they each deserve equal consideration (much like the recent trend in covering politics to give equal time to each position regardless of any empirical relevant considerations). Many of the theories of consciousness on Kuhn’s list, while reasonable in the past, are now known to be false based on our best current understanding of neuroscience and physics (specifically, I am referring to theories that require mental causation or mental substances). Among the remaining theories, some of them are much more plausible than others.

http://www.brainpreservation.org/not-all-theories-of-consciousness-are-created-equal-a-reply-to-robert-lawrence-kuhns-recent-article-in-skeptic-magazine/

My understanding is that if the creature is conscious at all, and it acts observably like a human with the kind of experience we care about, THEN it likely has the kind of experiences we care about.

Do you think it is likely that the creatures will NOT have the experiences we care about?

(just trying to make sure we're on the same page)

It depends how the creatures got there: algorithms or functions? That is, did the designers copy human algorithms for converting sensory inputs into thoughts? If so, then the right kind of experiences would seem to be guaranteed. Or did they find new ways to compute similar coarse-grained input/output functions? Then, assuming the creatures have some reflexive awareness of internal processes, they're conscious of something, but we have no idea what that may be like.

Further info on my position.

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Not all theories of consciousness are created equal: a reply to Robert Lawrence Kuhn's recent article in Skeptic Magazine [Link]

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Not all theories of consciousness are created equal: a reply to Robert Lawrence Kuhn's recent article in Skeptic Magazine [Link]

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