Thoughts on thoughts

[dhampyresa]

A story I am currently experiencing posits that scanning a person's brain is enough -- modulo computer code -- to upload them into the cloud.

But is it really?

I'm not talking about a soul or the golem's divine breath of life or anything on a metaphysical level. I'm talking on a purely physical level: is the brain the only part of us that thinks?

If my spinal chord can wrench my hand away from a hot stove, is that not thinking? No, seriously. What counts as thinking?

I think (hardy har har) this is not the line of questionning the story wants me to go down, but it's where I am, and I'm really curious what everyone else thinks?


I trying out the construction "story experiencing" as an alternative to "media consumption", because I hate the passivity and destruction implied by consumption. Would also welcome opinions on this.

Comments

[flamingsword]

Our intestinal biomes regulate a lot of our appetites and moods, and are not our moods and wants considered thoughts? I think you can create an engram of a person's thoughts in any given moment, but like: A.) the brain is not the whole of where those thoughts are coming from, and 2.) the amount of electrical discharge it would take to ping and record such an engram would literally destroy a lot of the delicate pieces of bioelectric hardware that is the human brain There's no way for it to not? You'd literally have to do it at the moment of death or it would be some weird form of murder/suicide.

[eller]

Heh, good question! I don't really think the brain is enough to "upload" a personality, though. The rest of the body matters. A lot. Like... A lot of "thinking" is done by the gastrointestinal system, even. And don't forget about hormones... So, uh, I'm having difficulties with the whole concept of separating consciousness from physical body. I'm at, it's an interesting concept in a story, but not in a "oh, yeah, if technology evolves a bit, we'll do that" way.

[mildred_of_midgard]

Here via network.

While I can't wholeheartedly recommend Neal Stephenson's Fall, he does address this issue in that book. His premise is that you could get part of the personhood by scanning the brain, but the total consciousness is fed into by the body, the microbiome, etc.

[luzula]

I think being a body physically interacting with the world shapes us too much for the "disembodied brain" thing to work!