Consciousness on/off switch
some of you may remember my ‘consciousness = life’ thread where I spoke about a scientific American article, which said that the same chemical reactions occur in microorganisms as in nerve cells, denoting electrical activity & possibly the most rudimentary level of consciousness. So lets imagine that we have got consciousness down to its simplest format, and replicated that artificially but with on/off functionality!
We can then switch consciousness on/off, and ask if the same means exacts the same product? So when you switch the device on again, it would be the same consciousness? I think its highly unlikely that any means to a given end, does not result in that end, when everywhere we look we see the same results-per-means, which is the job science/philosophy does.
Going with the positive line of inquiry;
- a set or collection of such organic or artificial devices could equally be turned off/on. The same consciousness would be manifest each time?
- In a full sized human brain or artificial equivalent, cells die and are replaced, and the schemata is in constant flux due to brain plasticity, and the arrival of new informations in a continuous stream. Therefore consciousness is adaptive, and the same consciousness may inhabit differing matrix’s [or schemata].
- There can be recurrence where the existent means facilitates the same consciousnesses?
- This function of existence does not require exacting schemata. so ‘you’ could be reborn in a similar [or completely different?] body, and the function doesn’t require exact matches to happen again.
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