> a really great way to confuse yourself would be to abstract the entire question of consciousness away from the life sciences and then wonder why you're so confused
Yes, exactly. Which is a direct challenge to transhumanism because it means that maybe it actually won't be possible to achieve immortality via brain upload, or build general AI (without first solving the life science "problem", i.e. building an artificial body), and so on.
Re:We Are Beast Machines
by eli_gottlieb on Friday October 15, 2021 @01:29PM
(#28880399)
Sure, but was anyone really suggesting that we somehow create disembodied people? That seems to be the other side of the dialectical coin from immaterial souls, which are precisely what most Hard Problem disbelievers deny.
Or at the very least, it's a fundamental property of the particular kinds of physical systems that animals happen to be, and without understand what that is, we have no hope of replicating consciousness in any non-animal.
This makes sense to me, because consciousness seems to be a question related to brains, which are part of animals, so a really great way to confuse yourself would be to abstract the entire question of consciousness away from the life sciences and then wonder why you're so confused.