It might. The brain could just be a solid piece of mass that just sits there. But we still have the problem of where the brain came from and why the heck the mind even bothers with it. Just go to sleep and don't wake up and be happy as a mind.

Rich

I think we are straying away from the original point: The issue is not if the brain is necessary, it is, but whenever its possible to copy one's mind to another one, what I believe to be possible.

If I go to sleep and dont wake up, my mind will go elsewhere, it wont just stay there thinking to itself

It is interesting thought that the mind wanders here and there, disconnected from the brain - the brain being a superfluous piece of mass that is really doing nothing. Maybe it is just there to give the head shape.

However, now we have to figure out how to create a mind that can wander in and out of a machine on its own. Because that is some trick.

Rich

I would say that the mind is an emergent feature of the brain,

Personally, I go the other way (brain emerges from mind - and I have reasons for this), but which ever way you go, they have to be connected somehow, otherwise one is doing its thing while the other is ... I guess just doing something else.

Could you please elaborate on the reasons why you think it is brain emerges from mind.

It has to do with my own personal metaphysics which is sort of a combination of Heraclitus, Daoism, thoughts of Itzhak Bentov, and my own imaginative thoughts. But I see Individual Consciousness (what you call mind, but I call Yi), as transcendental, and the brain being part of a nervous system along with the spine, that collects and transmits information for Consciousness.

So terminology and concepts are quite different and this is just a outline so as not to bore you. My blog has some of my thoughts.

Rich

Ah yes, a transcendental view will make our thoughts approach from opposite directions

My transcendental view emanates from the thought that what we call inherited characteristics are examples of skills that we inherited from prior existences.

Rich

PS for me it is not a view, but rather empirical fact, that inherited characteristics are inherited from genetic transmission.

Genes? How does one know how to think from a gene. I don't see the connection? A gene is some stuff, isn't it? Thinking is .... well you can fill in the blank.

I don't get it. This little thing-a-ma-jig knows how to think? Can it talk, smell, and do other things like twirling a hoola-hoop around its belly?

Inherited characteristics are something like this:

YouTube - The Next Mozart? 6-Year Old Piano Prodigy Wows All

Rich

It is interesting thought that the mind wanders here and there, disconnected from the brain - the brain being a superfluous piece of mass that is really doing nothing. Maybe it is just there to give the head shape.

However, now we have to figure out how to create a mind that can wander in and out of a machine on its own. Because that is some trick.

Rich

I would say that the mind is an emergent feature of the brain, and as such, the mind can not be disassociated from the brain. It is analogous to saying you can seperate water from the wetness of water.

I do not think a mind is created, a mind emerges. You need to create a suitable system that can allow and support an emergent mind. The brain does this. What would be interesting is, that if a synthetic system can support a mind, at what point does this support occur. Would this provide us with an objective "this is the minimum requirement to support a mind", rather than the subjective "it only has a mind if it is identical to me"

That indeed seens a better way to put things... well, then, If we made a eletronic brain that works exactly like a human's, then adjusted it to reproduce the current state of that of a living human, do you think the result can be called a mind?

If we made a eletronic brain that works exactly like a human's, then adjusted it to reproduce the current state of that of a living human, do you think the result can be called a mind?

The problem is how do you show that your very complex robot has free will or is genuinely having the experience of emotions or is just a convincing copy?

In order to answer this question, I would have to know what you mean by working "exactly like a human's". Observe everything that a human can do. Go to youtube and flip through it, for examples. Is this what you are proposing to duplicate?

Rich

I mean, same amount of data lost, same way of recording data, etc.

As I see it, in order to be identical, they would have to be capable of performing identical things. As I inspect the brief laundry list of what humans can do, including create more humans, I would say that the computer has a long way to go. And, of course, by the time the computer gets there (if it ever does), the it would have to have evolved so that it is whereever the human mind is at that future date.

I think anything is possible. But we will have to wait and see.

Rich

If we tie up a human in a bed and take control of all his senses, so he only receives the information we provide him, and make him unable to anything other than communicating through a equipment reading his mind, then that means he is not human anymore?

If we, somehow remove someone's brain, put it in a "jar" (see "brain in a jar") and then connect wires to it that allow to receive and send information, its not human anymore?

Then, we have different views of what a human is, im afraid