Ha! File this under "no shit." I've been laughed at by a bunch-o-brain scientists for saying the same shit. The difference between me and the current group of boycotters, however, is that they think it's not viable yet. I'm convinced that last word is unnecessary."We are left with a project that can't but fail from a scientific perspective. It is a waste of money, it will suck out funds from valuable neuroscience research, and would leave the public, who fund this work, justifiably upset," he said.
Still waiting. Your other replies lead me to believe we're gonna start talking about John Searle. I'm so down.
I gave up on Searle summarily after reading Freedom and Neurobiology, which is a dismal piece of cynicism that essentially boils down to, "If we stimulate a neuron in culture it behaves predictably. Therefore, you have no free will, and your agency is illusory." I just said in two sentences what he goes on for volumes about. It's not a philosophy I find inspiring, although I'm sure if I dug deeper into his writings I might find something worthwhile. As for the connectome, here's what I think about that in a nutshell. If we want to understand sociology, we don't do it by drawing a detailed map of where everyone lives and which way all the roads go. Why? Because a society is far more than the sum of where everyone goes and at what speed they travel. The connectome is trying to answer the question of how by simply describing what the brain look like. It's a fools errand if ever there was one.
WOAH, really? I was only familiar with the Chinese Room argument and some criticisms he had about AI, but I had totally not heard that reductionist nonsense. My co-worker had him at UC for philosophy of mind and had recommended him for that in particular. I am in agreement with your sentiments on the whole connectome thing, but it's only as useless as the claims it tries to make. I'm sure it can have some utility (I honestly can't imagine for what other than just doing it), but nothing seems obvious. As per Searle, he has arguments about mentation and intentionality that I think are appropriate in the debate on consciouness, I'm not an expert by any means, I'm personally trying to fill in the gaps my very materialist education left me with, and some of his stuff seems pretty sound
I agree although it is out of my specialty. Give us a list. I will check it against my non-Expert opinion.
A list of the misunderstandings/ bad assumptions of the Brain these brain sim projects . The way I see it we really don't know enough about how the brain works to really even start. Even our analogies may be ill founded i.e. brain as a computer etc. I am unsure we have a even a Theory of Intelligence or Sentience that reflects anything in the real world. I also have the inkling that the simulator would be larger than the brain by a few orders of magnitude. Even with magic Moore's law. Being in a Simulation background I have come to the conclusion that simulations that are as complex as the thing being simulated really don't have a whole lot of research utility. i.e. you have something as difficult to analyze as the real thing but you don't even know if it reflect s the thing it is meant to be modeling. It seems to me this is the Sci-Fi dreams of [B]illionaires being acted out on the public dime. [edit realized that millionaires are not really a thing anymore]
So there are some things that I think a simulator could accomplish. Mainly these things revolve around specific diseases. For example, maybe we can get an idea about parkinson's treatment by looking at how current loops move about the brain. This could give us a better understanding of brain stimulation-based treatment (hypothetically). However, I think that really isn't the purpose of this simulator. I think the purpose is to create an artificial consciousness under the hypothesis that consciousness is nothing more than the sum of the brain's electrochemical signals. This is where I diverge from the mainstream. It is my firm belief that consciousness is a function of the individual rather than of the brain (and by extension it's really a property of the universe). A brain can no more be said to be conscious than a rock, IMO. Anyway, even if you could model it, why does that have anything whatever to do with animal consciousness? Machine "intelligence":consciousness::Pleather:animal skin. We don't mistake pleather for animal skin, or PVC decking for wood, because they're approximations of nature made to look like the thing itself, but resembling it in no way other than cursory visual inspection. Anyway, these are kind of rambling and unconnected thoughts, so I apologize. If you go here I have some more well organized writing on the topic, but that's a 5000 word commitment, which is the minimum I could squeeze the tip of the iceberg into.
Thank you. My thoughts parallel yours quite closely. Although I am not strictly dualist or rather not Dualist at all when I am on my guard.
I would consider myself a materialist, if I had to pick a side. My point, perhaps not well made, is that dualism is alive and well in modern neuroscience, despite the fact that almost all modern neuroscientists will tell you that they are strict materialists. Merely stating that "consciousness comes from the brain" does nothing to solve the problem of consciousness (if such a thing exists).
It made its point much better when I read rather than skimmed it.
What I mean is that I think it's impossible, and not just for technical reasons. That is, it's not like the problem of modeling the weather, which is impossible because it's too complex and chaotic. It is my belief that it's impossible to model the brain in any way that makes the model brain-like in principle.