"'I don't believe we'll ever figure out precisely how the brain works.'"
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest (London, 2009), Chapter 1, p. 12.
See Philosophy And Fiction.
The premises and plots of Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis assume the possibility of the artificial duplication of human cerebral/mental processes, including memory, self-consciousness and personal identity. This in turn would probably require someone to figure out precisely how brains work, including how they generate minds. As yet, we have no idea whether it is possible to figure this out. There is not a one-to-one identity but a qualitative difference between externally observable cerebral processes and our inner subjective experiences.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And the points you listed in your remarks about Anderson's HARVEST OF STARS books and GENESIS were among those I had great difficult grasping. I needed a second reading before I could properly the boldness and skill of PA's late phase works.
Sean
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