X-Ray Vision And Telepathy

I have been thinking about the mind-body problem with thought experiments featuring familiar sf characters. I could have published this post on the Religion and Philosophy blog but then no one would have read it.

See "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?" 

See also the quotation in the attached image. If there were no consciousness, then there would be no problem and nothing would be interesting.

 

Thought Experiment (i): Observing A Brain

 An enhanced optical instrument gives Dominic Flandry the Kryptonian powers of X-ray vision and microscopic vision. (We import Kryptonian visual powers from another fictional universe.) Thus, Flandry is able to look right through a skull and to observe neurons functioning and interacting inside a brain.

Thought Experiment (ii): Observing A Mind

Cerebral enhancement technology gives Flandry the Chereionite ability to detect and understand the momentary conscious thoughts of nearby intelligent organisms of any species. 

In (i), Flandry sees someone else's neurons. Of course, to us, sight is an immediate experience but it happens only because other events have happened. Thus, sensory input causes neurons in the visual center of Flandry's brain to generate the experience of seeing, in this case, someone else's neurons. In (ii), cerebral enhancement enables Flandry's neurons to reproduce the effect generated by someone else's neurons (or alien equivalents of neurons). In (ii), Flandry does not see the other person's neurons but experiences their effects - certain thoughts.

It follows that observation of a brain is not observation of a mind or vice versa. Even if Flandry alternates between (i) and (ii), he is no closer than anyone else to understanding the relationship between brains and minds.

Lucien: "Webster was much possessed by death and saw the skull beneath the skin." He did, you know. He really did.

Matthew: Yeah? You mean like he had some kind of X-ray vision?

Lucien: No, nothing like that.

-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (New York, 1996), 1, p. 12, panel 2.

(Hitman's two superpowers are X-ray vision and telepathy, a useful combination for an assassin.)