Dog blog 10 - plugging in

Plugging in

The philosophy of mind brigade have an interesting thought experiment.

It goes like this: suppose the boffins eventually manage to advance cybernetics so far that they can actually replace your entire brain with a mechanical version. And suppose this process takes place over a few years, gradually replacing your old grey cells with a fancy you-MK-II. The machine would replicate exactly the part being replaced. The point being that you'll still feel like it's you while all this is happening.

Although, when you get the upgrades after the process is finished, you'll be fantastic at chess, and always remember where you left your keys. Whenever, wherever. As Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira might say. Sing, even.

Assumptions

Now there's a lot of assumptions there.

Which makes a good point in itself: if you want to pick holes in an argument, one of the things to look at is the premises. That's where arguments live. And where the British Police always find you on if you're up to no good.

For example, if I say, "All dogs like going for walks", and I am a dog, it must follow that I like going for walks.

Which I do, and so do most dogs. But some dogs are very lazy, and just like to sit inside and watch Dog telly, like Scooby Doo, Snoopy or One Man and his Dog. Or do snoozings (which is nice too). So that argument only works if my first premise (all dogs like going for walks) is right.

Modal logic

Modal logic is a fancy way of looking at the musts, mights and coulds of an argument.

Modal logicians use a lot of symbols. The Dog likes two in particular. Mainly because they look like the Dog's squeaky toys. They are: (a must be right bit of an argument) and this one: (a maybe/might be right bit).

And using these squeaky toys you can see where the weaknesses are. Here's where they are in the first bit of my "all dogs like going for walks" argument:

"All dogs like going for walks". (Logician Dogs might keep one toy in the Dog bed, and just use one toy at the front of the sentence).

Unless we had absolutely fabby evidence from the real world to make this first bit of the argument a "goodun", we'd need to go back and rethink the premise. We might even have a think about putting it in terms of probability. (So: "Nearly all dogs like going for walks. I am a dog, so it follows that it is highly probable that I like going for walks too. You still need to back up your premise though.)

Anselmo d'Aosta

Fun toys eh. They might have been useful to Anselmo d'Aosta who was the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 11th century and beginning of the 12th. Interestingly, Anselmo's dad was called Gundulf. Seriously.

Which reminds me, Sir Ian McKellen based his version of Gandalf in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings on John Tolkein. Especially his voice. Here's JRRT yapping to YouTube:

Back to Anselmo. He and some other philosophers thought that they could come up with a proof that God exists. Just by using a Derren Brown type of magic number game: think of a number, times it by two, take away six. What are you thinking of? It's God, isn't it?

Here's Derren chatting to Richard Dawkins about cold reading and mind control techniques used by "psychics". Interesting stuff.

Anselmo v squeaky toys

Anselmo's Derren Brown game is called the ontological argument. Mark Sainsbury has a modern version of it in my yellow Philosophy book which I mentioned in Dog Blog 8 - how much do you need to know? And it's on the book wheel on the right in the Dog's faves. Mark's version goes like this:

The notion of God, as a necessary being, is conceivable.

Whatever exists of necessity exists.

So, God exists.

People were convinced by Anselmo's argument for a long time. Rene Descartes tried something like it too. But when you start applying the squeaky toys to it, it becomes about as convincing as my pals at Pedigree Chum making rhubarb and custard flavour dog food. No thanks.

Here's Anselmo's argument with squeaky toys:

The notion of ((God, as a necessary being)), is conceivable.

(Whatever exists of necessity exists).

(So, God exists).

It's the diamond squeaky toy in the first sentence that skews it: God might be a necessary being. But only might. Or maybe. The diamond toy shows the bracket bit in the sentence is really saying: "it might be right that it must be right".

Anselmo can't have any diamonds in his argument if it's to work as a proof for God. And he has two. Squeak, squeaking away.

Plugging back in

Anyway, back to the philosophy of mind experiment. One of the assumptions it makes is that the brain is the end of the story for consciousness. That there is no soul "out there" hovering around in space, in some quantum field or another dimension that can (and does) exist separate to the brain. Steven Pinker talks about whether a belief in a soul is a justifiable assumption in the face of neuroscience in Dog Blog 7 - Moonwalking. He doesn't think it is.

Which is an interesting story for another day in another Dog Blog: what sorts of jumps are justifiable, rational or defensible in the face of what we observe in the world? Do they become less justifiable the more we learn that discredits the jump? For example (taking an example from Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion) say I believe there is a blue mouse in my kennel. Is it less defensible to believe it the more places I look - and just don't find it?

I had a quick think about defensible jumps in Dog Blog 8 - how much do you need to know? To what extent is it justifiable to trust someone's explanation for something based on our past experience of reliability? And if you don't have a lot of time to investigate the claim being made yourself?

Some philosophers call the jumps we make from what we observe "projectable induction". An example might be that I close my jaws round one of my squeaky toys (better make it the diamond one) and it makes a squeak. And I do this forty times in a row, because it's fun and I'm enjoying making a noise. If I do it a forty-first time, is it a rational and defensible jump to say, right before I do that, that the diamond toy will squeak?

Plugging back in

Until I complete my neuroscience degree at the Open University for Dogs, you'll just have to humour my assumption that we can replace the brain bit by bit.

If we could, wouldn't that be fascinating? We could, for example, really become just a brain in a vat (see Dog Blog 8 again). Our conciousnesses could be transferred to robot vehicles on other worlds, like a fancy version of the Mars Rover vehicle (which I think is still stuck in a Martian sand dune). And we could have a look around. Which might be fun (if we had our fun algorithms loaded in). Or we could have a go at being the Asimo robot:

And we might (with the right parts and maintenance) be able to exist and expand our knowledge for a very, very long time. There'd be very interesting questions about the philosophical and ethical status of your "back up". Say you went to Mars for a look, but the transmission got stuck, and the boffins had to load up your backup. Would that be you? So tricky.

And there's another possibility: this has happened already. And I am choosing to re-live my life as a dog. Which means that I really am just a brain in a vat.

Whatever the answer to that one is (and as a response to the brain-in-a-vat brigade), I'm going to take my brain in a vat for a walk now.

Because, like most dogs, I love going for walks... .