| >Our nervous system extends into our bodies. We feel emotions in our bodies. People with certain kinds of brain damage that prevents them from feeling emotions normally also experience trouble making rational decisions. I think that may be true enough, but it doesn't have the upshot you seem to think it does. It just means that what we need to sustain not just a brain itself but the totality of the environmental conditions on which it depends. No easy task for sure, but not something that presents an in-principle impossibility of preserving brains. I think there's a major philosophical error here in thinking that the added logistics present this kind of in-principle impossibility. Also, talking like this starts to play with anti-science speculation a bit. Octopi actually have neurons extending through their limbs. We don't. So when we talk about consciousness being "embodied", I'm sorry, it's an attempt to romanticize the question in a way that loses sight of our scientific understanding. Consciousness happens in the brain. Sure, the brain needs stimulus from its embodied nervous system, and may even depend on those data and interactions in significant ways, but everything we know about consciousness suggests its in the brain. And so the data from "embodied" nervous systems may be important but there's no in-principle reason why it can't be accounted for in the context of preservation. |
You don't have neurons extending through your limbs?