A Potential Elephant

An elephant can be defined as a large chunk of matter (protons, neutrons, electrons etc) arranged in very special ways. Arranged in different ways, the same "matter". may become what we call a tractor, or a rock, or a star, an oak tree, a worm, or whatever. The thing is not so much the thing. The thing is more like the pattern, the structure. Just like a great painting is not so much about the paint itself, but rather about a visual pattern.

Take a look at yourself. You soon realise that most parts actually can be exchanged, as long as a replacing part will fulfill the functions of the original part. But what about the brain? If I loose a leg and have it replaced, no big deal. But if a brain transplant was suggested most of us would probably think twice, and for good reasons. Evidence suggests that the brain is the place where your life is taking place. But the brain is made of the same stuff (matter) as everything else around, living and non-living, thinking and non-thinking. What matters, it seems, is not so much the protons, atoms and molecules, it is rather the way the brain is structured and the way it operates. So evidence suggests that what you experience throughout your life is a function of what goes on in your nervous system. You may well think that you know a little about this world. The beauty of the mountains, the smell of spring, the music of Bach. The truth is that what you know about all this, has been filtered and processed many times over by your nervous system before it even came near your consciousness. Your senses, your mind and consciousness have not been designed to find out what the world "really" is like. They were designed to focus on "relevant" information. Relevant information according to this definition, is information that in one way or another can improve the chances for survival and reproduction, in an environment as it looked thousands and millions of years ago, when our species and its ancestors evolved.

Your brain is a tool, generated by the same evolutionary process that has generated orchids and elephants, cockroaches and bacteria. The human brain however has proven to serve us well in our efforts to survive and reproduce. But it tells us little about what the world "really" is about. Our consciousness is a product of the history of mammals, birds and reptiles. We carry all kinds of mental luggage from millions of years of evolution within ourselves. No wonder the world is a messy place at times.

So, if the brain is its functions, what if we copy its functions? There is little reason to believe that this copy brain is not as alive and as self-conscious as the original brain. In any case it would be very hard to find out. If you get the same responses from two different brains, how could you ever tell if one is self-conscious and one is not? How do you know that your neighbour is conscious at all? You don't. You just assume that, because you somehow feel conscious (well, it happens), and other people and many other living beings behave in somewhat conscious ways. That's a good assumption, but no good evidence. It may not be very easy to map a brain. It wasn't made for easy backup. But in principle it operates under exactly the same sets of rules as does all other objects around us, such as aeroplanes, icebergs, tropical storms and slot machines.

So what about my free will? I do experience some kind of control over my activities, don't I (hrm)? But considering the fact that the brain appears to be one huge physio chemichal slime, the room for free will seems quite reduced. If we actually were equipped with something like free will, would we really act the way we do? How do you define "free will"? Shopenhauer made this comment about this problem: "A man can do what he will, but not will what he will" and that is pretty much how the author of this text feels about it.