This gets back to basic Dharma teaching:FiveSkandhas wrote: ↑Sun Jun 06, 2021 5:13 am Here is a thought experiment.
Humans are able to take on prosthetic devices like artificial limbs. I am sure none of us would argue that a human would be less of a human if he/she had a prosthetic arm.
Now, neural prosthetics have existed for some time. The most widespread example is the cochlear implant, which uses a microphone and a unit that electrically stimulates the auditory nerve. Other neural prosthetics work with muscles to translate physical responses into electrical impulses.
I would hope we can agree that neural prosthetics do not make anyone less human.
Now suppose we begin replacing every single neuron in the brain one-by-one with a prosthetic neuron. Of course in reality this is impractical because of the number of neurons and the size of the prosthetic neurons, but we are in a thought experiment.
Eventually the human has no organic tissue left but still has a perfectly functioning human brain. Is not such a being still human and still sentient? If one argues that she is no longer human, at what point exactly did she cease to be human? If one accepts she is still human, then consciousness with non-organic matter is obviously a given.
Where is “me” located in the body?
If I lose my legs, if I lose half of my body, is half of ‘me’ gone or am I still fully ‘me’ but without legs?”
...replacing an original body part with an artificial one isn’t even necessary to delve into this matter.
In fact, since every cell in your body has died and been replaced every seven years, the same question applies. ‘Real vs artificial’ doesn’t even need to be considered. Replacing one organic cell
With another one will do. Where is that “me” which is experienced as a constant aware entity?
I think that the answer is always: awareness arises as a function along with, or you might say suitable to, the conditions of that body. Awareness is not produced by that body, but it assumes an expression of that body. If awareness arises with a dog body, for example, there will be a lot more “nose consciousness” experienced than there would be if it arises with a human body.
As an analogy, air is air, breath is breath, but the same air blown through a tuba, a flute, and a harmonica will have a different sound because what the air interacts with has different characteristics in each instrument. Likewise, awareness or consciousness will appear as an expression of the conditions in which it arises.
But since this hypothetical scenario has been suggested, and let’s say every part of a person’s body is replaced by something artificial, then the question becomes whether or not that awareness will arise as an expression of artificially produced conditions (at that point one has to ask what ‘artificial’ even means).
This harkens back to what is mutually considered by both Buddhist theory and Advaita Vedanta, which is that whatever can be witnessed or experienced is an object of awareness and hence is not, itself, awareness (the A.V. argues that this awareness constitutes a continuous ‘self’ or atman, and the Buddhist disputes this conclusion).
Thus whatever occurs as functional awareness with regard to an artificial body isn’t that body itself. If it produced by that body, as with AI, it only simulates sentience. If the sense of a permanent “me” (both instinctive and mistaken, according to Buddhist theory) still arises functionally along with a body whose original parts have been replaced one by one with artificial parts, then ultimately a genuine consciousness would be replaced by an artificial one. So, if you replaced bit by bit a human body with a dog body, at the point of 100% replacement, do you have a human experience in an artificial dog body, or a dog experience in a dog body?
The answer is, you don’t have either one, because the physical body isn’t what causes sentience. Furthermore, the notion of ‘human’ itself, being based in that body, is an imputed category, an invented concept.