Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Steven Pinker’s Synapse Scanner

Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, and is an author of several books on language, the mind and consciousness. He now has a short article at Time.com addressing the general issue of the mind figuring out how the brain works.

One of the hard problems of the “self” is determining whether science can ever refine out and analyze that which we perceive to be our essence, our being, our soul. This essence of self perception is beyond mere consciousness or sensory input of pain, pleasure, other existences. Can it be distilled into the crucible of analytical science?

Pinker raises this issue in an interesting manner, posing a thought test. The environment is the future, with a new invention, the “synapse scanner”.

Pinker:
“The synapse scanner has been perfected, and you can download a backup copy of your mind into a brainlike computer that will outlast your body. Unfortunately the scanner destroys the tissue it scans, so you have to choose between your old brain and a new one. The new brain will react and behave exactly like you—but would it be you? If you say yes, are you confident enough to step into the scanner? “
Perhaps this will come to pass. Perhaps someone will be induced to step into the scanner, and perhaps the “brain-like” computer will give person-like responses. But will the “self” have been preserved? It will not be possible to know for sure without stepping into the scanner yourself.

The “self” is a purely subjective entity. To think that science can attach for its own analysis non-objective entities, is to give science more credit than is due. Science voluntarily limits itself to the “measurables” of the sensory universe; it does not pretend to test the unmeasurable. To think that science is unlimited is an error of non-scientific ignorance, or of the arrogation of the Materialist agenda, which demands that everything perceivable by man is material, including his essence, his soul.

Then let the materialists step into line for the Synapse Scanner.

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