I should make some qualifying statements regarding this most recent article I completed over two years ago (TSN development efforts completely distracted me from writing papers and articles).

Regarding the sources I cited on the nature of consciousness, I found better ones shortly after this article was published (under a tight deadline) and came to respect the views of people I had earlier opposed, including Daniel Dennett. The connectionist work of Gerard O’Brian and Jon Opie provided a clearer conception of sensory appearances or “qualia” of experience as consisting of matter transiently in a dispositional orientation to its environment and “self-same” system of modular information processing, united in part by strong psychological biases of interpretation (among several other fascinating subjects). Shortly after surrendering any hope of “material continuity” based on a better understanding and appreciation of physics, I read Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Levels of Organization in General Intelligence,” which I highly recommend to anyone considering the bioethical issues in my article. As I begin to consider cognitive science topics again, I look forward to reading more work by Andy Clark, Ben Goertzel, and Anders Sandberg.

Since writing the “Personhood Rights” article, there have been a few cases of people in minimally conscious states (MCS) – not persistently vegetative states (PVS) – revived after many years. In the case of Terry Wallis, his mind endured in a MCS for 19 years after an auto accident at the age of 19. It seems that “dormant” or less-active areas of the brain may gradually be able to reconnect so as to fulfill functions once served by favored areas in the same region that were destroyed. However, if most of the cortex is necrotized and filled with cerebrospinal fluid, the chances of any substantial recovery can rapidly drop to nil. Still, I fully support a careful assessment of any severe brain injury patient’s potential, using the best tools and techniques available, particularly fMRIs, to help patients recover functionality if it is possible and avoid the neglect of patients who may be enduring “locked-in syndrome” in cases where injuries are primarily to the lower brain.

I think Kant achieved useful insights that can offer a good initial framing of the problem of consciousness (in addition to contributing vital insights to pragmatic realist epistemology), but most bioethical issues only will be resolved through a cautious process in which functions and correlated physical activities are teased apart, or in the case of artificial general intelligence (AGI), processing code is structured and experimentally altered through non-biological substrates. For anyone interested in learning more about the interpretation of Kant’s “Critique” I have used, or the pragmatic realism I am inclined to endorse – at least partially (I’m also inclined to endorse epistemologically “shallower-but-unrivaled levels” of justification that identify of minds with their processing patterns and the matter that appears to transiently facilitate perceptual and cognitive functions) – I recommend reading work by my former mentor at Northwestern University, Kenneth R. Westphal.

The “acts of judgment” I referenced only have been accounted for through scientific investigation by computations, and cognition does not appear to have dependence on speculative quantum levels of computational processing (which, in any event, do not appear to offer any significant form of “free will”). Sorry to repeat myself, but essentially, sensory appearances seem to be matter, in a dispositional orientation to its environment and interpretive system, and computations and computational relations (acts of judgment) are what provide transient dispositional interpretations and system-wide integration of information, which is experienced as awareness and consciousness (but not necessarily sentience or other human-like experiences in an AGI). The apperceptive tendencies structure matter composing sensory appearances into perceptions are embedded in the interpretive system as physical dispositions and memories (including physiological, perceptual apperceptive, limbic/emotional, conceptual apperceptive and cognitive levels of dispositions, all of which contribute to behavioral habits and inclinations). In a biological brain system that seems to facilitate perception in a connectionist manner to some extent, the levels of processing that provide sensory appearances and perform intellectual acts would often be one and the same, synthesized at a physiological level. However, I have found no good reason to doubt that the “hardware” and “software” levels of processing for a cognitive system cannot be separated and still retain a synthesis of intellectual acts and sensory appearances.

Whatever the extent of connectionist processing in the human brain, from reading Yudkowsky’s work, I’ve become inclined to think that not only could many or all the same perceptions humans experience (smell and taste might pose an early challenge) be achieved on an alternative substrate through a functional simulation of a three-dimensional environment, but the processing patterns might even be organized in a completely linear manner, as Turing argued, given sufficient computational speed and power relative to available time. Though parallel processing seems useful enough to be retained, this possibility might be more easily achieved once uploaded minds reorganize themselves to function more adaptively, efficiently, and quickly, including more readily integrating semantic and episodic memory as would be impossible or very difficult in a connectionist system.