'Hey Bill Nye, Does Consciousness Transcend the Brain?'| Big Think
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Hello Bill, my name is Peter. I live in Miami, and I have a hypothetical question for you. If we could clone or build a human brain atom by atom so that the second brain was an exact copy of the first brain, and we decided to clone Bill Nye, my question is: would the second brain also be Bill Nye? Or do you think consciousness transcends the physical structure and biochemical processes of the brain? Thank you.
If I understand your question, we make a replica of Bill Nye's brain. It's very troubling at some level. I don't think there's any consciousness or soul or awareness that exists outside of our physical brains. This is a very difficult question to answer. Extraordinary claims are made on both sides - the molecular people like me and the spiritual people like others. But there's no reason to think, for me, for me there's no reason to think there's something beyond the physical brain.
And I say this because of the experience I had with people as they grow old. Their consciousness, their awareness changes. And I'm talking about people who lose their cognitive abilities. The most reasonable explanation for that, for me, is the chemical brain is all you get. The nature of consciousness is a deep and wonderful question.
Furthermore, would this brain that you produce be just like Bill Nye? I think the answer is clearly no. Because the Bill Nye you have here is based on all these life experiences which could only happen during the time I have been alive. In other words, I remember Nixon resigning. I remember the moon landing. I remember 9/11. But this new brain you create of Bill Nye will not have had all those experiences.
He may not have played Ultimate Frisbee with an old Amo Master; he has only played with a 165 G disc. So his experience is just going to be totally different if you see what I'm driving at. So while this is a wonderful question, I'd like all of us to think about the nature of consciousness. And this has all kinds of implications about how you treat other people and how you treat other organisms, other animals.
Where is there a gradient? You know, when I go to the zoo, I see the gorillas, the bonobos, chimpanzees. They're looking at me; they're thinking chimpanzattical thoughts, and they're thinking about something. They're experiencing life in many ways the same way I do or would. But there's something else about me or us that's different.
I mean, there's no evidence that gorillas do calculus, for example, at least not formally. And so there's something else that seems to me best explained as a gradient of chemical processes that happen in our wet computer brains. Our brains have managed to set aside a little more space for cognitive thought. You know, for example, a blue whale has an enormous brain, but most of that brain apparently is used for running a blue whale, not for doing extraordinary philosophical treatises.
If I'm wrong, if this turns out to be wrong, that'll be exciting. It's a great question. Thank you.