🚀 go-pugleaf

In <3cfj35$egp@calvin.st-and.ac.uk> thm1@st-andrews.ac.uk (Tomas Henrique Maul) writes:

>	By cerebral comunication I mean the transference of an imediate 
>mental state from subject A to subject B with the latter subject still 
>managing to perceive a fuzzy borderline between "I" and the transferred 
>state....

Hmmm.... well, if mental states are embodied by brain states, then since
no two human brains are exactly alike, because brain structure is dependant
upon the person's experiential history, no two people could ever have EXACTLY
the same brain state, therefore no two people could have the same mental
state.

If you think that mental states can be construed as patterns in brains which
are homeomorphic, though not necessarily identical, then this would not be
a problem, except that for a signal to pass from one person to another there
would have to be some kind of encoding system in person A to get from brain
state to signal, and some decoding system in person B to get from signal
to brain state, and somehow each person would have to either have a universal
encoder so all of their individual brain states could be mapped onto some
universal signal corresponding to that mental state and a universal decoder
to map the universal signal for that mental state onto his personal brain
state corresponding to it; or, each individual would have to have a decoder
of person A's unique signal to person B's unique brain state. Either way it
seems a bit complex. No to mention the fact that no NEW experiences or
thoughts could be transferred (no thoughts/experiences not synthesized by
previously experienced thoughts/feelings in B) because person B's decoding
mechanism would have no way of decoding it.

If you are a dualist and think that mental states are independant of brain
states, then I would still argue that no two people could have the same
mental states because we can do experiments (psych) to show that mental
states, as well as brain states, are dependant upon an individual's
experiential history, and therefore no two people can have exactly the same
mental state.

Take the case of deams: there is some evidence that what we experience in
dreams is fragmentory and incomplete, and is filled in subconsciously
when we wake up and "remember" it so that it makes sense.  If this is the
case, even assuming that the fragments are transmitted (which are also
based on memory), it seems unlikely that the "filling in" would be the 
same, because this is also based on individuals' own experiences.

Greg Stevens

stevens@prodigal.psych.rochester.edu

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