> The second important property of consciousness that any theory needs to explain is that consciousness is a single, cohesive experience. My consciousness is of my entire self. It is not of half of myself, nor is it some superposition of you and me. Somehow, whatever is going on in my brain to produce my consciousness contains all the neurons of my brain, not just a subset of them. There are not multiple consciousnesses in my brain, it’s just me in there.
> Some individuals with severe epilepsy have to have their corpus callosum severed, which separates their left and right hemispheres. After this procedure these individuals often seem to exhibit two consciousnesses rather than one. The right side of the brain seems to be surprised when the left side of the brain decides to raise the right arm, and vice versa. But this is never the case in an individual with a connected corpus callosum. Every time I decide to raise my arm (left or right), my arm goes up and it only goes up when I decide to raise it.
That is ignoring people which create "tulpas", which are another consciousness in the same brain, with different memories. From what I've gathered this is done purely through a mental process, not by separating your brain into multiple pieces. I don't have any personal experience with this, so this is all information coming from secondary sources. But you can't ignore those people and say "There are not multiple consciousnesses in my brain, it’s just me in there.". If we admit that those people are telling the truth and what they experience is really another or multiple other consciousness living in the same brain, this opens the door to something interesting: it is possible for a person to create a consciousness. Again from what I've gathered, tulpas don't suddenly appear all formed, they go through an initial period of "growing up", forming themselves as a person.
A wild theory would be that the process of creating a tulpa is the same as the process of creating a human consciousness, the only difference is if you target another brain or your own brain. And if that's true, once you've managed to recreate the human brain, you would "only" need to interact with it the same way you would when creating a tulpa to create a consciousness.
> Some individuals with severe epilepsy have to have their corpus callosum severed, which separates their left and right hemispheres. After this procedure these individuals often seem to exhibit two consciousnesses rather than one. The right side of the brain seems to be surprised when the left side of the brain decides to raise the right arm, and vice versa. But this is never the case in an individual with a connected corpus callosum. Every time I decide to raise my arm (left or right), my arm goes up and it only goes up when I decide to raise it.
That is ignoring people which create "tulpas", which are another consciousness in the same brain, with different memories. From what I've gathered this is done purely through a mental process, not by separating your brain into multiple pieces. I don't have any personal experience with this, so this is all information coming from secondary sources. But you can't ignore those people and say "There are not multiple consciousnesses in my brain, it’s just me in there.". If we admit that those people are telling the truth and what they experience is really another or multiple other consciousness living in the same brain, this opens the door to something interesting: it is possible for a person to create a consciousness. Again from what I've gathered, tulpas don't suddenly appear all formed, they go through an initial period of "growing up", forming themselves as a person.
A wild theory would be that the process of creating a tulpa is the same as the process of creating a human consciousness, the only difference is if you target another brain or your own brain. And if that's true, once you've managed to recreate the human brain, you would "only" need to interact with it the same way you would when creating a tulpa to create a consciousness.