Consciousness, brains and the replica problem

Consciousness is thought to emerge from brain activity, but the mapping between neural hardware and conscious experience is not one-to-one; multiple conscious patterns can arise from the same hardware. A thought experiment shows that any temporary shutdown of brain activity irreversibly ends the original conscious experience. Without a guaranteed continuous stream of consciousness, the previous self vanishes and a new self replaces it.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Although the conscious state is considered an emergent property of the underlying brain activity and thus somehow resides on brain hardware, there is a non-univocal mapping between both. Given a neural hardware, multiple conscious patterns are consistent with it. Here we show, by means of a simple {\em gedankenexperiment} that this has an important logic consequence: any scenario involving the transient shutdown of brain activity leads to the irreversible death of the conscious experience. In a fundamental way, unless the continuous stream of consciousness is guaranteed, the previous self vanishes and is replaced by a new one.