Using Neuralink to better understand the nature and origins of consciousness
Neuralink, or more broadly, brain-computer interfaces, are becoming more and more popular with investors and the general public. Advocates of the technology promise an untethered, invisible connection between ourselves and the digital world, along with the perfect transmission of any aspect of our internal lives to other users of the technology.
While there is a world of ethical consideration regarding this topic, I’d like to point to a different problem in this technological lineage — it makes a huge assumption about what consciousness is.
Neuralink assumes a strictly physicalist framework regarding consciousness.
Physicalism is the idea that any given state of consciousness, including all of perception, memory, and emotion, has a direct causal relationship with the precise formation of neuronal synapse in the brain.
In other words, a physicalist believes that if you were able to perfectly scan your brain and then map your neuronal network onto mine, I would experience precisely what you were experiencing in that moment. I would see myself in your body, with your memories, and with all of the things you were perceptually aware of in that moment.
