Can we know with certainty that the same properties were preserved between 2011-brain and 2021-brain?
No, we cannot. Just as we cannot know with certainty whether a mind-upload is conscious. Just because we presume that our 2021 brain is a related conscious agent to our 2011 brain, and granting the fact that we cannot verify the properties that enabled the conscious connection between the two brains, does not mean that the properties do not exist.
It seems to me that this can’t be verified by any experiment, and thus must be cut off by the Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword.
Perhaps we presently have no way of testing whether some matter is conscious or not. This is not equivalent to saying that, in principle, the conscious state of some matter cannot be tested. We may one day make progress toward the hard problem of consciousness and be able to perform these experiments. Imagine making this argument throughout history before microscopes, telescopes, and hadron colliders. We can now sheath Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword.
I can’t say the same about any introspection-based observations that can’t be experimentally verified.
I believe this hedges on an epistemic question about whether we can have have knowledge of anything using our observations alone. I think even a skeptic would say that she has consciousness, as the fact that one is conscious may be the only thing that one can know with certainty about themself. You don’t need to verify any specific introspective observation. The act of introspection itself should be enough for someone to verify that they are conscious.
The human brain is a notoriously unreliable computing device which is known to produce many falsehoods about the world and (especially!) about itself.
This claim refers to the reliability of the human brain to verify the truth value of certain propositions or indentify specific and individuable experiences. Knowing whether oneself is conscious is not strictly a matter of verifying a proposition, nor identifying an individuable experience. It’s only about verifying whether one has any experience whatsoever, which should be possible. Whether I believe your claim to consciousness or not is a different problem.
No, we cannot. Just as we cannot know with certainty whether a mind-upload is conscious. Just because we presume that our 2021 brain is a related conscious agent to our 2011 brain, and granting the fact that we cannot verify the properties that enabled the conscious connection between the two brains, does not mean that the properties do not exist.
Perhaps we presently have no way of testing whether some matter is conscious or not. This is not equivalent to saying that, in principle, the conscious state of some matter cannot be tested. We may one day make progress toward the hard problem of consciousness and be able to perform these experiments. Imagine making this argument throughout history before microscopes, telescopes, and hadron colliders. We can now sheath Newton’s Flaming Laser Sword.
I believe this hedges on an epistemic question about whether we can have have knowledge of anything using our observations alone. I think even a skeptic would say that she has consciousness, as the fact that one is conscious may be the only thing that one can know with certainty about themself. You don’t need to verify any specific introspective observation. The act of introspection itself should be enough for someone to verify that they are conscious.
This claim refers to the reliability of the human brain to verify the truth value of certain propositions or indentify specific and individuable experiences. Knowing whether oneself is conscious is not strictly a matter of verifying a proposition, nor identifying an individuable experience. It’s only about verifying whether one has any experience whatsoever, which should be possible. Whether I believe your claim to consciousness or not is a different problem.