I am a huge fan or Dennett and mainly side with him on such issues but that siding with is an issue of belief/faith rather than scientific certainty. I'm not sure what you mean by "not really worried about this one" since it seems like it could not be more germaine to the issue of whether cryogenics can work.
The question here is surely "what information do we need to revive my consciousness?" The answer can only realistically be "we currently have no way of knowing." I am certainly willing to believe that my consciousness would arise from the execution of any of a class of sufficiently similar algorithms in any medium. However, this is a belief not a theorem and certainly not "science".
At one extreme it is possible that in a "singularity" kind of way, any currently existing consciousness could be reconstructed in the future by backtracking its effect on the universe at some distant future point (given unimaginable computing power to do so and very precise large scale measurements). At the other extreme it is possible that your precise consciousness relies on subtle quantum effects which would be lost unrecoverably only moments after "death" and not captured by any freezing process. The cryogenic claim (that a frozen brain could be restored to a working consciousness) lies between these extremes -- we have no current scientific way of knowing.
The "killed by bad philosophy" piece is interesting (though I only skimmed it). However, it proceeds from a belief that we can only currently consider as not supported by science -- that the procedure will work (ignoring all the stuff about souls which is something of a distraction to get the reader on side by making the counter-argument appear ridiculous) -- whereas, in fact, we currently have no way of knowing.
Incidentally, all of Hofstatder and Dennett's "The Mind's I" seems to be online (probably illegally). If you've not read it you might enjoy chap 13 (seems to be bad OCR scan).
no subject
The question here is surely "what information do we need to revive my consciousness?" The answer can only realistically be "we currently have no way of knowing." I am certainly willing to believe that my consciousness would arise from the execution of any of a class of sufficiently similar algorithms in any medium. However, this is a belief not a theorem and certainly not "science".
At one extreme it is possible that in a "singularity" kind of way, any currently existing consciousness could be reconstructed in the future by backtracking its effect on the universe at some distant future point (given unimaginable computing power to do so and very precise large scale measurements). At the other extreme it is possible that your precise consciousness relies on subtle quantum effects which would be lost unrecoverably only moments after "death" and not captured by any freezing process. The cryogenic claim (that a frozen brain could be restored to a working consciousness) lies between these extremes -- we have no current scientific way of knowing.
The "killed by bad philosophy" piece is interesting (though I only skimmed it). However, it proceeds from a belief that we can only currently consider as not supported by science -- that the procedure will work (ignoring all the stuff about souls which is something of a distraction to get the reader on side by making the counter-argument appear ridiculous) -- whereas, in fact, we currently have no way of knowing.
Incidentally, all of Hofstatder and Dennett's "The Mind's I" seems to be online (probably illegally). If you've not read it you might enjoy chap 13 (seems to be bad OCR scan).
http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-13-where-am-i.html