I thought I had heard all the consciousness thought experiments but at #cshlNeuroAI @LibedinskyLab told me a new one that literally kept me up last night. This is Camilo’s idea but I’ve taken some liberties with the details. Answer the polls in the order that you read them. 1/
— Dr. Anna Schapiro (@AnnaSchapiro) April 9, 2022
It's also worth reading this excellent write up by my friend at selfawarepatterns.com. That post also links a paper, which I confess I have not read. I'm going on the Twitter thread only.
The setup is to imagine being able to record and replay exactly what all the neurons in a brain are doing while experiencing something. When we replay, is the experience reproduced? What if the neurons are separated in space and in time?
I agree with whoever originally framed this thought experiment (Camilo?) that it poses a serious problem for physicalist functionalism. But it poses no problem at all for my view.