Consciousness, brains and the replica problem

TL;DR

This paper explores the relationship between brain activity and consciousness, demonstrating through a thought experiment that transient shutdowns cause irreversible loss of conscious experience, raising questions about the continuity of self.

Contribution

It introduces a thought experiment highlighting the implications of non-unique brain-conscious mappings for consciousness continuity during shutdowns.

Findings

Transient brain shutdowns lead to the irreversible loss of consciousness.

Multiple conscious states can correspond to the same neural hardware.

Continuity of consciousness is essential for personal identity.

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.