Chapter 16 3.6 Without a body, there is no consciousness

We humans think that we are closer to robot "walkers" than tiny ants, and this innate idea has caused "walkers" to have trouble with bloated bodies.Since medicine confirmed the important role of the brain in physiology, the mind has replaced the heart as the center of our modern identity. Human beings in the 20th century depend entirely on their brains to exist, so the robots we make also depend on their brains.Scientists—and mortals alike—believe that the living beings themselves are rooted in that little area behind the eyeballs, just under the forehead.We live here.By 1968, brain death had become the basis for judging clinical death.Without consciousness there is no life.

Powerful computers fuel fantasies of disembodied intelligence.We've all seen the formulation that consciousness can inhabit a brain submerged in a vessel.Modern man says, with science, I can live on without a body but in the form of a brain.Since the computer itself is a huge mind, I can survive in the computer.In the same way, computer consciousness can easily use my body. The transferability of consciousness has become a widely held dogma in the canon of American popular culture.People claim that consciousness transfer is a brilliant idea, an amazing idea, but no one thinks it's a wrong idea.Modern people believe that consciousness can be poured back and forth between containers.As a result, a large number of similar science fiction works such as "Terminator 2" and "Frankenstein" were born.

Regardless of the outcome, in reality we are neither mind-centered nor consciousness-centered.Even if it were true, our consciousness has no center, no "I".Our bodies are also not centripetal.Body and consciousness straddle the imaginary boundaries between each other, blurring the distinctions between them.They are all composed of a large number of sub-level substances. We know that the eye is more like the brain than a camera.Eyeballs have the massive processing power of a supercomputer.Much of our visual perception occurs as soon as light hits the thin retina, long before the central brain forms the scene.Our spinal cord isn't just a bundle of telephone wires carrying commands from our brains, it's thinking too.When we put our hands on our hearts (rather than our foreheads) and pledge our actions, we are closer to the truth of the matter.Our emotions roam through a soup of hormones and peptides that runs through our bodies.A hormone secreted by the pituitary gland that releases loving thoughts (and maybe some cute thoughts).These hormones also process information.Scientists have recently deduced that our immune system is an amazing parallel distributed perception machine that recognizes and remembers millions of different molecules.

For Brooks, body means simplicity and clarity.Intelligence without a body and beings beyond form are illusory phantoms that give people an illusion.Complex systems like consciousness and life can only be built by creating real objects in the real world.Only by creating robots that have to live in real bodies and let them fend for themselves day in and day out will it be possible to discover artificial intelligence or true intelligence.Of course, if you intend to prevent the emergence of consciousness, then just separate it from the body.