The AI pioneer Marvin Minsky once said that the mind is what the brain does. Another way of saying this is that the mind ‘supervenes’ on the brain. This leads to the recognition that any change in the mind must witness a physical change in the brain.
There can be no mental difference without a physical difference.
However, this doesn’t mean all changes in the brain will make for changes in the mind. There might be some brain activity that remains unconscious, the mind might not be the only thing the brain does. Going further, other mediums may be able to ‘perform’ the same mind too.
Think of it like music: a song supervenes on a vinyl record — if you play the same record over and over, you hear the same music, changes only happen when the record spins or is swapped for another. But the music doesn’t require that vinyl record, you could have a CD, cassette, or MP3.
Is the mind like music? If so, it leaves us with two interesting possibilities:
- copies of the same brain must result in the same mind
- the same mind may not require the same brain.
Same Brain, Same Mind
If we have two physically identical brains, we must have two correspondingly identical minds.
