Forget for a second all of the obvious exploits left wide open by having a wifi chip implanted in your skull. The thing that gets me is this:
"Take emotion. Have you ever considered how hard it is to express how you feel?"
All the damn time. One reason for that is that most of the emotions aren't just inarticulate feelings. This guy, who is speaking for all of these dorks, believes that language is an optional add-on that as often gets in the way of expressing otherwise well-defined processes in the brain.
That may be the case with simple feelings like basic fear or arousal. The problem is that we also have a range of sophisticated mental states which often can't be distinguished from the concepts or words we use to formulate them. Feelings like shame or a desire to create a work of art aren't just shapeless impulses lurking fully-formed in the brain.
This is one reason that we can find it so difficult to say what we mean. We are, literally, searching for the right expression, because the correct expression plays a part in fully realizing the otherwise inarticulate feeling.
If we accept that something like this is true for most of the mental states that we consider importantly human (and I do), then I invite you to spend a moment or three reflecting on the consequences should one of these projects result in a brain-to-brain link that actually does remove language from the equation.
I don't know exactly what would result, but I wouldn't want to be one to find out.
Forget for a second all of the obvious exploits left wide open by having a wifi chip implanted in your skull. The thing that gets me is this:
"Take emotion. Have you ever considered how hard it is to express how you feel?"
All the damn time. One reason for that is that most of the emotions aren't just inarticulate feelings. This guy, who is speaking for all of these dorks, believes that language is an optional add-on that as often gets in the way of expressing otherwise well-defined processes in the brain.
That may be the case with simple feelings like basic fear or arousal. The problem is that we also have a range of sophisticated mental states which often can't be distinguished from the concepts or words we use to formulate them. Feelings like shame or a desire to create a work of art aren't just shapeless impulses lurking fully-formed in the brain.
This is one reason that we can find it so difficult to say what we mean. We are, literally, searching for the right expression, because the correct expression plays a part in fully realizing the otherwise inarticulate feeling.
If we accept that something like this is true for most of the mental states that we consider importantly human (and I do), then I invite you to spend a moment or three reflecting on the consequences should one of these projects result in a brain-to-brain link that actually does remove language from the equation.
I don't know exactly what would result, but I wouldn't want to be one to find out.