What If Your Visual Cortex Were Replaced? | Arnold Zuboff
Why It Matters
If correct, Zuboff’s argument undercuts materialist intuitions that consciousness depends on specific biological tissues and supports the view that artificial or nonbiological systems could instantiate genuine experience, with major implications for neuroscience, AI ethics, and mind-uploading debates.
Summary
Philosopher Arnold Zuboff argues for functionalism using a thought experiment: if a scientist replaced his right visual cortex with a device that preserved the same input-output relations, his visual experience and behavior would remain unchanged. From this he concludes that qualia—the subjective character of experience—are determined by functional role and relations to the rest of the mind, not by the material substrate. Zuboff acknowledges complexities when replacing larger or more integrated mental systems but maintains the core claim that functional equivalence suffices for preserving conscious experience. He positions this as a decisive rebuttal to views that intrinsic biological properties alone ground qualia.
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