Suppose that Phineas Gauge, in his railroad tie accident, had had his entire visual cortex cleanly blown out of his head. Would Phineas still have been a conscious being? The answer seems to clearly be “yes.” Suppose now that Phineas had then been given an artificial visual cortex (AVC) to replace his destroyed biological visual cortex (BVC). Suppose further that the AVC was nothing like a BVC in any way except for the fact that where it connected up with the rest of Phineas’ brain, and only there, the AVC was functionally equivalent to Phineas’ previous BVC. In other words, the AVC and the BVC carried out the exact same functions, but by employing entirely different mechanisms such that the AVC gives the exact same output to some input as Phineas’ original BVC did in response to the exact same input. (more…)
