Evolution doesn’t usually result in mechanisms that do only one thing well. Rather, survival over multiple generations depends on flexibility. Macro-evolution produces protean toolkits, from which micro-evolution selects different tools as environments change.
The brain is by far the most protean and semantically complex object we have yet encountered, and it is all about adaptability. Humans happen to have physically evolved in a particular way, but that doesn’t mean our brains are limited to inhabiting these particular bodies. If evolution is any guide, human brains should be capable of inhabiting some much larger class of possible bodies.
Some body configurations might make more sense to our human brain than others. We might not do all that well as a 1000 tentacled hydra, but other bodily features might seem perfectly natural and learnable, such as functioning wings to fly with, teleportation, seeing through walls, moving objects at a distance, and perhaps new forms of natural language, or finding our way through a four dimensional world.
We don’t exactly know what sorts of possible bodies our brains would be able to inhabit, but trying on different bodies in virtual reality might be a great way to start asking that question.
Let’s see how well a human brain handles having its head transplanted onto another equally human body before we go thinking about whether a human brain would feel at home in a non-human body.
Why?
Because it’s so close to happening and we won’t have to wait long to see the answer!
It’s already happening.
In our lab we have been pursuing both paths, and I am quite sure we are not the only ones.