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Views on Death and Copying

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Fri, 2011-01-07 16:26

Lowsow

Views on Death and Copying

The point sometimes come up in the forum that alpha forks may not want to be re-intergrated for fear of death or that farcasting is fatal to the user and mearly produces a copy of the self at the destination (or, for that matter, using a Star Trek transporter). These seem to me to be matters of perspective. I thought I'd start a thread to list some of the possible views. I've marked each view with an M for materialist (consiousness is in the brain) or D for dualist (the consious part of the mind, aka the soul, is independent of the brain matter). Any help creating new ideas, or tidying up these ideas, would be appreciated. This article could be helpful to understanding some views on uplifts and forks. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Zombie Brain-based M If my brain is intact and stays intact I stay alive. A copy of me isn't me at all, and if my brain gets overwritten I'm still me, just different afterwards. If I re-merge a fork the fork dies and it's memories are sent to my brain. Farcasting kills me and makes a copy. Brains linked to souls D As the above, because I have a soul attached to my body. If I alpha-fork the fork is ensoulled, and if I re-merge an alpha-fork I'm commiting murder. Beta-forks are also ensoulled, but making one is like deliberately brain damaging a child. I'm unsure whether AGIs are ensoulled as well, and for uplifts there's a cut-off point - somewhere. Consiouness-based M I don't worry that the universe might be destroyed and re-created every instant, meaning that I'm killed and replaced by a copy every instant, because If I'm consiousness I clearly haven't died. If I fork myself it isn't meaningful to say which has the original presonality, just which one inhabits the original body. Merging with a fork (or even someone else) doesn't kill them or you, you both continue with one consiousness. Farcasting doesn't kill me (if I didn't delete the original copy then remeber that I think it's no different from having a fork at the destination point and the original at the origin, or having the original at the destination point and the fork at the origing). This is NOT a dualistic idea, it simply supposes that the thoughts count, not the medium they occur in (much as a sound wave can remain the same wave when moving through different chambers and including different molecules). Sharing the soul after birth D I was ensoulled at birth, and I share the soul with any forks of myself. That means we share responsibility for each others actions - if I kill someone in AF10 the alpha fork I made in BF10 also deserves punishment. Farcasting doesn't kill me because my soul is passed along. Merging with forks is fine because we only had 1 soul between us anyway. I'm not sure about AGIs and uplifts. Souls for the born only D Only people born humans (or possibly flats only) have souls. Forks, AGIs and uplifts are philosophical zombies. I may believe that farcasting is wrong and replaces me with a zombie or I may believe that farcasting is fine and moves my soul along, depending on my sect or personal beliefs. Farcasting an alpha fork without destroying the original is definately wrong though.

Fri, 2011-01-07 20:24

Ataraxzy

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Consciousness, that nearly ineffable attribute that seems to require the ability to reflect upon the nature of the self. A good point to add would be that consciousness is transitory even today. Ever personally been knocked unconscious or know someone who has? That's a break in consciousness. Every time you go to sleep you lose consciousness. For a complete philosophical look at consciousness [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett]Daniel Dennett[/url] is a great place to start. Douglas Hofstadter's [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach]Godel, Escher, Bach[/url] is incredible for describing the details of some of the attributes of consciousness - there's a reason this book won the Pulitzer. As for me, my expectation is that the ability to transfer brain states between organic and inorganic matter is pretty much going to put an end to dualism for the general public, much like it has been left behind by physical scientists and philosophers today.

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Sat, 2011-01-08 00:11

jsnead

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Given that 95+% of transhumanity left Earth as infomorph refugees, I'm guessing this argument is mostly dead except among the Jovians. OTOH, the argument that I can see being fairly hot is if restoring someone from a backup is meaningful to the individual. From one PoV, since there is no continuity of consciousness between the ego that died and the backup that was restored, the original ego is dead and the new one is a copy whose existence may make other people happy, but is irrelevant to the dead original. OTOH, others may approach this as seeing the restored copy as simply the same person with some memory loss. I'd guess that most people who hold the first opinion and who can afford to do so have emergency farcasters, while people who hold the second won't worry about this item nearly as much.

Sat, 2011-01-08 06:59

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

The most popular argument in EP seems to be that of continuity. My 'soul' is the pattern of information in my brain. As long as that pattern of information maintains cohesion and continuity, my soul continues, regardless as to its format. Creating an alpha fork is creating a second soul, and as long as their unique information is properly integrated, their soul is also integrated when remerged. A beta fork is a... sorta-different soul (grey area). A major question is what defines 'continuity', specifically how fast is too fast to maintain it. If I die and someone pops my stack in a new morph, who is that? It's not the me that died. Those are different people. But what if I die in my sleep? At the time my consciousness was not working. If during an egocast, the original fails to delete properly, what do you do? Egocast him over to me and merge us? Kill him? (BTW, great way for an egocast facility to make a little extra cred when times are slow.) And of course, the whole thing can't be proven. It could be possible that while I, the guy who is on the receiving end of an egocast, remember being on both ends and maintain continuity, it could be that the guy on the sending end is watching in horror as parts of his consciousness and ego are sheared off, and he just can't express it because his actions are over-ridden by a dominant ego.

Sat, 2011-01-08 14:06

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

I follow the continuity argument, but I'm also a dualist. I don't claim to know anything about the soul, but I'm of the opinion that, given that memories, personality, etc. have no roll in continuity (you can easily change both without ever getting rid of the entity involved; case in point, humans do it just by experiencing things), there must be something else to defining an entity.

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Sat, 2011-01-08 14:23

Ataraxzy

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
I'm of the opinion that, given that memories, personality, etc. have no roll in continuity (you can easily change both without ever getting rid of the entity involved; case in point, humans do it just by experiencing things), there must be something else to defining an entity.

I would love to see that statement expanded into an argument.

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Sat, 2011-01-08 18:38

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

I'm not sure what else there is to say, really. A person cannot be defined by their memories or personality, as these qualities are ultimately transitory and change greatly throughout a person's life, without the person ever being defined as a separate being to the one they were before; I am very different to the me that was in grade school, but I am most certainly the same entity. An amnesic can totally lose their memory, and a person who suffers brain damage can have their entire personality rewritten, but they are without a doubt the same entity. This begs the question that, if it is not memory or personality that defines an entity, what is it? The answer is its continuity, which begs the question of why the continuity is special. Why does the continuity matter? When the only apparent components to a person (the data that forms the mind) can be changed and you're still left with the same entity, does it not beg the question as to what defines an entity? This leads me to posit that there is something else here; a piece of the puzzle that we're missing. I do not posit on what it is, just that we know it by its absence. I do not deny that our ability to think, feel, experience, etc. is derived from the brain and material processes, but our, for lack of a better word, entity-hood is granted by something we've yet to discover in the brain's processes. I can't comment on how it's affected by backups or forking or anything else, mostly because I know nothing about it, but I would still argue that it's there.

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Sun, 2011-01-09 07:41

Lowsow

Re: Views on Death and Copying

True, that's what I wanted to suggest here. What kind of continuity is it that counts - body, identity, consiousness or 'soul'. Most people in eclipse phase would say consiousness, that they can be transfered between mediums. On the other hand I can imagine some interesting things coming out of different ideas. Someone leaves their partner after they're uploaded evacuating earth, because the partner doesn't count. A guaxani-made alpha fork of a martian plutocrat demands half of his wealth - why should he live in poverty just because he was kidnapped? A jovian pc joins his teammates in forking himself for the teamwork bonus, but soon realises his mistake as his fork, unlike his teammates, is terrified of 'death my reintergration'.

Sun, 2011-01-09 12:43

Rhyx

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Quote:
What kind of continuity is it that counts - body, identity, consiousness or 'soul'.

Yep well show me a machine that can quantify the soul. To me it's always sounded like people that bring up souls were always the type to try to make themselves feel better about death. If you ask me personally the soul is nothing but the expression of humanity trying to come to terms with nothingness. We've been Kidnapped by death for so long that we have simply created a "Stockholm syndrome" relationship with it where we now think that the whole dying part is somehow part of our identity that we should simply accept it. If not something "aweful" would happen if we were to slip the binds of death: we would become undead monsters that prey on others or we would violate the laws on nature, that being deathless somehow makes us monsters, that our tiny brains can't cope with eternity. Personally I always though that the "philosophical zombie" idea was basically a form of mental masturbation. If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck and tastes like duck when you eat it, it's probably duck, and if it's not then it's not important because it can substitute duck and might as well be one. To me, ideas like that are made for one thing only, so that tenured professors can keep on putting out articles until they become ancient and eventually retire, usually posthumously. Until someone can show me a soul-o-meter the idea of having the soul as a basis for any kind of conclusion is a waste of time and effort. But, humans want to be somehow special, somehow something more than the animals that surround them, they want a divine spark when it's pretty much just an act of hubris. If anything we need to uplift our own species before uplifting anything else. The sooner we realize, as a whole species, that we're a bunch of selfish screaming monkeys the sooner we can actually understand how to move forward from that and truly evolve.

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Sun, 2011-01-09 17:26

#10

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

I never said the soul is immortal, survives death, or is in any way indestructible. I merely argue that some quintessential element of a being, defined neither by their memories or personality, exists and that we have yet to find what it is. I entirely agree with you that death is not, and need not be, a part of our existence, and that the pursuit of discarding it is hardly a pathway to evil. That trope annoys me greatly. However, you're disregarding that there is something quintessential here that we're missing somehow. I'm not sure how we're missing it, but there's something that the continuity problem clearly addresses. An entity is not destroyed along as its continuity is maintained but what is the continuity maintaining? It's not the substance that supports it, or the personality or memories that form the consciousness; both of those change constantly, like the Ship of Theseus. So what is it maintaining if not these things? I repeat that I'm not arguing as to any predetermined nature of the soul; merely that all the other elements of consciousness that make up a p-zombie are insufficient to explain the reason continuity is so important.

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Mon, 2011-01-10 00:15

#11

Rhyx

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Quote:
I entirely agree with you that death is not, and need not be, a part of our existence, and that the pursuit of discarding it is hardly a pathway to evil. That trope annoys me greatly.

Yeah well it's just how perseverant that trope is that annoys me, as if immortality was a forbidden thing and the we needed to die to have a purpose for existing in the first place. As for the rest I wasn't challenging your view specifically I was just giving my 2 cents worth.

Quote:
An entity is not destroyed along as its continuity is maintained but what is the continuity maintaining?

You know in a half comical but kinda straight faced way, I think the answer to that is that maintaining continuity also maintains our suspicion of disbelief. I know it sounds weird but if we believed that we could replicate and create life and purpose as banally as uploading a program there's this little thing that says that continuity itself would lose it's meaning. We are used to seeing our life and the lives of others and a kind of narrative with a clear beginning , middle and end and that continuity helps to thread our inner narrative and those of others together in order for everything to fit. Things that detract from this narrative scheme sound false to us, it sounds hollow just like if someone you've just met says you're their best friend. Deep down I think it's because that it's a question that it seems like this continuity is a result of causality whereas witnessing someone's end and having them come back with lack (missing memories and "amnesia" of events since the last backup) somehow makes less narrative sense even to us as real human being and not just the game masters. In short someone's story has ended and yet they return and somewhere due to causality you are expecting answers because they have returned but they didn't really return so there's a base unsatisfactory missing thing. That's my view anyway.

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Mon, 2011-01-10 13:38

#12

Lowsow

Continuity

Funny - it didn't occur to me that people might mean continuity in different ways. When I used the word I meant continuity from one instant to the next, between sleeping and waking, from one event to another rather than the idea of someones ego being preserved by insurance and forks. But now you've shown me there's quite a few ways to see it. How do you think these attitudes might effect Eclipse Phase games, and affect the lives of npcs?

Mon, 2011-01-10 15:08

#13

Nathan Brazil Nathan Brazil's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

The old B5 game had a supplement where Vorlons proved that there were immortal indestructible souls, but they were constucts of space time. If a Vorlon was killed, he was embodied again into another physical shell Hmm..sounds like this game. On the other hand, only they could make these spacetime latices, so that meant they were the only ones who had souls ;-'

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Wed, 2011-01-12 16:56

#14

Lowsow

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Irobot][quote wrote:
Detective Del Spooner:Can a robot write a symphony? Can a robot turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece? Sonny: Can you?

Rhyx][quote wrote:
Yep well show me a machine that can quantify the soul.

Show me a human who can quantify the soul. Every part of the brain has a corresponding function. A neurosurgeon can make you laugh, or cry, or forgetful. He can't cut out your soul. But I'm not a dualist, so it's a rather moot point to me. An AGI should have a soul, if such a thing exists. Is an AGI still a machine? Are AGIs not built to think like humans ensoulled? They mightn't know emotions or thoughts as we know them, so should we describe them as 'thinking'?

Wed, 2011-01-12 17:46

#15

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

A soul is a quality that is difficult to quantify and is the reason for the p-zombie problem. I have as much assurance that a human being has a soul as an AGI, though, so it's a moot question; there's no reason to assume either do (as you are not them, if "they" exist), really, but they are still conscious beings regardless and deserving of respect regardless. That's the problem with souls: We don't have a "soul detector" yet.

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Sun, 2011-01-16 08:18

#16

Saerain

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Lowsow wrote:
Brain-based M If my brain is intact and stays intact I stay alive. A copy of me isn't me at all, and if my brain gets overwritten I'm still me, just different afterwards. If I re-merge a fork the fork dies and it's memories are sent to my brain. Farcasting kills me and makes a copy.

This falls apart even today with the knowledge that not one atom currently composing your brain will still be a part of your brain in seven years. We're constantly discarding and taking on new matter—we very slowly resleeve throughout our lives. We [i]have[/i] to consider continuity of consciousness to be an informational issue, probably down to the quantum mechanical information—which, although still mutable, cannot be copied, only moved. Which would have interesting implications for EP. Unlike with classical information, quantum information cannot be [i]exactly[/i] copied (for spooky reasons we don't understand) unless the source particles first (or simultaneously) lose that information. It's like a cosmic DRM. This answers all of the questions in EP about continuity of consciousness that come to my mind: egocasting probably doesn't destroy you, whilst forking yourself and killing the pre-forked self probably does—as do backups, unless they're encrypted in such a way that the backed-up quantum state is not constructed until the backup is decrypted, as long as your ego isn't already active elsewhere. Transhumanity doesn't seem to have that kind of mastery of quantum mechanics in AF 10, though, considering the expense of farcasting. By the way, I can see this invigorating the hippies of the EPverse into arguing that everything has a soul—because, indeed, everything has a quantum state, and in the case of the brain, it is probable that the quantum state fulfills the functions historically attributed to souls. One can imagine this taking religions like Jainism to a whole new level of absurdity as millions of people miss the point that consciousness is an emergent property of quantum mechanics in an already complex computational system—something that isn't likely to apply to a bacterium. Or a hydrogen atom.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
I'm not sure what else there is to say, really. A person cannot be defined by their memories or personality, as these qualities are ultimately transitory and change greatly throughout a person's life, without the person ever being defined as a separate being to the one they were before; I am very different to the me that was in grade school, but I am most certainly the same entity. An amnesic can totally lose their memory, and a person who suffers brain damage can have their entire personality rewritten, but they are without a doubt the same entity.

What do you mean by 'the same entity'? I would think it most accurate to say that you are in the state you are now, and you have memories of many previous states because that's what synapses do. Asking whether or not you are 'the same entity' as the states of which you have memory seems incoherent to me. I mean, what would it mean to wake up tomorrow and [i]not[/i] be 'the same entity'?

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
This begs the question that, if it is not memory or personality that defines an entity, what is it? The answer is its continuity, which begs the question of why the continuity is special. Why does the continuity matter? When the only apparent components to a person (the data that forms the mind) can be changed and you're still left with the same entity, does it not beg the question as to what defines an entity?

I don't understand how being able to accumulate data rules out consciousness being informational, for you. I mean, that [i]is[/i] continuity. That's what you're talking about when you use that word: a chronological chain of events, i.e. the history of changing information.

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
This leads me to posit that there is something else here; a piece of the puzzle that we're missing. I do not posit on what it is, just that we know it by its absence.

Really? What does its absence look like?

Axel the Chimeric wrote:
I do not deny that our ability to think, feel, experience, etc. is derived from the brain and material processes, but our, for lack of a better word, entity-hood is granted by something we've yet to discover in the brain's processes. I can't comment on how it's affected by backups or forking or anything else, mostly because I know nothing about it, but I would still argue that it's there.

Wait, so it [i]is[/i] a part of the brain's processes? I'm misunderstanding either this or the rest of your post. :~

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Sun, 2011-01-16 08:49

#17

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Saerain wrote:
What do you mean by 'the same entity'? I would think it most accurate to say that you are in the state you are now, and you have memories of many previous states because that's what synapses do. Asking whether or not you are 'the same entity' as the states of which you have memory seems incoherent to me. I mean, what would it mean to wake up tomorrow and [i]not[/i] be 'the same entity'?

Well, by definition, you couldn't. You are you; you are that entity. Changing any other aspect of yourself is not going to get rid of it. I'm not talking about the characteristics that define you (memories, personality, etc.) but the quintessential "you" that makes p-zombies a viable question to begin with.

Saerain wrote:
I don't understand how being able to accumulate data rules out consciousness being informational, for you. I mean, that [i]is[/i] continuity. That's what you're talking about when you use that word: a chronological chain of events, i.e. the history of changing information.

I'm not arguing that the processes that make up our mind (thoughts, emotions, etc.) do not arise entirely from physical events. Destroy these things, you destroy it. My point is that you can change these things and still have it be the same entity within as long as you maintain continuity. My point is to ask why continuity is so special when, from all present facts, there is no viable difference between a person and a perfect copy of them. Clearly they are not the same entity... But why not?

Saerain wrote:
Really? What does its absence look like?

To all the rest of the world? Like a normal person. This is what's known as the p-zombie. Fundamentally, they're no different from you or I, but lack the quintessential "you" that I mentioned before. They would have no need to worry about personal continuity, because there would be nothing they'd need to try and save.

Saerain wrote:
Wait, so it [i]is[/i] a part of the brain's processes? I'm misunderstanding either this or the rest of your post. :~

All I've ever asserted here is that the problem of personal continuity raises a serious question. We know that the core of a person does not lie in the aspects of their mind (thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories) or even the physical material of it, both of which change with time. They are transitory in the long-run, and the person I am now is not the same person I was ten years ago. However, the fact that I am the same entity while not being the same person suggests that there is a defining quality to myself that we're somehow missing here. Anything beyond that, I cannot posit, and I merely call this quality a soul out of convenience.

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Wed, 2011-01-19 15:36

#18

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Lowsow wrote:
Show me a human who can quantify the soul. Every part of the brain has a corresponding function. A neurosurgeon can make you laugh, or cry, or forgetful. He can't cut out your soul.

A few people who underwent prefrontal lobotomies have made the opposite claim, albeit probably in a poetic mode rather than a literal one.

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Thu, 2011-01-20 10:43

#19

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

The Doctor wrote:
Lowsow wrote:
Show me a human who can quantify the soul. Every part of the brain has a corresponding function. A neurosurgeon can make you laugh, or cry, or forgetful. He can't cut out your soul.
A few people who underwent prefrontal lobotomies have made the opposite claim, albeit probably in a poetic mode rather than a literal one.

Yup. Oliver Sachs remarks in "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" that while one patient with severe anterograde amnesia due to Korsakoff syndrome appeared to be quite soulful despite his impairment:

Quote:
One tended to speak of him, instinctively, as a spiritual casualty—a ‘lost soul’: was it possible that he had really been ‘de-souled’ by a disease? ‘Do you think he has a soul?’ I once asked the Sisters. They were outraged by my question, but could see why I asked it. ‘Watch Jimmie in chapel,’ they said, ‘and judge for yourself.’

another patient did not: [quote] ‘But George died nineteen years ago!’ said Bob, aghast. ‘Aye, George is always the joker!’ William quipped, apparently ignoring, or indifferent to, Bob’s comment, and went on blathering of George in his excited, dead way, insensitive to truth, to reality, to propriety, to everything—insensitive too to the manifest distress of the living brother before him. It was this which convinced me, above everything, that there was some ultimate and total loss of inner reality, of feeling and meaning, of soul, in William—and led me to ask the Sisters, as I had asked them of Jimmie G. ‘Do you think William has a soul? Or has he been pithed, scooped-out, de-souled, by disease?’ This time, however, they looked worried by my question, as if something of the sort were already in their minds: they could not say ‘Judge for yourself. See Willie in Chapel’, because his wisecracking, his confabulations continued even there. There is an utter pathos, a sad sense of lostness, with Jimmie G. which one does not feel, or feel directly, with the effervescent Mr Thompson. Jimmie has moods, and a sort of brooding (or, at least, yearning) sadness, a depth, a soul, which does not seem to be present in Mr Thompson. Doubtless, as the Sisters said, he had a soul, an immortal soul, in the theological sense; could be seen, and loved, as an individual by the Almighty; but, they agreed, something very disquieting had happened to him, to his spirit, his character, in the ordinary, human sense. It is because Jimmie is ‘lost’ that he can be redeemed or found, at least for a while, in the mode of a genuine emotional relation. Jimmie is in despair, a quiet despair (to use or adapt Kierkegaard’s term), and therefore he has the possibility of salvation, of touching base, the ground of reality, the feeling and meaning he has lost, but still recognizes, still yearns for ... But for William—with his brilliant, brassy surface, the unending joke which he substitutes for the world (which if it covers over a desperation, is a desperation he does not feel); for William with his manifest indifference to relation and reality caught in an unending verbosity, there may be nothing ‘redeeming’ at all—his confabulations, his apparitions, his frantic search for meanings, being the ultimate barrier to any meaning. [quote]

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Thu, 2011-01-20 12:47

#20

Lowsow

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Saerain wrote:
Lowsow wrote:
Brain-based M If my brain is intact and stays intact I stay alive. A copy of me isn't me at all, and if my brain gets overwritten I'm still me, just different afterwards. If I re-merge a fork the fork dies and it's memories are sent to my brain. Farcasting kills me and makes a copy.
This falls apart even today with the knowledge that not one atom currently composing your brain will still be a part of your brain in seven years. We're constantly discarding and taking on new matter—we very slowly resleeve throughout our lives.

I agree. On the other hand, a 'Brain-based materialist' could argue that the individual atoms in the brain are irrelevant anyway, and too small to have any effect. They could argue that some quality of the brain, such as structure or 'something' is preserved over time even as the atoms are replaced.

Saerain wrote:
Axel the Chimeric wrote:
I do not deny that our ability to think, feel, experience, etc. is derived from the brain and material processes, but our, for lack of a better word, entity-hood is granted by something we've yet to discover in the brain's processes. I can't comment on how it's affected by backups or forking or anything else, mostly because I know nothing about it, but I would still argue that it's there.
Wait, so it [i]is[/i] a part of the brain's processes? I'm misunderstanding either this or the rest of your post. :~

Daniel Dennet argues that - using a allegory of someone watching a movie inside their head, that person then needing another observer to understand what their 'consiousness eyes' see, and so on forever - consiousness must be inherent to the processes of the brain. Of course, that's not an answer for the question of why consiousness arises.

Thu, 2011-01-20 13:51

#21

Axel the Chimeric Axel the Chimeric's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Lowsow wrote:
They could argue that some quality of the brain, such as structure or 'something' is preserved over time even as the atoms are replaced.

Doesn't this just beg the question as to why that is relevant, and what there is to preserve?

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Thu, 2011-02-17 05:05

#22

Decivre

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Lowsow wrote:
I agree. On the other hand, a 'Brain-based materialist' could argue that the individual atoms in the brain are irrelevant anyway, and too small to have any effect. They could argue that some quality of the brain, such as structure or 'something' is preserved over time even as the atoms are replaced.

Which then potentially invalidates your previous statement. If structure is the key element that defines a given individual, then a copy which retains the same structure is, by your definition, the same being.

Lowsow wrote:
Daniel Dennet argues that - using a allegory of someone watching a movie inside their head, that person then needing another observer to understand what their 'consiousness eyes' see, and so on forever - consiousness must be inherent to the processes of the brain. Of course, that's not an answer for the question of why consiousness arises.

But a lack of answer does not immediately make the answer "soul". If what we are doing is defining the soul through an argument of ignorance, then we are basically acknowledging that all future discoveries about the sense of consciousness chip away at whatever definition of soul is left. If that's the case, why even assume there is a soul there until we discover one?

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Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]

Thu, 2011-02-17 08:39

#23

Yerameyahu Yerameyahu's picture

Re: Views on Death and Copying

Why, indeed?