are we "individuals?"

[dalovindj]

A unique transport for each person, in fact.

Just like an exact copy would be a transport for the same memories. Now neither one is unique. The same “person” has a new unique transport every moment. If a unique transport makes you an individual, then a human is not one individual over an entire life, but millions of individuals strung together creating the illusion of one consistant individual over time. It’s still an illusion.

As Eris said, that’s a malformed question if you mean physically. No one knows whether even the universe itself is individual.

Just because an answer is not known does not mean the question was not properly asked. I fail to see how the question “What is the physical minimum of body material required to remain the same individual person?” is malformed due to the fact that we don’t know “if the universe is individual” (which could mean that we don’t know if there are multiple universes or something, but I’m not sure. You are, in standard fashion, being deliberately cryptic).

But more discussion of this (improperly labeled malformed) question: What is the physical minimum of body material required to remain the same individual person?" Is an amputee the same person? Is it just the mind that makes up “you”? If I got into a car accident and my body was horribly disgigured but my brain was transplanted into another body (even a mechanical one) am I still the same person? If I want to upload myself into a machine, how much physical material must I be sure remains in existence to still be me? What if my current body had it’s memory wiped? Am I still me? Is an amnesiac the same person? What if they grafted someone elses memories onto my wiped brain? Am I me or the other person?

These questions may be unanswered given current technology, but it does not mean that the answers are unattainable, nor that the question is improper. It just means that we need more data. Silly theists, always assuing they know exactly how everything is well before all the neccesary data is in, and then calling the very questions unanswerable. Pessimistic worldview. The hardest questions are the most rewarding once answered. At least from where I’m standing. If new data could invalidate those tenants which I base my entire belief system on, I might be relunctant to search for the answers to difficult questions myself.

DaLovin’ Dj

[Drastic]

More on the sci-fi transporter bits: Algis Budrys’ Rogue Moon had an interesting take on it. The backstory there was the discovery of an alien maze of sorts up on yonder moon, where every wrong turn or action resulted in death–which made exploring the maze something that not too many were keen to volunteer. (I don’t recall why they couldn’t just send a robot on remote control through, but I’m sure there was some plot mechanism against it.)

What they ended up doing was taking a fellow (a stuntman/“extreme athlete”–no Mountain Dew even–of sorts) and running him through a transporter/duplicator rig. The “beamed” copy of him stepped right out of the receiving apparatus at the moonbase lab while the original him was kept in a sort of suspended-animation/sensory deprivation tank. The idea was, as long as the original was kept from having sensory experience of its own, he was either the same consciousness as, or had a telepathic link with the copy. Or copies, rather, as they kept making more and more of him so he could figure out the alien deathtrap maze by trial-and-error–sort of like having a save game feature.

When the final copy figured out the correct path through, the original him was taken out of sensory-deprivation, and their “link” was severed, and were two separate people again.

Interesting book, though even at the time I read it I found the sensory-deprivation angle a little dodgy to swallow.

Regarding the larger thread: seems to me to be an argument over whether or not that 2-d represenation of a wireframe cube is a solid block or a hollow pit.

[greck]

all the star trek talk appears to be variant on the same argument made earlier:
something only has to have one difference to be “different”

but this principle doesn’t hold up in other areas. the old cowboy saying goes “you can never step in the same river twice”
so why don’t they rename the river every time?

if the temperature is 1 degree lower in the outskirts of new york than in the city, do we refer to it as being cold in the suburbs and hot in the city?

or, like i said earlier, a 1 watt light bulb would certainly make it “not dark” in a room, but you’re still gonna need a flashlight.
but

the sci fi movie and show talk is fun, so i’ll play ball

Darth Vader
he was born anakin skywalker, prophesized to be the one to return balance to the force
he was corrupted, lost an arm, more machine than man in the end,
but he still fulfilled his prophecy
now, for all his individuality he was just fulfilling his role in the force.
search your heart, you know it to be true…
wasn’t there an episode of star trek where capitain picard was lost and the reconfigured from transporter memory?

and an exact copy of you isn’t you, much like identical twins aren’t each other.

[erislover]

The reason the question is malformed is that it is not clear that it can be answered, and no reasons are given as to why the answer can exist in the first place.

when analyzed physically, DJ, we run into some of these problems right from the start. At what level must the description occur in order to be complete? (Atomic? Subatomic? Molecular? Visible to the human eye? [which begs the question]) Is everything that makes me an individual able to be described in strictly physical terms? (If consciousness is an emergent property, and consciousness is part of my identity, then this question may not be able to be answered reductively.) Given that we seem to live in a very dynamic universe, is a physical definition a dynamic relationship between these physical terms or is an individual instantaneously individualistic? (That is, can everything that is which gives me identity be said to exist simultaneously at every instant of my existence? If not, then what range of time must be given for a complete definition?)

In other words, the question “What is an individual, physically?” does not actually ask the same thing depending on all sorts of things which may not even be known in principle. If consciousness is a non-reductive material effect (it emerges from systems of size but is not describable in terms of the component parts) then any physical description will fail. If there is a non-material component to making me me then obviously every physical description of me will fail.

If we take this to a nonsensical end, every description of my identity is still just a description, and must be inherently incomplete (the map is not the territory, a thread I started about 1.5 weeks ago but no one seemed to bite at it).

More later… gotsta work!

[dalovindj]

The reason the question is malformed is that it is not clear that it can be answered . . . If consciousness is a non-reductive material effect (it emerges from systems of size but is not describable in terms of the component parts) then any physical description will fail. If there is a non-material component to making me me then obviously every physical description of me will fail.

This seems to be the heart of this debate. Scientific reductionism versus the unknowable, the unseeable, in other words: the metaphysical. Just because we don’t know if reality is made up strictly of material as we know it does not invalidate the question in my opinion.

Here is an interesting page which describes the two positions fairly well. The author of that page is ultimately against the reductionist view, but does a pretty good job describing it:

The central self that makes choices and then acts upon them is fundamentally a creationist notion, which reductionists ridicule as “the ghost in the machine.” Selfish genes would produce not a free-acting self, but rather a set of mental reactions that compete with each other in the brain before a winner emerges to produce a bodily reaction that serves the overall interests of the genes.

Interesting stuff. Dawkins and Blackmore are a couple of the most interesting thinkers of our time. Howard Bloom is pretty impressive as well. He has taken memetics to new levels of understanding. Check him out.

Anyway, this issue is not simply a thought exercise which amounts to no more then mental masturbation. As we speak scientists are making great strides with implants and other forms of human augmentation. Much study goes on in this department. The future will see the line between man and machine blur. Some of the great futurists of our time suspect that we may be able to upload ourselves into machines. This is something humanity will have to deal with.

Most would agree that if you copy me and upload that info into a machine that is not me. It is a copy of me. So from a practical perspective we need to understand what exactly has to be maintained as far as a physical body to still be one’s self. If there is a metaphysical “soul” we still must learn where it physically resides (or what the least amount of material that will keep a soul around is). Otherwise, we may kill ourselves in the upload.

Read this interview, eris. I think it addresses the arguments you are making pretty well:

This in turn leads us to regard these as though they were “things” with no structures to analyze. I think this is what leads so many of us to the dogma of dualism-the idea that ‘subjective’ matters lie in a realm that experimental science can never reach. Many philosophers, even today, hold the strange idea that there could be a machine that works and behaves just like a brain, yet does not experience consciousness. If that were the case, then this would imply that subjective feelings do not result from the processes that occur inside brains. Therefore (so the argument goes) a feeling must be a nonphysical thing that has no causes or consequences. Surely, no such thing could ever be explained!

The first thing wrong with this “argument” is that it starts by assuming what it’s trying to prove. Could there actually exist a machine that is physically just like a person, but has none of that person’s feelings? “Surely so,” some philosophers say. “Given that feelings cannot not be physically detected, then it is ‘logically possible’ that some people have none.”

The entire article is quite interesing as is that whole website. Kurzweil is another great thinker and also a skilled inventor. Gotta run now, but I love this subject so I’ll be back . . .

DaLovin’ Dj

[Latro]

*Originally posted by Drastic *
When the final copy figured out the correct path through, the original him was taken out of sensory-deprivation, and their “link” was severed, and were two separate people again.

Cool !
So what happened to that final copy?
Must be hell to have all the memories and know that they are not really yours.

[Drastic]

Latro:
So what happened to that final copy?

As I recall, the final copy got out of the death maze unscathed, leading (I think) the project research lead through with the correct path of actions. (It was a rather surreal route, involving things like needing to stop in the middle of this room and make sure your hands were held at exactly shoulder height and then running after waiting five seconds, or dying, and that sort of thing. Past heaps of his past dead bodies en route.)

I’m pretty sure his life after that was left unresolved, as was the mystery of the alien maze itself–the only thing they’d learned thorugh the whole travail was how to navigate it safely, but not a single why or what, no inkling of purpose.

I’m absolutely certain there were all sorts of nuances of deeper questions and so forth going on beyond that were sort of eluding me sixteen odd years past.

[Liberal]

DJ wrote:

Just because we don’t know if reality is made up strictly of material as we know it does not invalidate the question in my opinion.

But it was the question that itself precluded nonmaterialism by insisting that the individual be specifically material.

[erislover]

I have read Bloom’s The Lucifer Principle, though it was many years ago so I do not recall much of the arguments anymore, other than a reliance on a sort of intuitive meme theory, some reference to superorganisms (or their potential), and a strong reliance on viewing man from a strictly biological perspective (almost necessary when dealing with memes, I think).

As interesting as memes are to me, I have unfortunately never read anything else about them by other authors. My personal studies (I’m not a student at any place or for anything other than my own enjoyment) have lead me rather to epistemology, though of course most disciplines cross at the philosophy of mind (not surprisingly).

The issue of non-reductive descriptions of consciousness (and hence identity since, presumably, my consciousness is part of my identity) feels suspiciously like sweeping the problem under the rug. In the case of Hilbert’s Program at least Church, Turing, and Gödel demonstrated that it was impossible in the general case; philosophers of mind don’t quite have that same footing.

So from a practical perspective we need to understand what exactly has to be maintained as far as a physical body to still be one’s self.

It gets to be a huge mess here, doesn’t it? —Because I feel like we would start resorting to discussing what is essential to make me me. As a matter of personal taste I reject most descriptions that apply a metaphysical status to “essentials” or “properties” or whatever someone wants to call them; in the case of identity this would be the definitive list of instantiated universals which serves to accurately detail me.

I think such a list is impossible, though I don’t think that is because consciousness is an emergent or non-reductive phenomenon. (It still might be, of course.)

For another view on the philosophy of mind you might like to check out Dennett. He takes a sort of behaviorist/functionalist perspective, but not quite, and also deals with the act of competition within “a mind” that seems to take place. In Consciousness Explained he attempts to remove the compulsion (drawing on Wittgenstein) to name my consciousness a thing. He wouldn’t be the first philosopher to do so.

I enjoyed Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines very much.

As far as the article, I disagree with Minsky quite a bit on his assertion that philosopher’s zombies beg the question. The short paper—somewhat infamous—called “What Mary Didn’t Know” makes a pretty strong case for the existence of qualia, and I think Wittgenstein made a pretty strong case for the irreducibility of the description of qualia. The union of these two perspectives coupled with somewhat strongly interpreted rules of inference make the philosopher’s zombie indetectable among a sea of conscious men. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of philosopher that asserted there really were these zombies, but rather that they demonstrate (sort of like Searle’s Chinese Room or Box or whatever) that it really isn’t logically forbidden on empiricism alone. That’s my estimation of the arguments, anyway. Minsky in that article sounds a lot like a proponent of strong AI.

It is the act of description which I find to be insurmountable for several reasons which are likely too involved to detail in a post or three. The way we learn language (and hence the limit of which we are able to describe) seems to forbid any description of qualia (what it is “like” to see red or “how” this coffee tastes).

IMO a natural science view of the operation of the mind will never make it into common parlance; the theory will predict things successfully, but it will be understood via analogy (consider the perplexity quantum physics offers in terms of “what is going on” at the subatomic level, for instance). And so we won’t ever escape what Minsky is naming “suitcase” concepts.

This post is much longer than I intended. :eek:

[AncientHumanoid]

Did you realize that even if you are a ‘one in a million’ kind of guy, in a world of six billion people there are sixty thousand just like you?