Any time you sleep, are knocked unconcious, or the like, your conciousness is interupted. Every time you return from it, your conciousness is “reinstated.” Basically, conciousness is a current state, not a continuing attribute. Your conciousness now is not the same one you had three seconds ago. I’d consider it like the output on my monitor, my desktop. Every time I shut off my computer, the image on my monitor goes away. When I start it up again, it loads up my desktop again. The computer processes it, and shows it. Is it really a new desktop each time I start up my computer? Even if I swap out monitors, video cards, or CPUs for identical ones, it’s still the same desktop. There isn’t any percievable difference, even though you could swap out every single piece of hardware (Copying over data exactly for those parts that matter for it), and still get the same destop displayed.
But, while we could identify it as the “same” desktop we had before, we also know that it’s being generated each and every time the computer starts up. I think it’s the same way with conciousness; it’s generated “on the fly.”
one of my points was that at any given moment you MAY be someone completely different from who you were the previous moment. or at least who your meat was.
if your “consciousness” was taken from your body and put into a different medium, and it still thought it was you, but reconized its new lack of body, would most people not still consider it you? wouldn’t it literally be what most people would define as you? what’s the difference between that and copying something over and destroying the original? this “new” consciousness would certainly think it was you.
I’m still fascinated with this subject. So I’ve searched the web for anything related. If anyone has the time to check it out, this comes pretty close to what we’ve been discussing : -> http://world.std.com/~twc/death.htm
Ramanujan, your participation is especially appreciated here. If I may ask you to re-read the thread, you will see that I am (admittedly rather clumsily) trying to address the very point you made.
To my doppelganger and to everyone else, transfer has occured, or a situation indistinguishable from such.
However, the important viewpoint here is that of the original. There is a consciousness which goes to sleep and wakes up elsewhere: the copy.
But surely to the original me, someone else is waking up while I am asleep? I wake up because the atoms comprising my brain are (largely) identical.
You are not an entirely new person, you are very slightly different - this is the nature of the physical continuity we are talking about.
Again, the word “souls” is poorly chosen. Substitute “conscious experiences” and I would agree with the above entirely.
Again, the s word clutters things somewhat - “string of concsious experiences” is much better. Now, having defined a “person” as such a string, can we say that a new person is born after the coma? I do not believe so: the string of experiences was merely punctured temporarily, as happens every night. You are right to say that our consciousness does not exist when we are rendered unconscious.
I actually believe you nailed the whole thing in your OP but subsequently got yourself a little confused with your syntax. Do not buy shares in “LifeSava” ™ - carry your consciousness around on your keyring in case you’re whomped by a SUV! since it would only be for everyone else’s benefit, your own meat having been mushed beyond repair (barring miracles in cryonics and nanotechnology and perhaps even violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics).
I’ve been avoiding this thread because of the word Schwartzenegger I’m afraid… haven’t seen this movie, but as you say the philosophy is interesting.
A couple of my amateurish stories about *copying *here The Audubon Engenerator The Bolobo Murders
by the time this sort of technology is possible, no-one will worry about the continuity of souls- they will be used to dividing up, extending and up/downloading part or whole of their minds so will view the idea of waking up in a new body as common place.
I hardly have to add that clones are completely separate entities with different personalities that grow independently from birth… identical twins do not have the same personality, and it would be unethical to plonk the personality of one twin into the head of another.
Copies are different- they have to be grown rapidly (like fungus perhaps)and he brains have to be instantaneously identical to the mind state of the original.
This would be difficult to do with a physical protein and lipid brain, so most copying will happen (I expect) inside electronic media.
How so? Largely the same atoms comprise the brain from moment to moment, and day to day.
As I said, confusion seems to have arisen because in the twin’s case an entire new set of atoms is created in a moment, whilst in the course of a night my brain changes only slightly.
Is this directed towards one of my posts? Apologies if it was meant for another.
** No they don’t, SentientMeat. The old-wives’-tale of all the cells in your body being replaced over seven years is false, but I’ve read many estimates that any given atom in the body is exchanged after about a year.
More to the point, the structure of the brain varies from moment to moment. Why do you consider it to be the same brain, then?
Atoms are essentially indistinguishable. Only the configuration matters.
Actually, applying my conclusions to myself 10 years ago, I was essentially a completely different set of atoms. That person is now dead, gone forever, since the meat which produced his consciousness simply leaked out piecemeal to disperse irretrievably around the world.
So, knowing this, and knowing I am merely a “copy” of him, should that poor sod have killed himself since he was bound to die and be gone forever anyway? I am eternally grateful that he continued to slowly die in order that I might be born. However, don’t think I’m so generous, oh no! No decade-older-version of myself is going to take over my brain - you just watch!
Vorlon, thank you for pointing out the wives’ tale - let us settle on a year for the sake of argument (although I understand stuff like tooth enamel doesn’t get replaced?).
I am arguing that there is no transfer. I am still unsure of your position.
I ask again: if an exact copy is made whilst the original still exists, which one do you wake up as?
Sentient, I’m not sure that question can be logically answered. Neither the original nor the copy would be able to tell. There would be, practically speaking, no way to distinguish which person the “original” woke up as, since they would both perceive themselves as being the original. And there’s be no way for anyone else to tell, either.
Isn’t this a possible interpretation of what happens every time you lose consciousness? Specially at death.
If this where the case, everybody would start behaving extra nice to everyone else. Imagine that !
No more war. No more terrorism. No more corrupt politicians. No more greedy corporations.
How about this analogy:
Lets say lives are threads of experiences. Lets compare these threads to painted lines on a wall. Two lines start on the left side of the wall. They are independent. Lets call them A and B. They swirl, loop, zigzag happily, change colors, all the time moving towards the right.
At one point, they cross each other, having the exact same color and postition, then they continue, free and individually, swirling and zigzagging as they always had.
Who can distinguish which line is which after the crossing point?
An outside observer staring at the wall can’t honestly determine where line A continues after the crossing with B. The observer can logically conclude that it is a pointless question.
The lines themselves cannot distiguish either. At any given “moment”, all they know and all they are is a simple dot with colour. Before the crossing, they can’t tell where they are going. After the crossing, they can’t tell where they came from.
At the moment of crossing, they are one! This is true for the outside observer without a doubt. The wall (universe of sorts) only has one position for the crossing point assigned, and one color, say blue, assigned for that crossing point. Therefore, at the crossing point, they are one.
They don’t transfer, they cross.
Some techniques for accomplishing this, gretting more advanced and more speculative…
see where your soul concept fits into thse…
1/ Uploading- using nanomachines in the brain of a living person to replace the neurons one by one with artificial neurons (with the same function); the individual is not aware of his/her sloconversion, but if these artificial neurons can also communicate their state to external media, a copy or copies of the entire brain-state can be made, run on larger computers, or given mechanical bodies to move about the real world.
2/ Nanocopying- using nanomachines in the brain of a living person to record the state of every neuron and synapse in the brain, and sending these to a tissue printer which can build a biological body or bodies complete with neurons and synapses with the same instantaneous state as the original to molecular level only.
3/Quantum Teleportation - using Quantum entanglement the quantum state of every atom and subatomic particle can be transmitted to a remote site using classical channels, where the body and brain of the original can be reconstructed to a greater degree of congruence.
This method actually destroys the original particles, so there is still only one individual, but in a different place. Please note the transfer of information does not occur faster than light.
4/ Quantum copying- the location of every subatomic particle is estimated with an allowance for Uncertainty which permits multple copies to be made, accurate to the quark level and with any quantum effects within the microtubule organelles faithfully copied, duplicating the essence of the soul itself (according to those who have been through the experience).(although many disagree).
eburacum
I can hardly begin to comprehend any of the methods you propose, except, maybe, vaguely, the nanomachine uploading.
But that would be something that happens all the time naturally. All our atoms are being gradually replaced all the time, as SentientMeat and RickJay have pointed out.
So, all of us have been “Uploaded” many times since we where born. right?
Uploading involves transfering the data responsible for “memory”, “personality”, and “cognitive skills” to a fundamentally different medium. Merely replacing the atoms within the brain isn’t uploading.
Well, the ideas for all these things are in the culture now- I expect that efforts will procede until some approximation of one or more of these technologies is possible- however crude and inaccurate.
I am just surprised to see Arnie in a film addressing such concepts-
although he has been in other ‘philosophically interesting’ films before, like Total Recall and Terminator,
he still is a rubbish actor.
