I Gotta Split. Paradox?

Great Debates
21

I think the crux of this is that we perceive our identity with a significant emphasis upon its future continuance, whereas is only actually exists as a cumulative legacy.

The future doesn’t exist yet (let’s not argue that, even though I’m sure we could), so there is no me extending forwards into time, because there’s nowhere for something like that to happen.

On the other hand, the me that existed yesterday left a large parcel of memories, experiences, emotions etc; packaged in such a way that I genuinely do perceive them as my own, even though they no longer exist as anything other than patterns in my mind.

If there was a way for two identical 'me’bodies with two identical ‘me’ brains to receive the same mental parcel in the same way, then both of them would be utterly convinced that they were me; as fully, utterly and genuinely convinced as only one ‘me’ would be. The package would consist of references to things that no longer exist except for their description inside of it.

What’s the difference? Without invoking a metaphyical soul (which I’m more than happy to consider, but it will kill the discussion stone dead), what is it that I possess that makes me ‘really’ the same person I was yesterday (or three minutes ago, for that matter) that would not be possessed in equal and equivalently genuine measure by two ‘splones’ in exactly the same circumstances?

22

Yes, that’s my point. If one entity can have two futures each with 100% probability, then that must be illogicality, and it must be resolved. I don’t have a problem with the physical matter being replicated in my scenario because mitosis is real and it doesn’t break any laws of nature (each subatomic particle from the original does not have 2 futures with 100% probability, even though it may appear that way) . The two futures from the single physical entity in this case is not a paradox. Likewise, I believe that the physical body being copied in your scenario is theoretically possible and does not constitute a paradox (unless your copy machine is making the matter of the copied entity from nothing…then you must resolve this with something like a quantum vacuum fluctuation, I suppose). It is the non-material consciousness that I have a problem with. If consciousness is linked to the physical matter from which it derives (neurons, neurotransmitters, engrams etc.), then it should split into both splones with 100% probability. But how can it? How is it possible that I can say with 100% certainty that I will feel like two separate beings at some point in the future? (at 2:00pm I’m going to feel like Splone-A and Splone-B, happy and sad, dead and alive…etc.). Perhaps it is possible and I just have to re-work my concept of consciousness and the feeling of continuity. I don’t know, maybe I should ask my splone…he’s the smart one, not me. :slight_smile:

23

We all have an infinite number of futures. Every move we make changes what that future will be.
As soon as your splones became separate, their consciousness diverges. One is to the left, one to the right. Their visual sphere is no longer identical. We learn from our environment, at that moment, they inhabited separate environments, so although they share memory, they no longer need or can share the same place. Even if they remain “in touch,” able to know the other’s thoughts and feelings, each has the mandate to develop from that point forward in different ways.
Say, the air is cooler on the right than the left. Right is learning he must cover himself to stay warm. While Left may, and probably will learn that same lesson, it won’t be at that exact moment, or in the same way. They will interact with other individuals, gaining new and different insight to the world.
They will likely both learn to do the same things, but the learning comes to them in slightly different ways.
Did you know that as one learns his/her brain, changes, physically? Your splones brains would too, meaning after a time, they would actually be physically different.

24

More good posts all around, thanks! We’re making headway I believe.

While we continue to contemplate the plight of our splones, here is something else to ponder:

Let’s say that the mitosis does not take place in each cell all at the same time. The cell division starts anteriorly and progresses posteriorly. You split into right and left bodies, the last of the attachment being posterior. At some point in this split, one-half of the conscious-bearing area of your brain will be the single original, the other half will be split into the copies (one and one-half brains: one in the back, two in the front). Besides the fact that you won’t need a Halloween costume to scare small children, my question is:
What the hell will this feel like?

At what point does one conscience become two?

The mind is a terrible thing to displace :cool:

25

I, for one, always try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but am nevertheless frequently astounded by the extraordinary lengths some people will go to in their passionate pursuit of utter pointlessness. Were I you, I wouldn’t reject that possibility out of hand. You might want to consider this scenario as well: Say someone loses one of those glove liners rather than the glove itself, something that I suspect happens quite a lot, and they genuinely don’t know where it is. However, in a moment of blind madness, might they then photograph the remaining liner and send it in, since it’s pretty much identical to the one they lost? My guess is that the only way you’d know that someone had tried to pull the wool over your eyes would be if someone else found and photographed the actual lost glove and sent it in. It’s really sad to think that there really are people who simply aren’t aware that their irresponsibility can ruin it for everyone!

Is that a joke?

26

There is a phenomenon we could examine in respect of this question.

As you’re most likely aware, the cerebral cortex of the human brain is composed of two distinct halves; various regions of each individual half are responsible for various functions and, broadly speaking, each half is responsible for the opposite half of the body with respect to conscious motor control and sensation. Anyway, that’s kinda beside the point; what is important is that the cerebral cortex is the part of the brain believed to be most important to cognitive functions such as thinking, reasoning and personality.

The two halves of the cerebral cortex are linked by the corpus callosum; this can be thought of as a sort of ribbon cable transferring data between the two halves, ensuring that they operate as a consistent whole.

Damage to the corpus callosum has interesting effects (google Split Brain Experiments) - it is actually possible for a single human with a split brain to act in many ways as if there are two distinct and largely separate consciousnessses at work. Arguably, there are two minds present.
The question is though, which of them is the ‘real’ person that existed previous to the injury? The answer must be that neither of them are, or both of them are.

So, I argue, it is with these hypothetical splones; in any sense that I continue to be the same person from one moment to the next, so too will they be the same person as their single progenitor (they won’t be the same person as each other after the split though, as they begin to tread different paths); in any sense that they are not the same person as their progenitor, so neither are we.

27

BTW, where the hell is SentientMeat in this hour of need?

28

Hmmm, SentientMeat. I don’t know him, but he sounds like a good candidate for my experiment. Let’s split him and see what happens…

…and then, for some reason, I feel we should marinate and bar-b-que him.

29

With lime juice and fresh coriander, I am apparently (and ironically), divine.

I am also served best with Mangetout.

30

I prefer a dry rub on my meat, but I was afraid you may have taken that the wrong way.

31

But, isn’t this really one physical mind with two focuses (focii ?) of awareness simply performing acts / thoughts independent of each other? Them splones don’t do that.

I vote for both, I think. Hasn’t the injury only modified the “real” person’s perceptions, rather than created a new person, a new sense of “me”? Can the patient (victim) sit there and think, “Well, here’s this me”, and then <SYBIL> “Here’s the other me”? </SYBIL>. If so, might there be other, less hypothetical explanations for that type of behavior?

I understand that who we are (the product of our perceptions) changes with each passing nano-second, but doesn’t the mind that processes these perceptions to determine our individual sense of self remain the same? Isn’t that why we do wake up each day the same person who went to sleep, even though we then have a new (or augmented) set of perceptions?

I don’t know, maybe I’m still hung up on that “tool” thing, but it still seems to me that as the term “same person” applies to splones, they, the original and the dupes, may indeed all be comprised of the same set of experiences (memories & such), and be physically identical down to the sub-molecular level, but if each possess his own, independent sense of self, wouldn’t this make each his own “real person”, separate and distinct from each other, simply by virtue of who each is NOT, rather than who he is?

32

In the interest of taking this discussion from the theoretical to the concrete, I’ve been experimenting with some formulations. I had a eureka moment with one in particular (I won’t divulge the entire secret formulation, but it includes Alka Seltzer and Kipper Snacks). I’m afraid that I’m a bit too weary to respond to the last few posts for the time being…all this esoteric talk is making my brains hurt.
Mr. Tibbs :smiley:

33

No, what they do is a good deal more complex and distrurbing than that; they (can) behave like two different, unconnected individuals, each with their own preferences, desires, prejudices, opinions etc - the individual that each of them remembers being in the past happens to be the same individual for both sides.

Of course they would be separate individuals, at least they would from the point of separation onwards, but there is no meaningful sense in which the pair of labels ‘real’ and ‘copy’ can be applied to them one way around and not the other.

Setting aside metaphysical possibilities, what do I have, right now, of the ‘me’ that existed yesterday; I have:
A physical body that bears the scars of yesterday’s battles
A physical brain featuring a structured map of interconnecting neural pathways that is uniq

34

Damn. hit ‘reply’ too soon.

Setting aside metaphysical possibilities, what do I have, right now, of the ‘me’ that existed yesterday; I have:
A physical body that bears the scars of yesterday’s battles
A physical brain featuring a structured map of interconnecting neural pathways that is uniqe to me, embodying a complex set of mental processes that amounts to ‘me’ mentally, emotionally etc.

Assuming that given sufficient technology or magic, these could arguably be precisely duplicated (or ‘sploned’), what would the splone lack that I have?
He would have a physical body that bears something indistinguishable from the scars of yesterday’s battles
He would have a physical brain featuring a structured map of interconnecting neural pathways that I thought was uniqe to me, embodying a complex set of mental processes that amounts to ‘me’ mentally, emotionally etc.
He would be ‘me’ in every meaningful sense that I am ‘me’. We wouldn’t be the same ‘me’, but there would be no difference. Unless I’m missing something, in whcih case, what is it?

35

Don’t you HATE IT when that happens!?!

But, is the patient exhibiting these different behaviors, desires, opinions, etc., all at the same time? If not, couldn’t this be explained more readily as a series of acute schizophrenic episodes?

But, would you ever claim to be him, or would he you? Or would you more likely say he’s his own “me” and you are yours?

Well, first off, you may be right. But, maybe the reason I keep coming back to there being a difference is the old proverbial distinction without one. What if the act of making the distinction creates the difference?

Let me see if I can ask it a different way: If there is a difference, might that difference be outwardly imperceptible, non-existent by all objective measurement and comparison? Might the difference, if there is one, only be knowable from within each “self”, yours and your splones’?

Maybe the difference could be displayed this way: I’m in an empty room sitting across from my splone. I’m thinking, “I’m me, he’s the splone.” The splone is looking back at me thinking pretty much the same thing with the same unshakable feelings of certainty. Into the room comes an impartial witness to the splitting process who walks over to me and whispers in my ear that I’m the splone and the other guy is the real deal. As soon as I get over the initial shock of being wrong, I realize that I’m the only one shocked here. I might be the splone, but I’m OK with it because I received the news and he didn’t react. I’m here and he’s there, though we be identical in every way, we are each ourselves, not shared, not parallel, not networked. And, unless I tell him I’m the splone, he’ll always have to wonder and I won’t. There’s the difference. :cool:

36

Oh, I agree that the two splones would share no live-linked consciouness, but my point is that there is no objective difference between me existing tomorrow and a perfect copy of me existing tomorrow. The idea of this fills us with horror because we like to think of our existence somehow extending from here into the not-yet-existent future, when in fact it works the other way around; only when the future occurs can whatever creature then exists drag in the past that makes it ‘me’.

Again, without invoking metaphysics (and I realise I’m just repeating myself at this point), there’s no difference between ‘me’ having woken up this morning and a perfect copy of ‘me’ having woken up, because that’s all ‘me’ is - it’s a creature that remembers having been ‘me’ in the past and emotionally considers this to be some kind of continuous existence.

37

Ah… no objective difference! That’s where I’ve been missing the point. :smack:

Yes, and if we accept the hypothetical splones, there’s no reason two of those creatures can’t co-exist! :smack:

Finally! I get it! I suppose that’s what you’ve been saying all along - I’ve just been “hearing” it differently, or not hearing it at all. There is no “difference” in the sense that both are objectively identical. :smack:
(Ouch! I gotta stop doing that…)

So… now I’ll go back and see how many posts ago the OP’s distilled query, “Is a shared consciousness theoretically possible?” was satisfied. I think it was agreed that it was not possible, or at least not as it was laid out in the “splone” scenario. It seems I got a bit distracted and was the last to realize it. Thank you for your forbearance.

38

Yes. Once the splones are split to the extent that their brains are no longer sharing information, they are not part of the same consciousness - they are different individual people (very similar ones, quite probably subject to many of the same behaviours and thought patterns, but not connected in the sense that either one would consider the other as part of himself.

If the split happens as part of a gradual process, there’s no real reason that the detachment wouldn’t progress in likewise manner - it need not be instantaneous -even though it is a hard thing to imagine what that would be like to experience.

39

Time for good ol’ Mr. Tibbs to mop things up a bit…

Thinking about this problem yesterday, I couldn’t concentrate at work, so I dropped everything and came home to work out the solution. I may have left my Senn retractor in that lady I was operating on, but no matter.
As much as I’ve tried to avoid it, I’m afraid that we have to resort to quantum mechanics for the answer. I’m no physicist, so I won’t be embarrassed if one of you calls me to the mat on any mistakes that I make in the following analysis. Well, maybe I would be a little embarrassed if you’re a little kid or retar…ah, cerebrally challenged.
I will re-read the last few posts. It may be that one or all of you have come to the same or similar conclusions. If that is the case, then maybe this post will at least give some scientific foundation on which to base those conclusions.

The problem in a nutshell: Is it possible for one consciousness to split into two consciousnesses with no loss of continuity?
The obvious answer, and the answer most propagated in this thread, is “yes”. I now believe that the obvious answer is wrong: I don’t think that it is possible for a consciousness to survive the split.

Assumptions:

  1. Our consciousness emanates from the physical matter and physiology of our brains. I maintain that this assumption is correct.

  2. It is possible to divide or replicate our bodies into two (or more) bodies that are physically essentially identical to each other and to the original. I maintain that this assumption is correct.

  3. Since consciousness is an expression of the physical matter from which it arises, the original consciousness will be divided or replicated if the physical matter is divided or replicated. I maintain that this is incorrect.

If all 3 assumptions were correct, then your awareness today could continue into two awareness’s tomorrow in 2 unlinked bodies. I believe this is a paradox.
How do we resolve it?
First, by looking a little deeper into my three assumptions listed above.

  1. The word “essentially” is the important word in #2. It may be possible to derive two physical bodies from one and have them “essentially” identical, but you cannot have them “exactly” identical (not without violating a law of physics).
  2. The word “original” is the important word in #3. You may or may not have “a” consciousness in each splone, but you will not have the “original” consciousness in either splone.

Mitosis creates 2 bodies out of 1. The two bodies appear identical. They have the same cells, the same sub-molecular physiology…the same everything needed to process consciousness. But they don’t have the same subatomic particles and it is at the subatomic level that I now believe the “mitosis” would have to take place in order to continue the “original” consciousness.

Doesn’t this simply push the paradox down a little deeper? No, because mitosis at the cellular level is possible, mitosis at the subatomic level is not. You can’t split an elemental particle into two particles identical to each other and to the original. If it can’t happen, it can’t be a paradox.

I think that the original consciousness would be destroyed by the very act of cellular mitosis. If the essence of the original consciousness resides in the realm of the subatomic, as I believe it does, then the not-too-discreet, willy-nilly, bull-in-a-china-shop division of cellular mitosis will break the delicate fabric of your consciousness and render you null and void for all the rest of eternity.

Here is an analogy (maybe not a great analogy, or the best analogy, but the best I can muster in the spur of the moment): You want to copy a painting of Georges Seurat (Mr. Pointillism). You get the same frame, canvas and paint that Seurat used. You are a brilliant artist in your own right and a master at art forgery. The only problem is that you are far-sighted and the only way for you to see the original is to back away from it. Your copy appears flawless to you and all of your far-sighted friends. Unfortunately, everyone with normal vision is not that impressed, noting that you didn’t duplicate the tiny dots. Think of your consciousness as the tiny dots.

There may be one exception, however. If, during cellular mitosis, all of the “original” elemental particles in all of the cells responsible for awareness in the brain of the original body were to commit to one splone, the original consciousness would continue into that splone. The other splone would either have a different consciousness or no consciousness at all. With elemental particles, you can only speak in terms of probability (i.e. the particle has a 50% probability of being here, a 50% probability of being there, a 100% probability of being somewhere, but 0% probability of being here and there at the same time. You’ve a better chance of having Michael Jackson refrain from the temptation of young boys than to have each and every subatomic particle commit to a 100% probability of going into one splone as opposed to another. But, it’s possible. And if it’s possible, it can’t be a paradox.

I do believe that the two splones that result from cellular mitosis would survive and be conscious, however. Does this contradict my assertion that the original consciousness is snuffed out by the process of division? No, in the same sense that the physicality of the splones is different at the subatomic level, the consciousnesses must be different too. Everything is in place to create and maintain a consciousness, so it probably is created and maintained. The splones are “born” at the moment of division (also the moment of your death), they just wouldn’t be aware of it.

How would it feel? Like this: at the beginning of cell division you feel a little light-headed. As division commences, things get darker and darker, until you lose consciousness forever. You have shed your mortal coils. As you snuff out, your splones flame on. Except for the strange feeling of awakening from a momentary blackout, the splones would feel that nothing unusual has occurred. You have no future; your splones have no real past. They have an illusionary past, a past that they stole from you.

Why is this important? Easy, because if anybody ever asks you to undergo mitosis, you should say, “hell no, why should I die so that those two bozos can exist!”

Now excuse me while I get in my time machine and fast-forward into the future. I suspect that I will be split and one of my splones will shag my wife. I feel a duty to punch him in the nose (if I feel the pain of my blows, I’ll know I was mistaken). Of course, he’ll feel innocent of the crime, but that’s no excuse. I can’t blame my wife though…unless she gets double teamed by both splones…

Comments, please.

40

No. Leave aside for the moment that you’re talking as if any of this is even remotely possible as a physical reality - it isn’t.

But still, no. Your consciousness doesn’t project forward into the future, it is dragged along, trailing behind whatever creature stands in your place tomorrow; you don’t go forward, you stand here now remembering having always been you. If some miracle occurs that results in two creatures standing here identicallly (in terms of qualitative experience) remembering having been you, then so be it; there will be two people with a single history and their existence will be no less valid that yours is right now.

The particles themselves are only responsible for your consciousness by virtue of their arrangement - arrange some other particles in the same way (actually this is happening constantly in your body anyway) and the result will still be ‘you’.