The reference to Searle clearly classifies this as a zombie argument: it hinges on consciousness.
The “not you” argument makes no sense at all—if we are positing a fully conscious, fully intelligent entity which shares all of my memories, all of my preferences, all of my dispositions, all of my projects; which no person, even my wife or children, would be able to tell apart from the meat-me; but which nevertheless is not me.
The rare neurological syndrome known as Capgras delusion illustrates why words like “me” or “self” carry such a mysterious aura: the sense of someone’s identity is the result of not one but several computations carried out in different parts of the human brain, which sometimes get out of step resulting in weird distortions of identity-perception.
But to the extent that “self” is a non-mysterious notion associated with being possessed of a certain set of memories, of future plans and of dispositions, our biological selves already become “someone other than they are” quite naturally with the passage of time; age and experience turn you into someone with a slightly different set of memories, plans and dispositions.
In that sense, uploading and aging are not fundamentally different processes, and any argument which applies to one applies to the other as far as the preservation of “self” is concerned.
Well, there can be a question of what rate of disposition change is consistent with being still the same person. About telling apart—well if someone cannot tell a computer program and animal apart, they have a trouble.
It looks like currently humanity can learn a lot about concept of self but seems to be a bit afraid to try by medically temporarily freezing inter-hemisphere link… What would the person remember as “past self” after re-merging?
All this is moot anyway because gradual uploads are as likely to be possible as stop-and-go ones.
Nope, not exactly zombies.
Alive and well person—just not you.
The reference to Searle clearly classifies this as a zombie argument: it hinges on consciousness.
The “not you” argument makes no sense at all—if we are positing a fully conscious, fully intelligent entity which shares all of my memories, all of my preferences, all of my dispositions, all of my projects; which no person, even my wife or children, would be able to tell apart from the meat-me; but which nevertheless is not me.
The rare neurological syndrome known as Capgras delusion illustrates why words like “me” or “self” carry such a mysterious aura: the sense of someone’s identity is the result of not one but several computations carried out in different parts of the human brain, which sometimes get out of step resulting in weird distortions of identity-perception.
But to the extent that “self” is a non-mysterious notion associated with being possessed of a certain set of memories, of future plans and of dispositions, our biological selves already become “someone other than they are” quite naturally with the passage of time; age and experience turn you into someone with a slightly different set of memories, plans and dispositions.
In that sense, uploading and aging are not fundamentally different processes, and any argument which applies to one applies to the other as far as the preservation of “self” is concerned.
Well, there can be a question of what rate of disposition change is consistent with being still the same person. About telling apart—well if someone cannot tell a computer program and animal apart, they have a trouble.
It looks like currently humanity can learn a lot about concept of self but seems to be a bit afraid to try by medically temporarily freezing inter-hemisphere link… What would the person remember as “past self” after re-merging?
All this is moot anyway because gradual uploads are as likely to be possible as stop-and-go ones.