I am uploaded. A copy of my “self” is made (I believe this is the definition of “you” people are using when they’re talking about uploading themselves) and the original is disassembled or dies of natural causes. That’s all that was done. I’m assuming no other steps were taken to preserve any other element of me because it was believed that uploading me means I wouldn’t die. I’ll call the original Epiphany and the copy I’ll call Valorie.
Epiphany:
Death of body—Check. Brain was in it? Check.
Death of experience—Check. (See previous note about my brain.)
Death of genes—Check. Pregnancy is impossible while dead. Genes were not copied.
Death of influence—Check. Upload was not incarnated.
Death of self—No. There is a copy.
Valorie:
Death of body—No body. It’s just a copy.
Death of experience—Doesn’t experience, it isn’t being run, it’s just a copy.
Death of genes—Doesn’t have genes, a copy of my “self” is being stored in some type of memory instead of a body.
Death of influence—Cannot influence anything as a copy, especially if it is not being run.
Death of self—No. It’s preserved.
Conclusion:
I am dead.
Of course it’s not hard to imagine other scenarios where everything possible is copied and the copy is incarnated, but Epiphany would still stop experiencing, which is unacceptable, so I would still call this “dead”.
I’m perfectly willing to accept that if you get uploaded and then nobody ever runs the upload then that’s death. But if you’re trying to give the idea a fair chance, I’m not sure why you’re assuming this.
There’s one really important detail here. If you get uploaded, even if the copy is put into a body exactly like yours and your genes are fully preserved and everything goes right, you still stop experiencing as soon as you die.
Okay, I was pretty sure that was your real point, so I just wanted to confirm that and separate away everything else.
But to be honest, I don’t have a real answer. It’s definitely not obvious to me that I will stop experiencing in any real way, but I have a hard time dismissing this as well. One traditional answer is that “you will stop experiencing” is incoherent, and that continuity of experience is an illusion based on being aware of what you were thinking about a split second ago, among other things.
I decided that being transformed would probably maintain continuity of experience, and being re-assembled out of the same particles in the exact same locations would probably result in continuity of experience (because I can’t see that as a second instance), but I am not sure about it (because the same particles in different locations might not qualify as the same instance, which brings into question whether same instance guarantees continuous experience) and I’m having a hard time thinking of a clarifying question or hypothetical scenario to use for working it out. (It’s all in the link right there).
One traditional answer is that “you will stop experiencing” is incoherent, and that continuity of experience is an illusion based on being aware of what you were thinking about a split second ago, among other things.
What’s not incoherent, though, is looking forward to experiencing something in the future, yet knowing you’re going to be disassembled by a transporter and a copy of you will experience it instead. That, in no uncertain terms, is death. We can tell ourselves all day that having a continuous experience relies on you being able to connect your current thought and previous thought, but the real question we need to ask is “Will I have any thoughts at all?” so the connected thoughts question is a red herring (as it relates only to your second instance, not your first one) and is a poor clarifying question for telling whether you (the original) survived.
What’s not incoherent, though, is looking forward to experiencing something in the future, yet knowing you’re going to be disassembled by a transporter and a copy of you will experience it instead. That, in no uncertain terms, is death.
Either way, only a copy of you will experience it, because the non-copy of you is trapped in the present and has no way to experience the future. The copy can be made artificially, using a transporter, or naturally as time passes. Why is there a difference?
Why is the time-copy even a copy though? If we call some A a copy of some original B, then we have to have reason to associate A with B (if A and B are paintings, the one is a copy of the other if it closely resembles it, say). What association does EpiphanyA at t0 have with EpiphanyB at t1?
Well, I think I persist through time. But you’re saying that time makes copies of me, and I’m curious to know why you think those things are copies and not just new (very short lived) people.
Wait, wait, wait. I’m still confused as to why you think that time is copying me. By what mechanism does time create new instances of me and destroy the old ones? At what interval does this happen? Has anyone actually observed this phenomenon or is it just a theory?
I could reverse the question. Why do you think you’re the same person at different times, as opposed to being a copy? By what mechanism is a single person carried forward through time? Has anyone actually observed this phenomenon, or is it just a theory?
It’s not clear to me that those are fair questions, but then it’s not clear to me that their reversals are fair, either.
Occam’s razor. The theory that I’m being copied and destroyed over and over again doesn’t explain anything additional that I can think of, so it’s more likely the simpler idea (that I am not being copied and destroyed over and over) is true.
Also, not believing that I am being copied does not qualify as a belief. That’s just lack of belief in a theory.
If you guys believe I’m being copied over and over again, that IS a belief though, and if you want me to agree with it, the burden of proof lies on you.
The theory that I’m being copied and destroyed over and over again doesn’t explain anything additional that I can think of,
I think both of you are sorta failing to address (or not addressing clearly enough) the point that objects being “copied” “destroyed” or “persisted” is not really meaningful at the level of physics at all—like envisioning electrons as billiard balls, it’s mapping a concept that’s intuitive in one’s mind onto the physical world where it does not apply.
At the bottommost level of quantum physics that we know of, electrons have no identity. From what I gather to “destroy” an electron from here and “copy” it there is indistinguishable physically (even in principle) from “moving” it from here to there. Those are concepts which are differentiatable in our adapted-via-evolution minds, not in reality.
That having been said I don’t dismiss your concerns about uploading altogether because we still aren’t unconfused enough about consciousness to be able to clarify to ourselves what the fuck it’s supposed to do… I would really like to be unconfused about qualia and the nature of existence before I do any uploading of myself.
Yup. Which is why I say it’s not clear to me those are fair questions.
That said… if in the future two entities exist that are physically and behaviorally indistinguishable from one another, and one of them is me, it follows that either both of them are me, or one and only one of them is me. In the latter case, it seems “me-ness” depends some physically and behaviorally undetectable attribute which only one of them has.
Occam’s razor also seems to suggest that both of them are me, since the alternative posits an additional unnecessary entity in the system.
Yup. Which is why I say it’s not clear to me those are fair questions.
I’m interpreting this as difficulty figuring out who the burden of proof belongs to. I think it helps to realize that with each theory there are at least three options:
Believe it’s true.
Believe it’s false.
Not believe anything.
If you say “There’s a dragon in my garage.” and I say “I don’t believe this.” I am not saying “I believe there is no dragon in your garage.” I’m saying “I don’t have a belief about this.”
Now, I could go in there and inspect everything and conclude that there’s no dragon, at which point I’d have a belief that there isn’t a dragon. But why should I do this? You might claim next that there’s a God in your garage. Then I’d have to go to all sorts of work trying to prove there is no God in your garage. Then you could claim that there’s a pink elephant, and on and on.
This is why, if you want people to believe something the burden of proof lies on you—you can’t just turn it around and say “Well prove that it’s NOT this way!”—if that were the rule, people would troll the crap out of us with dragons and Gods and pink elephants and such.
Does that give you any clarity in whose burden it is to offer evidence regarding time copying people?
Occam’s razor also seems to suggest that both of them are me, since the alternative posits an additional unnecessary entity in the system.
No. The additional entity is not unnecessary. The second instance is absolutely required to explain the way you reacted to my teleporter with technical failure argument.
I am surprised you didn’t update after that by recognizing that there were two separate instances, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m stumped as to why you aren’t seeing it this way.
If you say “There’s a dragon in my garage.” and I say “I don’t believe this.” I am not saying “I believe there is no dragon in your garage.” I’m saying “I don’t have a belief about this.”
Perhaps you are. That’s certainly not what I would be saying if someone said that to me and I gave that reply.
This is why, if you want people to believe something the burden of proof lies on you—you can’t just turn it around and say “Well prove that it’s NOT this way!”
Proof in the sense you are discussing here is mostly useful when trying to win debates. I have no particular desire for you to believe anything in particular.
The second instance is absolutely required to explain the way you reacted to my teleporter with technical failure argument.
The unnecessary entity in the second case is the physically and behaviorally undetectable attribute which only the “real me” has. I don’t see any need for it, and I have no idea why you think it’s necessary to explain any part of my reaction to any of your hypotheticals.
I’ll call the original Epiphany and the copy I’ll call Valorie.
So your definition of self stops at the physical body? Presumably mostly your brain? Would a partial brain prosthesis (say, to save someone’s life after a head trauma) mimicking the function of the removed part make the recipient less of herself? Does it apply to the spinal cord? How about some of the limbic system? Maybe everything but the neocortex can be replaced without affecting “self”? Where do you put the boundary and why?
So your definition of self stops at the physical body?
No. As I mentioned, “This (referring to Death of Body) is important if your brain isn’t somewhere else when it happens but may not be important otherwise.”
If you get into a good replacement body before the one you’re in dies, you’re fine.
Presumably mostly your brain?
If you want to live, a continuation of your experience is required. Not the creation of a new instance of the experience. But the continuation of my (this copy’s) experience. That experience is happening in this brain, and if this brain goes away, this instance of the experience goes away, too. If there is a way to transfer this experience into something else (like by transforming it slowly, as Saturn and I got into) then Epiphany1′s experience would be continued.
Would a partial brain prosthesis (say, to save someone’s life after a head trauma) mimicking the function of the removed part make the recipient less of herself?
If Epiphany1′s experience continues and my “self” is not significantly changed, no. That is not really a new instance. That’s more like Epiphany1.2.
Does it apply to the spinal cord? How about some of the limbic system?
Not sure why these are relevant. Ok limbic system is sort of relevant. I’d still be me with a new spinal cord or limbic system, at least according to my understanding of them. Why do you ask? Maybe there’s some complexity here I missed?
Maybe everything but the neocortex can be replaced without affecting “self”?
Hmmm. If my whole brain were replaced all at once, I’d definitely stop experiencing. If it were replaced one thing at a time, I may have a continuation of experience on Epiphany1, and my pattern may be preserved (there would be a transformation of the hardware that the pattern is in, but I expect my “self” to transform anyway, that pattern is not static).
I am not my hardware, but I am not my software either. I think we are both.
If my hardware were transformed over time such that my continuation of experience was not interrupted, then even if I were completely replaced with a different set of particles (or enhanced neurons or something) that as long as my “self pattern” wasn’t damaged, I would not die.
I can’t think of a way in which I could qualify that as “death”. Losing my brain might be a cause of death, but just because something can cause something else doesn’t mean it does in every instance. Heat applied to glass causes it to become brittle or melt and change form, destroying it. But we also apply heat to iron to get steel.
I’m trying to think of a metaphor that works for similar transformations… larva turns into a butterfly. A zygote turns into a baby, and a baby, into an adult. No physical parts are lost in those processes that I am aware of. I do vaguely remember something about a lot of neural connections being lost in early childhood… but I don’t remember enough about that to go anywhere with it. The chemicals in my brain are probably replaced quite frequently, if the requirements for ingesting things like tryptophan are any indicator. Things like sugar, water and nutrients are being taken in, and byproducts are being removed. But I don’t know what amount of the stuff in my skull is temporary. Hmm…
I want to challenge my theory in some way, but this is turning out to be difficult.
Maybe I will find something that invalidates this line of reasoning later.
Hmmm. If my whole brain were replaced all at once, I’d definitely stop experiencing. If it were replaced one thing at a time, I may have a continuation of experience on Epiphany1, and my pattern may be preserved
If my hardware were transformed over time such that my continuation of experience was not interrupted, then even if I were completely replaced with a different set of particles (or enhanced neurons or something) that as long as my “self pattern” wasn’t damaged, I would not die.
So the “continuity of experience” is what you find essential for not-death? Presumably you would make exceptions for loss of consciousness and coma? Dreamless sleep? Anesthesia? Is it the loss of conscious experience that matters or what? Would a surgery (which requires putting you under) replacing some amount of your brain with prosthetics qualify as life-preserving? How much at once? Would “all of it” be too much?
Does the prosthetic part have to reside inside your brain, or can it be a machine (say, like a dialysis machine) that is wirelessly and seamlessly connected to the rest of your brain?
If it helps, Epiphany has implied elsewhere, I think, that when they talk about continuity of experience they don’t mean to exclude experience interrupted by sleep, coma, and other periods of unconsciousness, as long as there’s experience on the other end (and as long as the person doing that experiencing is the same person, rather than merely an identical person).
Yeah that has gotten tricky. I’ve worded the question as “Same instance or different instance?”. I’ve also discovered a stickier problem—just because a re-assembled me might qualify, in all ways, as “the same instance” I am not sure that guarantees the continuation of my experience. I explore that here, in two examples being re-assembled from the same particles both in the same arrangement and in a different arrangement. (scroll to “Scenarios meant to explore instance differentiation and the relation to continuous experience”—I labeled it to make it easy to find.)
As TheOtherDave pointed out, the question is what is, in your opinion, the essence of “self”. Clearly it cannot just be all the same “particles” (molecules?), since particles in our bodies change all the time. You seem to be relating self with consciousness, but not identifying the two. That’s why I’m asking questions aimed to nail the difference. That’s why I asked these questions earlier:
So the “continuity of experience” is what you find essential for not-death? Presumably you would make exceptions for loss of consciousness and coma? Dreamless sleep? Anesthesia? Is it the loss of conscious experience that matters or what? Would a surgery (which requires putting you under) replacing some amount of your brain with prosthetics qualify as life-preserving? How much at once? Would “all of it” be too much?
“The essence of self” seems like the wrong question to me. That sounds too much like “What is the essence of your personality?” and that’s irrelevant here.
What I’m talking about is my ability to experience. We all have an ability to experience (I assume) that, although it may be shaped by our personalities, it is not our personalities. Example:
A Christian sees a Satanic ritual.
A Satanist sees the same ritual.
The Christian is horrified. The Satanist thinks it’s great.
The reason one was horrified and the other thought it was great is because they have different beliefs, possibly different personality types, different life experiences and possibly even different neurological wiring.
What did they have in common?
They both saw a Satanic ritual.
THAT is the part I am trying to point out here. The part that experiences. It’s not one’s personality, or beliefs, or experiences or neurological traits.
I am saying essentially “Even if personality, beliefs, experiences and neurological differences are copied, this does nothing to guarantee that the part of you that experiences is going to survive.” Asking to define the essence of self is not relevant since I’m saying to you “Even if self is copied, this thing that I am talking about may not survive”.
How would you convince someone who thinks instants of experience are real and memories that give instants of experience historical context are real, but doesn’t believe in any meaningful process of forward continuity from one instant of experience to another beyond the similarity of memories, to believe otherwise? There’s no difference between blinking, taking a nap and being destructively teleported in this stance. It’s all just someone experiencing something now, and someone else with very similar memories that include the present experience moment experiencing something else in the future.
I’ve noted to self that this seems like a pattern with us, as you have complained about a question being ignored a few times now. Not sure what I should be doing about it when I don’t see a question as relevant but maybe I should just be like “I don’t see how this is relevant.”
Don’t know how I got the habit of ignoring things that seem irrelevant and moving on to whatever seems relevant but I can see why it would be annoying so I will be thinking about that. Thanks for getting me to see the pattern.
I am uploaded. A copy of my “self” is made (I believe this is the definition of “you” people are using when they’re talking about uploading themselves) and the original is disassembled or dies of natural causes. That’s all that was done. I’m assuming no other steps were taken to preserve any other element of me because it was believed that uploading me means I wouldn’t die. I’ll call the original Epiphany and the copy I’ll call Valorie.
Epiphany:
Death of body—Check. Brain was in it? Check.
Death of experience—Check. (See previous note about my brain.)
Death of genes—Check. Pregnancy is impossible while dead. Genes were not copied.
Death of influence—Check. Upload was not incarnated.
Death of self—No. There is a copy.
Valorie:
Death of body—No body. It’s just a copy.
Death of experience—Doesn’t experience, it isn’t being run, it’s just a copy.
Death of genes—Doesn’t have genes, a copy of my “self” is being stored in some type of memory instead of a body.
Death of influence—Cannot influence anything as a copy, especially if it is not being run.
Death of self—No. It’s preserved.
Conclusion:
I am dead.
Of course it’s not hard to imagine other scenarios where everything possible is copied and the copy is incarnated, but Epiphany would still stop experiencing, which is unacceptable, so I would still call this “dead”.
I’m perfectly willing to accept that if you get uploaded and then nobody ever runs the upload then that’s death. But if you’re trying to give the idea a fair chance, I’m not sure why you’re assuming this.
There’s one really important detail here. If you get uploaded, even if the copy is put into a body exactly like yours and your genes are fully preserved and everything goes right, you still stop experiencing as soon as you die.
Is that acceptable to you?
Okay, I was pretty sure that was your real point, so I just wanted to confirm that and separate away everything else.
But to be honest, I don’t have a real answer. It’s definitely not obvious to me that I will stop experiencing in any real way, but I have a hard time dismissing this as well. One traditional answer is that “you will stop experiencing” is incoherent, and that continuity of experience is an illusion based on being aware of what you were thinking about a split second ago, among other things.
The continuation of experience argument is compelling if you consider my transporter malfunction scenario.
That is one situation that would definitely result in a discontinuation of experience.
Others which I have discussed with Saturn and TheOtherDave (a wonderfully ironic handle for this discussion) have resulted in my considering other possibilities like being re-assembled with the exact same particles in the same or different locations and being transformed over time via neuron replacement or similar.
I decided that being transformed would probably maintain continuity of experience, and being re-assembled out of the same particles in the exact same locations would probably result in continuity of experience (because I can’t see that as a second instance), but I am not sure about it (because the same particles in different locations might not qualify as the same instance, which brings into question whether same instance guarantees continuous experience) and I’m having a hard time thinking of a clarifying question or hypothetical scenario to use for working it out. (It’s all in the link right there).
What’s not incoherent, though, is looking forward to experiencing something in the future, yet knowing you’re going to be disassembled by a transporter and a copy of you will experience it instead. That, in no uncertain terms, is death. We can tell ourselves all day that having a continuous experience relies on you being able to connect your current thought and previous thought, but the real question we need to ask is “Will I have any thoughts at all?” so the connected thoughts question is a red herring (as it relates only to your second instance, not your first one) and is a poor clarifying question for telling whether you (the original) survived.
In coherent terms, what we should avoid is this:
Either way, only a copy of you will experience it, because the non-copy of you is trapped in the present and has no way to experience the future. The copy can be made artificially, using a transporter, or naturally as time passes. Why is there a difference?
Why do you think that time copies you?
Well, it doesn’t even perfectly preserve the original, so I fail to see what else it could be but a copy.
You might argue that for some reason the time-derived copy is more important than an artificial copy, of course, but why?
Why is the time-copy even a copy though? If we call some A a copy of some original B, then we have to have reason to associate A with B (if A and B are paintings, the one is a copy of the other if it closely resembles it, say). What association does EpiphanyA at t0 have with EpiphanyB at t1?
You… don’t see a reason to associate future-you with present-you?
Well, I think I persist through time. But you’re saying that time makes copies of me, and I’m curious to know why you think those things are copies and not just new (very short lived) people.
I don’t think the distinction is meaningful. Possibly we just mean different things by the word “copy”?
I think I should, at this point, just ask for some elaboration on the theory.
Wait, wait, wait. I’m still confused as to why you think that time is copying me. By what mechanism does time create new instances of me and destroy the old ones? At what interval does this happen? Has anyone actually observed this phenomenon or is it just a theory?
I could reverse the question. Why do you think you’re the same person at different times, as opposed to being a copy? By what mechanism is a single person carried forward through time? Has anyone actually observed this phenomenon, or is it just a theory?
It’s not clear to me that those are fair questions, but then it’s not clear to me that their reversals are fair, either.
Occam’s razor. The theory that I’m being copied and destroyed over and over again doesn’t explain anything additional that I can think of, so it’s more likely the simpler idea (that I am not being copied and destroyed over and over) is true.
Also, not believing that I am being copied does not qualify as a belief. That’s just lack of belief in a theory.
If you guys believe I’m being copied over and over again, that IS a belief though, and if you want me to agree with it, the burden of proof lies on you.
I think both of you are sorta failing to address (or not addressing clearly enough) the point that objects being “copied” “destroyed” or “persisted” is not really meaningful at the level of physics at all—like envisioning electrons as billiard balls, it’s mapping a concept that’s intuitive in one’s mind onto the physical world where it does not apply.
At the bottommost level of quantum physics that we know of, electrons have no identity. From what I gather to “destroy” an electron from here and “copy” it there is indistinguishable physically (even in principle) from “moving” it from here to there. Those are concepts which are differentiatable in our adapted-via-evolution minds, not in reality.
That having been said I don’t dismiss your concerns about uploading altogether because we still aren’t unconfused enough about consciousness to be able to clarify to ourselves what the fuck it’s supposed to do… I would really like to be unconfused about qualia and the nature of existence before I do any uploading of myself.
Yup. Which is why I say it’s not clear to me those are fair questions.
That said… if in the future two entities exist that are physically and behaviorally indistinguishable from one another, and one of them is me, it follows that either both of them are me, or one and only one of them is me. In the latter case, it seems “me-ness” depends some physically and behaviorally undetectable attribute which only one of them has.
Occam’s razor also seems to suggest that both of them are me, since the alternative posits an additional unnecessary entity in the system.
I’m interpreting this as difficulty figuring out who the burden of proof belongs to. I think it helps to realize that with each theory there are at least three options:
Believe it’s true. Believe it’s false. Not believe anything.
If you say “There’s a dragon in my garage.” and I say “I don’t believe this.” I am not saying “I believe there is no dragon in your garage.” I’m saying “I don’t have a belief about this.”
Now, I could go in there and inspect everything and conclude that there’s no dragon, at which point I’d have a belief that there isn’t a dragon. But why should I do this? You might claim next that there’s a God in your garage. Then I’d have to go to all sorts of work trying to prove there is no God in your garage. Then you could claim that there’s a pink elephant, and on and on.
This is why, if you want people to believe something the burden of proof lies on you—you can’t just turn it around and say “Well prove that it’s NOT this way!”—if that were the rule, people would troll the crap out of us with dragons and Gods and pink elephants and such.
Does that give you any clarity in whose burden it is to offer evidence regarding time copying people?
No. The additional entity is not unnecessary. The second instance is absolutely required to explain the way you reacted to my teleporter with technical failure argument.
I am surprised you didn’t update after that by recognizing that there were two separate instances, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m stumped as to why you aren’t seeing it this way.
Perhaps you are. That’s certainly not what I would be saying if someone said that to me and I gave that reply.
Proof in the sense you are discussing here is mostly useful when trying to win debates. I have no particular desire for you to believe anything in particular.
The unnecessary entity in the second case is the physically and behaviorally undetectable attribute which only the “real me” has. I don’t see any need for it, and I have no idea why you think it’s necessary to explain any part of my reaction to any of your hypotheticals.
So your definition of self stops at the physical body? Presumably mostly your brain? Would a partial brain prosthesis (say, to save someone’s life after a head trauma) mimicking the function of the removed part make the recipient less of herself? Does it apply to the spinal cord? How about some of the limbic system? Maybe everything but the neocortex can be replaced without affecting “self”? Where do you put the boundary and why?
No. As I mentioned, “This (referring to Death of Body) is important if your brain isn’t somewhere else when it happens but may not be important otherwise.”
If you get into a good replacement body before the one you’re in dies, you’re fine.
If you want to live, a continuation of your experience is required. Not the creation of a new instance of the experience. But the continuation of my (this copy’s) experience. That experience is happening in this brain, and if this brain goes away, this instance of the experience goes away, too. If there is a way to transfer this experience into something else (like by transforming it slowly, as Saturn and I got into) then Epiphany1′s experience would be continued.
If Epiphany1′s experience continues and my “self” is not significantly changed, no. That is not really a new instance. That’s more like Epiphany1.2.
Not sure why these are relevant. Ok limbic system is sort of relevant. I’d still be me with a new spinal cord or limbic system, at least according to my understanding of them. Why do you ask? Maybe there’s some complexity here I missed?
Hmmm. If my whole brain were replaced all at once, I’d definitely stop experiencing. If it were replaced one thing at a time, I may have a continuation of experience on Epiphany1, and my pattern may be preserved (there would be a transformation of the hardware that the pattern is in, but I expect my “self” to transform anyway, that pattern is not static).
I am not my hardware, but I am not my software either. I think we are both.
If my hardware were transformed over time such that my continuation of experience was not interrupted, then even if I were completely replaced with a different set of particles (or enhanced neurons or something) that as long as my “self pattern” wasn’t damaged, I would not die.
I can’t think of a way in which I could qualify that as “death”. Losing my brain might be a cause of death, but just because something can cause something else doesn’t mean it does in every instance. Heat applied to glass causes it to become brittle or melt and change form, destroying it. But we also apply heat to iron to get steel.
I’m trying to think of a metaphor that works for similar transformations… larva turns into a butterfly. A zygote turns into a baby, and a baby, into an adult. No physical parts are lost in those processes that I am aware of. I do vaguely remember something about a lot of neural connections being lost in early childhood… but I don’t remember enough about that to go anywhere with it. The chemicals in my brain are probably replaced quite frequently, if the requirements for ingesting things like tryptophan are any indicator. Things like sugar, water and nutrients are being taken in, and byproducts are being removed. But I don’t know what amount of the stuff in my skull is temporary. Hmm…
I want to challenge my theory in some way, but this is turning out to be difficult.
Maybe I will find something that invalidates this line of reasoning later.
You got anything?
So the “continuity of experience” is what you find essential for not-death? Presumably you would make exceptions for loss of consciousness and coma? Dreamless sleep? Anesthesia? Is it the loss of conscious experience that matters or what? Would a surgery (which requires putting you under) replacing some amount of your brain with prosthetics qualify as life-preserving? How much at once? Would “all of it” be too much?
Does the prosthetic part have to reside inside your brain, or can it be a machine (say, like a dialysis machine) that is wirelessly and seamlessly connected to the rest of your brain?
If it helps, Epiphany has implied elsewhere, I think, that when they talk about continuity of experience they don’t mean to exclude experience interrupted by sleep, coma, and other periods of unconsciousness, as long as there’s experience on the other end (and as long as the person doing that experiencing is the same person, rather than merely an identical person).
Right, it’s her definition of “same” vs “identical” that I am trying to tease out. Well, the boundary between the two.
Yeah that has gotten tricky. I’ve worded the question as “Same instance or different instance?”. I’ve also discovered a stickier problem—just because a re-assembled me might qualify, in all ways, as “the same instance” I am not sure that guarantees the continuation of my experience. I explore that here, in two examples being re-assembled from the same particles both in the same arrangement and in a different arrangement. (scroll to “Scenarios meant to explore instance differentiation and the relation to continuous experience”—I labeled it to make it easy to find.)
As TheOtherDave pointed out, the question is what is, in your opinion, the essence of “self”. Clearly it cannot just be all the same “particles” (molecules?), since particles in our bodies change all the time. You seem to be relating self with consciousness, but not identifying the two. That’s why I’m asking questions aimed to nail the difference. That’s why I asked these questions earlier:
“The essence of self” seems like the wrong question to me. That sounds too much like “What is the essence of your personality?” and that’s irrelevant here.
What I’m talking about is my ability to experience. We all have an ability to experience (I assume) that, although it may be shaped by our personalities, it is not our personalities. Example:
A Christian sees a Satanic ritual. A Satanist sees the same ritual.
The Christian is horrified. The Satanist thinks it’s great.
The reason one was horrified and the other thought it was great is because they have different beliefs, possibly different personality types, different life experiences and possibly even different neurological wiring.
What did they have in common?
They both saw a Satanic ritual.
THAT is the part I am trying to point out here. The part that experiences. It’s not one’s personality, or beliefs, or experiences or neurological traits.
I am saying essentially “Even if personality, beliefs, experiences and neurological differences are copied, this does nothing to guarantee that the part of you that experiences is going to survive.” Asking to define the essence of self is not relevant since I’m saying to you “Even if self is copied, this thing that I am talking about may not survive”.
Here is a clarifying example:
Transporter Malfunction Scenario
Note to self: Thinking about motion might be the key to this.
How would you convince someone who thinks instants of experience are real and memories that give instants of experience historical context are real, but doesn’t believe in any meaningful process of forward continuity from one instant of experience to another beyond the similarity of memories, to believe otherwise? There’s no difference between blinking, taking a nap and being destructively teleported in this stance. It’s all just someone experiencing something now, and someone else with very similar memories that include the present experience moment experiencing something else in the future.
Well, that makes the second time you ignored my questions, so I will tap out.
I’ve noted to self that this seems like a pattern with us, as you have complained about a question being ignored a few times now. Not sure what I should be doing about it when I don’t see a question as relevant but maybe I should just be like “I don’t see how this is relevant.”
Don’t know how I got the habit of ignoring things that seem irrelevant and moving on to whatever seems relevant but I can see why it would be annoying so I will be thinking about that. Thanks for getting me to see the pattern.