Suppose all the memories in one person were wiped and replaced with your memories. I believe the new body would claim to be you. It would introspect as you might now, and find your memories as its own, and say “I am Dahlen in a new body.”
But would it be you? If the copying had been non-destructive, then Dahlen in the old body still exists and would “know” on meeting Dahlen in the new body that Dahlen in the new body was really someone else who just got all Dahlen’s memories up to that point.
Meanwhile, Dahlen in the new body would have capabilities, moods, reactions, which would depend on the substrate more than the memories. The functional parts of the brain, the wiring-other-than-memories as it were, would be different in the new body. Dahlen in the new body would probably behave in ways that were similar to how the old body with its old memories behaved. It would still think it was Dahlen, but as Dahlen in the old body might think, that would just be its opinion and obviously it is mistaken.
As to uploading, it is more than the brain that needs to be emulated. We have hormonal systems that mediate fear and joy and probably a broad range of other feelings. I have a sense of my body that I am in some sense constantly aware of which would have to be simulated and would probably be different in an em of me than it is in me, just as it would be different if my memories were put in another body.
Would anybody other than Dahlen in the old body have a reason to doubt that Dahlen in the new body wasn’t really Dahlen? I don’t think so, and especially Dahlen in the new body would probably be pretty sure it was Dahlen, even if it claimed to rationally understand how it might not be. It would know it was somebody, and wouldn’t be able to come up with any other compelling idea for who it was other than Dahlen.
I understand all this. And it’s precisely the sort of personality preservation that I find largely useless and would like to avoid. I’m not talking about copying memories from one brain to another; I’m talking about preserving the sense of self in such a way that the person undergoing this procedure would have the following subjective experience: be anesthetized (probably), undergo surgery (because I picture it as some form of surgery), “wake up in new body”. (The old body would likely get buried, because the whole purpose of performing such a transfer would be to save dying—very old or terminally ill—people’s lives.) There would be only one extant copy of that person’s memories, and yet they wouldn’t “die”; there would be the same sort of continuity of self experienced by people before and after going to sleep. The one who would “die” is technically the person in the body which constitutes the recipient of the transfer (who may have been grown just for this purpose and kept unconscious its whole life). That’s what I mean. Think of it as more or less what happens to the main character in the movie Avatar.
I realize the whole thing doesn’t sound very scientific, but have I managed to get my point across?
As to uploading, it is more than the brain that needs to be emulated. We have hormonal systems that mediate fear and joy and probably a broad range of other feelings. I have a sense of my body that I am in some sense constantly aware of which would have to be simulated and would probably be different in an em of me than it is in me, just as it would be different if my memories were put in another body.
Yes, but… Everybody’s physiological basis for feelings is more or less the same; granted, there are structural differences that cause variation in innate personality traits and other mental functions, and a different brain might employ the body’s neurotransmitter reserve in different ways (I think), but the whole system is sufficiently similar from human to human that we can relate to each other’s experiences. There would be differences, and the differences would cause the person to behave differently in the “new body” than it did in the “old body”, but I don’t think one would have to move the glands or limbic system or what-have-you in addition to just the brain.
I understand what you are going for. And I present the following problem with it.
Dahlen A is put to unconscious. While A is unconscious memories are completely copied to unconscious body B. Dahlen B is woken up. Your scenario is fulfilled, Dahlen B has entirely the memories of being put to sleep in body A and waking up in body B. Dahlen B examines his memories and sees no gap in his existence other than the “normal” one of the anesthesis to render Dahlen A unconscious. Your desires for a transfer scenario are fulfilled!
Scenario 1: Dahlen A is killed while unconscious and body disposed of. Nothing ever interferes with the perception of Dahlen A and everyone around that there has been a transfer of consciousness from Dahlen A to Dahlen B.
Scenario 2: A few days later Dahlen A is woken up. Dahlen A of course has the sense of continuous consciousness just as he would if he had undergone a gall bladder surgery. Dahlen A and Dahlen B are brought together with other friends of Dahlen. Dahlen A is introspectively sure that he is the “real” Dahlen and no transfer ever took place. Dahlen B is introspectively sure that he is the “real” Dahlen and that a transfer did take place.
Your scenario assumes that there can be only one Dahlen. That the essence of Dahlen is a unique thing in the universe, and that it cannot be copied so that there are two. I think this assumption is false. I think if you make a “good enough” copy of Dahlen that you will have two essences of Dahlen, and that at no point does a single essence of Dahlen exist, and move from one body to another.
Further, if I am right and the essence of Dahlen can be copied, multiplied, and each possessor of a copy has the complete introspective property of seeing that it is in fact Dahlen, then it is unscientific to think that in the absence of copying, that your day to day existence is anything more than this. That each day you wake up, each moment you experience, your “continuity” is something you experience subjectively as a current state due to your examination of your memories. More important, your continuity is NOT something “real,” not something which either other observers, or even yourself and your copies introspecting from within the brain of Dahlen A, B, C etc. can ever distinguish from “real” continuity vs just the sense of continuity which follows from a good quality memory copy.
That there is a single essence of Dahlen which normally stays in one body, but which can be moved from one body to another, or into a machine, I believe is a false assumption, and that it is falsified by these thought experiments. As much as you and I might like to believe there is an essential continuity which we preserve as long as we stay alive, a rational examination of how we experience that continuity shows that it is not a real continuity, that copies could be created which would experience that continuity in as real a sense as the original whether or not the original is kept around.
By this reasoning, isn’t it okay to kill someone (or at least to kill them in their sleep)? After all, if everyone’s life is a constant sequence of different entities, what you’re killing would have ceased existing anyway. You’re just preventing a new entity from coming into existence. But preventing a new entity from coming into existence isn’t murder, even if the new entity resembles a previous one.
By this reasoning, isn’t it okay to kill someone (or at least to kill them in their sleep)?
You tell me.
If you don’t like the moral implications of a certain hypothesis, this should have precisely zero effect on your estimation of the probability that this hypothesis is correct. The entire history of the growing acceptance of evolution as a “true” theory follows precisely this course. Many people HATED the implication that man is just another animal. That a sentiment for morality evolved because groups in which that sentiment existed were able to out-compete groups in which that sentiment was weaker. That the statue of David or the theory of General Relativity, or the love you feel for your mother or your dog arise as a consequence, ultimately, of mindless random variations producing populations from which some do better than others and pass down the variations they have to the next generation.
So if the implications of the continuity of consciousness are morally distasteful to you, do not make the mistake of thinking that makes them any less likely to be true. A study of science and scientific progress should cure you of this very human tendency.
If your reasoning implies ~X, then X implies that your reasoning is wrong. And if X implies that your reasoning is wrong, then evidence for X is evidence against your reasoning.
In other words, you have no idea what you are talking about. The fact that something has “distasteful implications” (that is, that it implies ~X, and there is evidence for X) does mean it is less likely to be true.
Historically, the hypothesis that the earth orbited the sun had the distasteful implications that we were not the center of the universe. Galileo was prosecuted for this belief and recanted it under threat. I am surprised that you think the distasteful implications for this belief were evidence that the earth did not in fact orbit the sun.
Historically the hypothesis that humans evolved from non-human animals had the distasteful implications that humans had not been created by god in his image and provided with immortal souls by god. I am surprised that you consider this distaste to be evidence that evolution is an incorrect theory of the origin of species, including our own.
This is a rationality message board, devoted to, among other things, listing the common mistakes that humans make in trying to determine the truth. I would have bet dollars against donuts that rejecting the truth of a hypothesis because its implications were distasteful would have been an obvious candidate for that list, and I would have apparently lost.
If you had reason to believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, the fact that orbiting the sun contradicts that is evidence against the Earth orbiting the sun. It is related to proof by contradiction; if your premises lead you to a contradictory conclusion, then one of your premises is bad. And if one of your premises is something in which you are justified in having extremely high confidence, such as “there is such a thing as murder”, it’s probably the other premise that needs to be discarded.
I am surprised that you consider this distaste to be evidence that evolution is an incorrect theory of the origin of species
If you have reason to believe that humans have souls, and evolution implies that they don’t, that is evidence against evolution. Of course, how good that is as evidence against evolution depends on how good your reason is to believe that humans have souls. In the case of souls, that isn’t really very good.
Evidence that killing is wrong is certainly possible, but your statement “I think that killing is wrong” is such weak evidence that it is fair for us to dismiss it. You may provide reasons why we should think killing is wrong, and maybe we will accept your reasons, but so far you have not given us anything worth considering.
I think that you are also equivocating on the word ‘imply’, suggesting that ‘distasteful implications’ means something like ‘logical implications’.
Suppose all the memories in one person were wiped and replaced with your memories. I believe the new body would claim to be you. It would introspect as you might now, and find your memories as its own, and say “I am Dahlen in a new body.”
But would it be you? If the copying had been non-destructive, then Dahlen in the old body still exists and would “know” on meeting Dahlen in the new body that Dahlen in the new body was really someone else who just got all Dahlen’s memories up to that point.
Meanwhile, Dahlen in the new body would have capabilities, moods, reactions, which would depend on the substrate more than the memories. The functional parts of the brain, the wiring-other-than-memories as it were, would be different in the new body. Dahlen in the new body would probably behave in ways that were similar to how the old body with its old memories behaved. It would still think it was Dahlen, but as Dahlen in the old body might think, that would just be its opinion and obviously it is mistaken.
As to uploading, it is more than the brain that needs to be emulated. We have hormonal systems that mediate fear and joy and probably a broad range of other feelings. I have a sense of my body that I am in some sense constantly aware of which would have to be simulated and would probably be different in an em of me than it is in me, just as it would be different if my memories were put in another body.
Would anybody other than Dahlen in the old body have a reason to doubt that Dahlen in the new body wasn’t really Dahlen? I don’t think so, and especially Dahlen in the new body would probably be pretty sure it was Dahlen, even if it claimed to rationally understand how it might not be. It would know it was somebody, and wouldn’t be able to come up with any other compelling idea for who it was other than Dahlen.
I understand all this. And it’s precisely the sort of personality preservation that I find largely useless and would like to avoid. I’m not talking about copying memories from one brain to another; I’m talking about preserving the sense of self in such a way that the person undergoing this procedure would have the following subjective experience: be anesthetized (probably), undergo surgery (because I picture it as some form of surgery), “wake up in new body”. (The old body would likely get buried, because the whole purpose of performing such a transfer would be to save dying—very old or terminally ill—people’s lives.) There would be only one extant copy of that person’s memories, and yet they wouldn’t “die”; there would be the same sort of continuity of self experienced by people before and after going to sleep. The one who would “die” is technically the person in the body which constitutes the recipient of the transfer (who may have been grown just for this purpose and kept unconscious its whole life). That’s what I mean. Think of it as more or less what happens to the main character in the movie Avatar.
I realize the whole thing doesn’t sound very scientific, but have I managed to get my point across?
Yes, but… Everybody’s physiological basis for feelings is more or less the same; granted, there are structural differences that cause variation in innate personality traits and other mental functions, and a different brain might employ the body’s neurotransmitter reserve in different ways (I think), but the whole system is sufficiently similar from human to human that we can relate to each other’s experiences. There would be differences, and the differences would cause the person to behave differently in the “new body” than it did in the “old body”, but I don’t think one would have to move the glands or limbic system or what-have-you in addition to just the brain.
I understand what you are going for. And I present the following problem with it.
Dahlen A is put to unconscious. While A is unconscious memories are completely copied to unconscious body B. Dahlen B is woken up. Your scenario is fulfilled, Dahlen B has entirely the memories of being put to sleep in body A and waking up in body B. Dahlen B examines his memories and sees no gap in his existence other than the “normal” one of the anesthesis to render Dahlen A unconscious. Your desires for a transfer scenario are fulfilled!
Scenario 1: Dahlen A is killed while unconscious and body disposed of. Nothing ever interferes with the perception of Dahlen A and everyone around that there has been a transfer of consciousness from Dahlen A to Dahlen B.
Scenario 2: A few days later Dahlen A is woken up. Dahlen A of course has the sense of continuous consciousness just as he would if he had undergone a gall bladder surgery. Dahlen A and Dahlen B are brought together with other friends of Dahlen. Dahlen A is introspectively sure that he is the “real” Dahlen and no transfer ever took place. Dahlen B is introspectively sure that he is the “real” Dahlen and that a transfer did take place.
Your scenario assumes that there can be only one Dahlen. That the essence of Dahlen is a unique thing in the universe, and that it cannot be copied so that there are two. I think this assumption is false. I think if you make a “good enough” copy of Dahlen that you will have two essences of Dahlen, and that at no point does a single essence of Dahlen exist, and move from one body to another.
Further, if I am right and the essence of Dahlen can be copied, multiplied, and each possessor of a copy has the complete introspective property of seeing that it is in fact Dahlen, then it is unscientific to think that in the absence of copying, that your day to day existence is anything more than this. That each day you wake up, each moment you experience, your “continuity” is something you experience subjectively as a current state due to your examination of your memories. More important, your continuity is NOT something “real,” not something which either other observers, or even yourself and your copies introspecting from within the brain of Dahlen A, B, C etc. can ever distinguish from “real” continuity vs just the sense of continuity which follows from a good quality memory copy.
That there is a single essence of Dahlen which normally stays in one body, but which can be moved from one body to another, or into a machine, I believe is a false assumption, and that it is falsified by these thought experiments. As much as you and I might like to believe there is an essential continuity which we preserve as long as we stay alive, a rational examination of how we experience that continuity shows that it is not a real continuity, that copies could be created which would experience that continuity in as real a sense as the original whether or not the original is kept around.
By this reasoning, isn’t it okay to kill someone (or at least to kill them in their sleep)? After all, if everyone’s life is a constant sequence of different entities, what you’re killing would have ceased existing anyway. You’re just preventing a new entity from coming into existence. But preventing a new entity from coming into existence isn’t murder, even if the new entity resembles a previous one.
You tell me.
If you don’t like the moral implications of a certain hypothesis, this should have precisely zero effect on your estimation of the probability that this hypothesis is correct. The entire history of the growing acceptance of evolution as a “true” theory follows precisely this course. Many people HATED the implication that man is just another animal. That a sentiment for morality evolved because groups in which that sentiment existed were able to out-compete groups in which that sentiment was weaker. That the statue of David or the theory of General Relativity, or the love you feel for your mother or your dog arise as a consequence, ultimately, of mindless random variations producing populations from which some do better than others and pass down the variations they have to the next generation.
So if the implications of the continuity of consciousness are morally distasteful to you, do not make the mistake of thinking that makes them any less likely to be true. A study of science and scientific progress should cure you of this very human tendency.
If your reasoning implies ~X, then X implies that your reasoning is wrong. And if X implies that your reasoning is wrong, then evidence for X is evidence against your reasoning.
In other words, you have no idea what you are talking about. The fact that something has “distasteful implications” (that is, that it implies ~X, and there is evidence for X) does mean it is less likely to be true.
Help me out, readers.
The fact that something has distasteful implications means it is less likely to be true.
[pollid:802]
Historically, the hypothesis that the earth orbited the sun had the distasteful implications that we were not the center of the universe. Galileo was prosecuted for this belief and recanted it under threat. I am surprised that you think the distasteful implications for this belief were evidence that the earth did not in fact orbit the sun.
Historically the hypothesis that humans evolved from non-human animals had the distasteful implications that humans had not been created by god in his image and provided with immortal souls by god. I am surprised that you consider this distaste to be evidence that evolution is an incorrect theory of the origin of species, including our own.
This is a rationality message board, devoted to, among other things, listing the common mistakes that humans make in trying to determine the truth. I would have bet dollars against donuts that rejecting the truth of a hypothesis because its implications were distasteful would have been an obvious candidate for that list, and I would have apparently lost.
If you had reason to believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, the fact that orbiting the sun contradicts that is evidence against the Earth orbiting the sun. It is related to proof by contradiction; if your premises lead you to a contradictory conclusion, then one of your premises is bad. And if one of your premises is something in which you are justified in having extremely high confidence, such as “there is such a thing as murder”, it’s probably the other premise that needs to be discarded.
If you have reason to believe that humans have souls, and evolution implies that they don’t, that is evidence against evolution. Of course, how good that is as evidence against evolution depends on how good your reason is to believe that humans have souls. In the case of souls, that isn’t really very good.
Evidence that killing is wrong is certainly possible, but your statement “I think that killing is wrong” is such weak evidence that it is fair for us to dismiss it. You may provide reasons why we should think killing is wrong, and maybe we will accept your reasons, but so far you have not given us anything worth considering.
I think that you are also equivocating on the word ‘imply’, suggesting that ‘distasteful implications’ means something like ‘logical implications’.