When are you not you (inspired by Nod's teleporter thread)

[Radical Edward]

in the telepoerter thread here there is a continuing theme of people no longer being themselves.

This is not really directed at deepflow, but I will reply to his post to make my point:

Deepflow said:

Originally Posted by Deepflow

im pretty sure i am fairly attached to the substance that makes up my form. Or at least my brain, assuming that contains my consciousnes. If it isnt the brain, then id like to hear your idea for what it may be. So lets just assume it is.

right, so you are deeply attached to your brain, and I guess would still consider yourself alive if you were nothng more than a brain in a jar.

now we know that neurons slowly die, some are replaced, and some are not. now lets say that in the future someone came up with a technology that allowed them to replace each biological neuron with a machine version that does exactly the same thing. would you always still be you, and at what point would you no longer be you.



alternatively say your brain were hooked up to an incrementally more and more powerful computer (which is itself far more powerful than your brain). Slowly but surely, all of your thought processes expand into this computer and eventually your thoughts are present primarily in the computer, and the brain is so irrelevant, that it is little more than a present day neuron (but it is still doing as much as it is now)

someone squashes your brain. are you dead?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Hell no.

[Prawn]

I reckon so. The computerised version of "me" imo is a simulation in this scenario - albeit an extremely good simulation.

[Radical Edward]

Originally Posted by Prawn

I reckon so. The computerised version of "me" imo is a simulation in this scenario - albeit an extremely good simulation.

aah but you have grown into this computer just like you grow into your own brain, which was initially empty of any memories and such.

[Cooling]

I'll see if I can draw the link between your supercomputer idea and the Chinese Brain thought experiment.

It isnt quite the same, in that the argument is based on replication not replacement. But its in the same spirit, and asks similar questions.

First we implant a device inside your brain that registers all the myriad nueron firings going on inside.

Second we hook that up to a computer capable of sending text messages.

Third we give every Chinese person a cellphone and a set of numbers to text when they recieve a message.

The device inside your brain will cause the computer to output certain text 'packets' of information out to the chinese population, who then look at their lists and pass the information along. The point of the experiment is not to get too bogged down in the specifics of how this system would operate; but rather to look at the overall system and ask the question:

Is the population of China another manifestation of your brain? Your thought processes, feelings, emotions etc. If the system is designed in such a way that it EXACTLY mimics the neural processes in your brain, then it seems logically plausible - although at the same time manifestly absurd - to claim that the population of China exhibits an overarching meta-consciousness (ie You) via the cellphones and text messages.

China is a machine, and yet its also 'you' at the same time. Or is it? Why not?

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by Cooling

Is the population of China another manifestation of your brain?

Assuming the network has a similar ability to the brain to change over time, then yes. If not, then no.

[Cooling]

You could add another ad hoc alteration to the device in order to 'edit' the lists given to the Chinese.

[pyirt]

I don`t like this comparison between brains and machines. The brain is n`t just a load of neurones transmitting information like the wiring in a computer. Much information is transmitted by hormones and neuro transmitters by diffusion.

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by pyirt

I don`t like this comparison between brains and machines. The brain is n`t just a load of neurones transmitting information like the wiring in a computer. Much information is transmitted by hormones and neuro transmitters by diffusion.

As we don't know quite how the brain operates, it's rather difficult to produce a perfectly analogous situation.

However, as we're not making such a system, the precise nature of the device is immaterial.

[vampire_lestat]

I'm not me on tuesdays.

[Nodrog]

"I", "me", and "you" are words. Like all words, they evolved within language in order to play a specific set of roles - to make distinctions which were thought to be necessary to a given linguistic community at a given point in history. As such, we all have a fairly clear idea how they are to be used in situations similar to one the ones in which they were introduced - the situations we encounter every day where there are established rules for using these words, and hence where problems of personal identity do not arise.

But once we consider situations which are very different from the ones in which our vocabulary of personal identity is normally used, it becomes unclear how to proceed. Situations involving 'teleportation', 'neuron replacement' and 'being hooked up to computers' do not arise at the day to day level, so we have never found it necessary to specify any conventions to govern how our 'personal identity' words should be used here. If a situation is significantly different to the normal ones in which we apply words like "I" and "you", we will reach a point where we are forced to say something like "I honestly dont know if I would call that 'me'". This isnt a problem - it just shows that we are trying to apply words to new situations, where there are no established conventions governing their correct usage (and where none can any be inducted from considering the 'normal' situations). At this point, we will probably evolve new rules for using these words.

Suppose I were to undergo teleportation. We might agree to use the word 'Nodrog' to refer to whoever steps out of the teleporter at the other end, and I would continue to think of myself as being 'me'. But we could also agree to say that 'Nodrog'' died during teleportation, and to call the teleported person 'Nodrog2'' - he would then think of himself as being 'me2'. If Nodrog2 was to be teleported, the resulting person would be 'Nodrog3', and so on. Neither of these two conventions is 'right' - they are just different ways of describing the same situation. We all agree on the facts (the first body got vaporised and the second was recreated) - we are just using different words to describe what is going on. There are many imaginable ways in which we could extend our language to cover teleportation and neuron replacement, but in practice only one convention will be adopted, and once everyone gets used to it, it will seem to be the most 'natural' way. If we find people in other cultures using a set of different linguistic conventions for describing teleportation, we will probably be surprised (just as people are often surprised by Chinese people not using nouns in the same way we do).

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Cooling

China is a machine, and yet its also 'you' at the same time. Or is it? Why not?

A vital part of being a person is the possession of a first person view - the ability to have phenomenological experiences. It's not clear how the population of China, as a whole, would have this. For a start, you'd need to somehow connect them to a form of sensory apparatus. Secondly theres the problem of localisation - I feel 'myself' as being in my head. This is presumably because my sense organs are located there, and I experience the world from the viewpoint of my skull. I have no idea where the population of China would 'feel' itself to be, or even if this question makes sense (I suspect not). A similar question arises if you imagine we could somehow take brain out of the head of a living human, and put it somewhere else (maybe in a jar, or even implant it in their bum). All the connections between the brain and the sense organs would remain during and after this procedure, and the brain would continue to function as normal. Would this change how the person experienced the world? Would they still feel their mind as being localised inside their skull? Certain answers do seem to suggest themselves, but I dont think any could really be supported by philosophical reasoning alone - we'd have to actually do the experiment and ask the person.

It is possible, though highly unlikely, that once you got the Chinese people acting like this, some sort of non-material 'spirit' would spontaneously come into being and start to have phenomenological experiences, just as my mind comes into being when my brain and sense organs act in a certain way. But I'm not sure whether you'd want to call this a scientific question, a philosophical one, or what.

[Nusselt]

within very very specific boundaries you could argue that the zeitgeist of a particular nation is what you're describing, alternatively could try applying non-individualistic population theories to the chinese (lol commies lol) like that of an ant colony for example. Incidently in terms of a meta intelligence that chap who i linked to with the random number generators was trying to find exactly that (he is a nut tho).

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Nusselt

within very very specific boundaries you could argue that the zeitgeist of a particular nation is what you're describing, alternatively could try applying non-individualistic population theories to the chinese (lol commies lol) like that of an ant colony for example. Incidently in terms of a meta intelligence that chap who i linked to with the random number generators was trying to find exactly that (he is a nut tho).

The ant colony is a nice example. But I dont think it could be said that the ant colony is conscious - there doesnt seem to be anything that it would be like to 'be' an ant colony. We can at least imagine experiencing the world from the point of view of a bat or a fish even if we dont know what it would be like, but I dont know what sense to attach to talk about "the point of view of a group of ants".

In one of the Discworld novels the witch who could project herself into animals and see the world through their eyes, projected herself into a swarm of bees. She said you "end up with your mind flying in all different directions" :/

[NEWSBOT3]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

In one of the Discworld novels the witch who could project herself into animals and see the world through their eyes, projected herself into a swarm of bees. She said you "end up with your mind flying in all different directions" :/

the ****

did you just quote discworld as fact ?

[JamMak]

Originally Posted by NEWSBOT3

the ****

did you just quote discworld as fact ?

Is there not a 'Science of Discworld'!

[dda]

After four beers and a pepperoni pizza.

[JamMak]

Originally Posted by dda

After four beers and a pepperoni pizza.

Question is: Is the mess left on the pavement after four(teen) beers a part of you or not?! Was it ever? When would it become a part of you? And who cleans it up?

[dda]

Originally Posted by JamMak

Question is1) Is the mess left on the pavement after four(teen) beers a part of you or not?! (2) Was it ever? (3)When would it become a part of you? (4)And who cleans it up? (5)

1. No. Most of it was only passing through in any event.
2. see #1
3. The pizza or the beer?
4. Not me, I'm not myself.
5. Aren't we all?

[JamMak]

I found this:

Miller explains that they had both been thinking about personal identity in the wrong way. Picking up Weirob's previous river analogy, Miller suggests that personal identity is more like the flow of a river or the expanse of a road, than it is like they were supposing the first night. Miller's idea is like this: Take Franklin St., as an example. Now suppose we take someone new to Chapel Hill and show him Franklin St. in front of Hazmat and CD Alley. We point to the street and say, "This is Franklin St." Then we walk along for awhile and point to the street between Linda's and the Quad and say, "And this is Franklin St." Our visitor should not be confused, even if the same road in two different places looks a bit different; for something to be the same road, it need not be the same in all of its parts. Rather, what makes something the same road is that it is connected in the right way by continuous road bits--e.g., what makes Franklin St. Franklin St. is that each of the bits of road that make up Franklin St. are connected in the right ways with the rest of it.

Likewise, Miller thinks, with personal identity. What makes a person the same person over time is that it is connected in the right ways by continuous conscious bits. That is, so long as there is psychological continuity--a continuous flow of consciousness or psychology--this is all that is need for a person to be the same person over time. In this way, Miller dsicards the the thought that we are identitcal to some immaterial floating soul, and dismisses Weirob's idea that we are identical to material bodies. Rather, personal identity is the whole stretch of conscious moments, connected together in the right psychological way.

http://www.unc.edu/~megw/Perry.html

And thought it relevant. This idea I agree with