The hard problem of consciousness [Archive] - Page 8

Belz...

6th August 2008, 10:13 AM

To me your position is still dualistic as I figure that considering the body as "the experiencer" is still dualism. To me it's shifting from the classical Cartesian perspective to a pseudo-monist one. Is the body actually "experiencing", or is this terminology merely created by the thinking brain to articulate?

Gosh you're projecting.

I'm not sure about what happens in deep sleep but I think you have to come out of it to be aware.

You're not aware while sleeping ? I'd hate to be you. Me ? I can guarantee that nobody can even step into my bedroom without me waking up. And I'm sure as hell aware of those dreams I'm having.

How, retrospectively, do you actually know that this body is now the same one that went to sleep?

Why would I assume otherwise ?

To answer a question you might ask in the near future, my memories might have been created a second ago and I wouldn't tell the difference.

However, why don't you answer MY question ? If the teleporter instead copies the person, does this vaunted consciousness now reside within BOTH bodies ? And, if not, what makes you think the original one resides in the teleported person ?

In common parlance there's no difference between saying "no one" and "nobody." But on this topic there is a considerable difference, imo. Here, to me, "one" infers selfhood as opposed to simply a lump of flesh and bone.

The copy is an exact duplicate, but it is not the same body.

Belz...

6th August 2008, 10:14 AM

In what way? As soon as we have two Darats in two different environments they will start having different experiences. Even if they are in the same environment their perceptions and experiences will start being different. In both cases they will become two different people.

Yes but the original HAS been killed. Although it makes no difference to the world that Darat A has been destroyed in favour of Darat B -- because to them there IS no difference -- it sure as hell makes a difference to Darat A.

Belz...

6th August 2008, 10:15 AM

Because Belz... knows that whilst a Belz...B will be created Belz... is still being destroyed.

Precisely. I don't want to cease to exist. Why is that so hard for them to understand ? I don't really care about my copy.

Nick227

6th August 2008, 11:16 AM

Why are you separating the body and the brain? No wonder you see dualism.

The person--the organism--acting in its environment, is "the experiencer". There is no separate part of the organism that is the experiencer, let alone some circularly inferred mental part.

Well, OK, that seems monist to me, as a theory. Can you provide any neurological data to substantiate the model? Or refute it. I ask because it does sound to me like a theoretical means to avoid really dealing with the issue of how selfhood is experienced. I could be wrong but that's how it seems at the moment.

Nick

Nick227

6th August 2008, 11:30 AM

Why would I assume otherwise ?

Well, the nature of the experiment is to give one the opportunity examine their beliefs in the nature of selfhood. I'm not compelling you to undertake it. If you do want to then you simply have to ask yourself - how do I actually know that the body is the same? If your position is that it couldn't possibly happen so I'm not going to even look, then I guess that's your position. Fair enough. Personally I find it quite an interesting and revealing question.

However, why don't you answer MY question ? If the teleporter instead copies the person, does this vaunted consciousness now reside within BOTH bodies ? And, if not, what makes you think the original one resides in the teleported person ?

I don't know what you mean by "consciousness" here, which is what I asked about before. What "vaunted consciousness?" It's just a body. It wakes up, reconstructs its sense of selfhood and goes about it's daily business. I'm totally happy to answer your question if you can explain me more what you're actually asking.

Nick

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 11:33 AM

Precisely. I don't want to cease to exist. Why is that so hard for them to understand ? I don't really care about my copy.

I believe the copy is "me", and I don't care about the original "me". That's where we differ.

Leon

Nick227

6th August 2008, 11:34 AM

Yes but the original HAS been killed. Although it makes no difference to the world that Darat A has been destroyed in favour of Darat B -- because to them there IS no difference -- it sure as hell makes a difference to Darat A.

You're right. However, the level of difference that it makes depends on (a) your personal conception of selfhood, and (b) the degree to which you can override your inevitable fear of death through your conviction in this belief, that is if the belief applies here.

Nick

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 11:41 AM

Nick227

6th August 2008, 11:43 AM

I believe the copy is "me", and I don't care about the original "me". That's where we differ.

Leon

Yes.

As I read him, Belz believes that he absolutely is the body. Thus if the body dies that's it. It's natural that he doesn't want to enter the teleporter.

Personally I feel that the creation of personal identity is a generic brain process that is constantly starting up and falling away, and tied together mostly only by memory. Thus I'm not ecstatic about entering the teleporter but it doesn't seem like the end of the world to me.

Thinking about it a little more, I don't know that the teleporter actually does provide a good distinction between monists and what I was considering pseudo-monists. That's too much for it maybe. It does allow some insights into the concept of selfhood though.

Nick

Nick227

6th August 2008, 11:48 AM

On a personal note, I've been quite close to dying on a couple of occasions and I've seen several people die, and it wasn't a big deal. That's probably why I have a different view from that of Belz.

Leon

Yes, a close friend of mine died a couple of years back. I was very upset whilst he was in the hospital bed, it also was quite sudden and unexpected. However, I distinctly recall also for a period feeling quite jealous that he was very shortly going to find out what dying was like. It was bizarre.

Nick

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 11:55 AM

Well, OK, that still seems reasonably monist to me, as a theory. Can you provide any neurological data to substantiate the model? Or refute it. I ask because it does sound to me like a theoretical means to avoid really dealing with the issue of how selfhood is experienced. I could be wrong but that's how it seems at the moment.

Nick

What? Neurological data to substantiate the model?

Ok. Every functioning brain ever observed has been functioning while still a part of the complete body of the organism. The sensory nerves which provide data to this functioning brain are actually located in the part of the body not containing the brain. The motor nerves connect said brain to the other parts of the body.

We can speak of localized function of areas of the brain only by extreme measures. If we wish to look at an actual functioning organism, the entire body (including the brain) is active. Consider, say, playing the violin (this example stolen shamelessly from the book "Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy"): certainly there is a motor projection area on the frontal cortex immediately adjacent to the sensory projection area on the parietal lobe. This frontal cortex, when stimulated experimentally, conveys action potentials to the peripheral nerves, which stimulate muscles, moving various parts of the body. In the case of playing the violin, some of those will be in the arms, hands, and fingers, but others will be in the neck, in the torso, in the legs. Of course, these frontal projection areas do not fire independently; they are coordinated by an area just forward, still in the frontal lobe. Other areas in the frontal lobe are in part associated with the deliberate planning (say, processing the environmental reinforcers or punishers involved in choosing one piece of music over another, or in choosing when to turn a page, how often to practice, etc.). The Parietal lobe is chiefly (but not solely) responsible for the organization of and routing of sensory input--the feedback of the string and neck of the violin on the finger, the strength of pressure of the bow, etc.. The occipital is one of the areas responsible for the processing of visual stimuli--not just the music on the page, but the conductor (if there is one), the audience, and more, in multiple throughput analyses, separately responding to shapes, colors, faces, movement, and much much more. The temporal lobe will, among other things, serve as conduit for auditory stimuli--is this note flat? Should I slow down a bit to take advantage of the echo in this concert hall? Did that bastard in the third row just cough? The cerebellum, at a non-conscious level (btw, the vast majority of the above was non-conscious), coordinates and smoothes the muscular movements; the medulla adjusts pulse and respiration (certainly no consciousness without those, at least for long!); the spinal cord itself processes spinal reflexes necessary to keep you upright while you are sawing away at that fiddle (thus, the knee-jerk response).

Not all stimuli will be responded to, and it is not at all solely the brain's job to focus. Not all stimuli will reach the threshold level required to produce that first action potential. Some action potentials will send excitatory, others inhibitory, signals, and these may cancel each other out at a level before you even get to the brain.

Not all movement signals are equal, either--through practice, some movements gain an automaticity, an independence from the necessity of conscious control. A volley of signals, without feedback, are part of the process (they do not *cause* it, they *are* part of it) of a rapid trill high up the neck of the violin.

There is no one place to look for the "part of brain responsible for playing violin". It is clearly and unambiguously something that the entire musician, the entire organism in its context, does. To look for it in part of the brain is a fool's errand.

*deep breath*

And there is more, of course. Look at the evolutionary history of the brain (http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/05.html). It is, of course, an evolutionary history of whole organisms--how could it not be? But more importantly, we can see that the brain develops to serve the organism, and not vice versa.

(glad I found that link--that was going to be a lot of typing on my part)

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 11:57 AM

Yes.

As I read him, Belz believes that he absolutely is the body. Thus if the body dies that's it. It's natural that he doesn't want to enter the teleporter.

Personally I feel that the creation of personal identity is a generic brain process that is constantly starting up and falling away, and tied together mostly only by memory. Thus I'm not ecstatic about entering the teleporter but it doesn't seem like the end of the world to me.

Nick

That's something like Susan Greenfield's view, in that Brainspotting programme I mentioned. She believes that consciousness is generated by constantly changing assemblies of neurons (there can be several) and the largest or most important one at any instant is the experienced "consciousness". It seems to be a testable theory:

http://www.imprint.co.uk/pdf2/Greenfield.pdf

Leon

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 12:03 PM

Yes, a close friend of mine died a couple of years back. I was very upset whilst he was in the hospital bed, it also was quite sudden and unexpected. However, I distinctly recall also for a period feeling quite jealous that he was very shortly going to find out what dying was like. It was bizarre.

Nick

A couple of days after major surgery had saved my life, probably because of all the drugs I was on, I had a very vivid dream in which I died. In the instant before I "died" I "knew" for sure that there was no afterlife. I then woke up. It was very comforting. I mentioned it to one of the nurses and heard later that they had all been discussing it and found it very scary.

Leon

Belz...

6th August 2008, 01:05 PM

Well, the nature of the experiment is to give one the opportunity examine their beliefs in the nature of selfhood.

Two apples aren't the same, no matter how close a copy one is of the other. Same with people. I don't see the problem, there.

If you do want to then you simply have to ask yourself - how do I actually know that the body is the same? If your position is that it couldn't possibly happen so I'm not going to even look, then I guess that's your position. Fair enough. Personally I find it quite an interesting and revealing question.

I simply don't understand why you ask the question, because it makes no sense to me.

I don't know what you mean by "consciousness" here

We've been talking about it for 45 pages, now. I'd think you have a pretty good idea what we mean by it.

It's just a body. It wakes up, reconstructs its sense of selfhood and goes about it's daily business.

"Reconstructs its sense of selfhood" ? When did it lose it ?

I'm totally happy to answer your question if you can explain me more what you're actually asking.

If I make a copy of you, will one body be aware of what the other is thinking ? I assume the answer is no. If my assumption is correct, why would we think otherwise about a teleporter ? The original "awareness" is destroyed along with the original body.

Belz...

6th August 2008, 01:06 PM

I believe the copy is "me", and I don't care about the original "me". That's where we differ.

No, the COPY believes that it is you and doesn't care about the original. The original pretty much cares about itself, but after the teleporting is done, it's dead.

Belz...

6th August 2008, 01:08 PM

You're right. However, the level of difference that it makes depends on (a) your personal conception of selfhood, and (b) the degree to which you can override your inevitable fear of death through your conviction in this belief, that is if the belief applies here.

It isn't about belief. The original is DESTROYED by the machine. There is no possible discussion about it. If, for some reason -- oh, I don't know, natural instincts -- you don't want to die, then it follows that you don't want to step into the machine. From YOUR point of view, YOU will die. Everybody else doesn't care.

As I read him, Belz believes that he absolutely is the body.

What else would I be ?

Personally I feel that the creation of personal identity is a generic brain process that is constantly starting up and falling away, and tied together mostly only by memory.

We probably agree about that, and I think I understand now what you meant by "persistent". But a copy of me still wouldn't be me.

Nick227

6th August 2008, 01:12 PM

What? Neurological data to substantiate the model?

Ok. Every functioning brain ever observed has been functioning while still a part of the complete body of the organism. The sensory nerves which provide data to this functioning brain are actually located in the part of the body not containing the brain. The motor nerves connect said brain to the other parts of the body.

We can speak of localized function of areas of the brain only by extreme measures. If we wish to look at an actual functioning organism, the entire body (including the brain) is active. Consider, say, playing the violin (this example stolen shamelessly from the book "Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy"): certainly there is a motor projection area on the frontal cortex immediately adjacent to the sensory projection area on the parietal lobe. This frontal cortex, when stimulated experimentally, conveys action potentials to the peripheral nerves, which stimulate muscles, moving various parts of the body. In the case of playing the violin, some of those will be in the arms, hands, and fingers, but others will be in the neck, in the torso, in the legs. Of course, these frontal projection areas do not fire independently; they are coordinated by an area just forward, still in the frontal lobe. Other areas in the frontal lobe are in part associated with the deliberate planning (say, processing the environmental reinforcers or punishers involved in choosing one piece of music over another, or in choosing when to turn a page, how often to practice, etc.). The Parietal lobe is chiefly (but not solely) responsible for the organization of and routing of sensory input--the feedback of the string and neck of the violin on the finger, the strength of pressure of the bow, etc.. The occipital is one of the areas responsible for the processing of visual stimuli--not just the music on the page, but the conductor (if there is one), the audience, and more, in multiple throughput analyses, separately responding to shapes, colors, faces, movement, and much much more. The temporal lobe will, among other things, serve as conduit for auditory stimuli--is this note flat? Should I slow down a bit to take advantage of the echo in this concert hall? Did that bastard in the third row just cough? The cerebellum, at a non-conscious level (btw, the vast majority of the above was non-conscious), coordinates and smoothes the muscular movements; the medulla adjusts pulse and respiration (certainly no consciousness without those, at least for long!); the spinal cord itself processes spinal reflexes necessary to keep you upright while you are sawing away at that fiddle (thus, the knee-jerk response).

Not all stimuli will be responded to, and it is not at all solely the brain's job to focus. Not all stimuli will reach the threshold level required to produce that first action potential. Some action potentials will send excitatory, others inhibitory, signals, and these may cancel each other out at a level before you even get to the brain.

Not all movement signals are equal, either--through practice, some movements gain an automaticity, an independence from the necessity of conscious control. A volley of signals, without feedback, are part of the process (they do not *cause* it, they *are* part of it) of a rapid trill high up the neck of the violin.

There is no one place to look for the "part of brain responsible for playing violin". It is clearly and unambiguously something that the entire musician, the entire organism in its context, does. To look for it in part of the brain is a fool's errand.

*deep breath*

And there is more, of course. Look at the evolutionary history of the brain (http://faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/g-cziko/wm/05.html). It is, of course, an evolutionary history of whole organisms--how could it not be? But more importantly, we can see that the brain develops to serve the organism, and not vice versa.

(glad I found that link--that was going to be a lot of typing on my part)

Merc,

How does this explain the phenomena of the "experiencer?" As in "experience" and "experiencer?" I am not disputing the evolutionarily-derived biological function of the brain. I'm asking you to empirically justify your statement that the body is the "experiencer," as opposed to a simple processor of information, and the creator through illusion of an experiencer. From what I have read so far my opinion is that you are assuming this aspect to be innate, whereas I consider it an illusion created by other biological brain processes. Very happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

Nick

Belz...

6th August 2008, 01:12 PM

Belz...

6th August 2008, 01:15 PM

Nick227

6th August 2008, 01:16 PM

A couple of days after major surgery had saved my life, probably because of all the drugs I was on, I had a very vivid dream in which I died. In the instant before I "died" I "knew" for sure that there was no afterlife. I then woke up. It was very comforting. I mentioned it to one of the nurses and heard later that they had all been discussing it and found it very scary.

Leon

Reminds me of listening to spiritual types banging on about reincarnation as though it was some kind of good thing. I just thought at the time, God...more of this?!

Nick

Darat

6th August 2008, 01:17 PM

On a personal note, I've been quite close to dying on a couple of occasions and I've seen several people die, and it wasn't a big deal. That's probably why I have a different view from that of Belz.

Leon

Leon - do you mean to say that if you were DaratA in my example (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3923412#post3923412) you would press the red vaporise button?

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 01:22 PM

Merc,

How does this explain the phenomena of the "experiencer?" As in "experience" and "experiencer?" I am not disputing the evolutionarily-derived biological function of the brain. I'm asking you to empirically justify your statement that the body is the "experiencer," as opposed to a simple processor of information, and the creator through illusion of an experiencer. From what I have read so far my opinion is that you are assuming this aspect to be innate, whereas I consider it an illusion created by other biological brain processes. Very happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

Nick
What the hell is missing?

Remember, "experience" is a reified categorical noun, encompassing any number of different actions. If you are looking for where "an experience" is, then any of the vast number of "rans" (to steal Darat's phrase) from my example will serve. That is to say, you may be looking at a whole bunch of trees, and asking where the forest is.

Nick227

6th August 2008, 01:28 PM

Two apples aren't the same, no matter how close a copy one is of the other. Same with people. I don't see the problem, there.

Nope.

I simply don't understand why you ask the question, because it makes no sense to me.

Well, the teleporter scenario is interesting but it lacks a certain something from my point of view. That is, you have to consider looking into the future at how it would be for you if such and such a thing happened. That's ok, but I think it's also interesting to consider the same question retrospectively. What if someone had replaced your body with an identical replica in the night? I found the question interesting, because it's like "OK, how actually would I know, as this body now. How would I know?" Think about it. Does it not change the feel of the teleporter question?

We've been talking about it for 45 pages, now. I'd think you have a pretty good idea what we mean by it.

If you want to check I think you'll find I very rarely use the c-word, except in quotes or paraphrased with "so-called." I don't know what the hell it's supposed to mean.

"Reconstructs its sense of selfhood" ? When did it lose it ?

My understanding is that theories which assert persisting selfhood are losing respectability pretty fast these days. There's a severe lack of data to back the notion up even though it does just seem like "it must be real." I think it's valid to examine other options, such as bundle theory of selfhood or whatever.

If I make a copy of you, will one body be aware of what the other is thinking ? I assume the answer is no. If my assumption is correct, why would we think otherwise about a teleporter ? The original "awareness" is destroyed along with the original body.

The answer's no. It won't be aware of what the other's thinking. Teleporter shouldn't induce telepathy as far as I can see. About awareness, what do you actually mean here. Do you mean the thoughts, images and feelings etc that are in awareness at the time you push the button?

Nick

Nick227

6th August 2008, 01:35 PM

What the hell is missing?

Remember, "experience" is a reified categorical noun, encompassing any number of different actions. If you are looking for where "an experience" is, then any of the vast number of "rans" (to steal Darat's phrase) from my example will serve. That is to say, you may be looking at a whole bunch of trees, and asking where the forest is.

You're saying the experiencer is an effect generated by a constantly shifting internal processing? It has no specific source or basis? If so, I'm good with that. I would still like to know if you'd get in the teleporter!

Nick

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 01:39 PM

Leon - do you mean to say that if you were DaratA in my example (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3923412#post3923412) you would press the red vaporise button?

I don't think so. But I would use the machine if I had to be vapourised before I was transmitted.

Leon

Nick227

6th August 2008, 01:40 PM

I'm asking you to empirically justify your statement that the body is the "experiencer," as opposed to a simple processor of information, and the creator through illusion of an experiencer.

There would be a difference ?

Yes. One is assuming that what appears to be so is innately valid. The other is checking it out a little more.

Nick

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 01:47 PM

No, the COPY believes that it is you and doesn't care about the original. The original pretty much cares about itself, but after the teleporting is done, it's dead.

When the copying takes place, the two brains are identical with identical brain states. Therefore the copy is "me".

Leon

Nick227

6th August 2008, 01:48 PM

I just had a funny thought. We talked about the fact that people become aware of their decisions after the decision is made. Perhaps this explains some of our "I don't know why I did that" moments! :P

Yes. Ben Libet, I think. Very famous experiments. He found out that the motor cortexes go into action before the moment when you get the idea to do something. A dark day for the free will believers, though I think the ideas are still a bit contested.

Nick

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 01:48 PM

You're saying the experiencer is an effect generated by a constantly shifting internal processing? It has no specific source or basis? If so, I'm good with that. I would still like to know if you'd get in the teleporter!

NickI can't recall having said that; indeed, I am not quite certain what it means. I don't think it sounds like something I would say.

I experience. Does that mean I contain an illusory experiencer effect? That doesn't sound like the same thing at all. It sounds more like I am an experiencer--the whole me, not some fictional part of me. Which kinda makes the rest of your analysis... mu.

I would consider the transporter if I had someplace or somebody to go to where I would rather die than not go, and have no other means of getting there. I would die knowing that in what amounts to some parallel universe, of no use to me at all, a me-equivalent was where I wanted to be.

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 01:49 PM

When the copying takes place, the two brains are identical with identical brain states. Therefore the copy is "me".

Leon

Two xerox copies are in fact one piece of paper?

:notm

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 01:53 PM

I would consider the transporter if I had someplace or somebody to go to where I would rather die than not go, and have no other means of getting there. I would die knowing that in what amounts to some parallel universe, of no use to me at all, a me-equivalent was where I wanted to be.

Of course, I (Mercutio-B) would be very happy indeed, with the probable exception of the nightmares where I think about what I knowingly did to Mercutio-A.

Nick227

6th August 2008, 01:54 PM

I can't recall having said that; indeed, I am not quite certain what it means. I don't think it sounds like something I would say.

I experience.

The way I see it "I experience" is a thought, generated by the brain, being articulated by the body in speaking or writing. If I read you right, you are saying that the "I" here refers to the whole organism. This answer is also the result of brain processing. I am simply querying whether these answers that your brain is providing can be in any way empirically substantiated. I have not seen you do this yet.

Nick

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 01:58 PM

Two xerox copies are in fact one piece of paper?

:notm

I think of it as more like copying a DVD. The DVDs will have identical data on them. The DVD data is like the two brain states when the copying process takes place. If the brain states are identical, what differentiates one person from the other at the instant the copying takes place?

Leon

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 01:59 PM

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 02:03 PM

I think of it as more like copying a DVD. The DVDs will have identical data on them. The DVD data is like the two brain states when the copying process takes place. If the brain states are identical, what differentiates one person from the other at the instant the copying takes place?

Leon
Two identical things =/= one thing.

If nothing else, XYZ coordinates differentiate one person, one DVD, or one xerox copy from another. And in the scenario, person A is being killed. Person B lives on, and must know (because person A did) that he/she did this.

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 02:06 PM

Yes. Ben Libet, I think. Very famous experiments. He found out that the motor cortexes go into action before the moment when you get the idea to do something. A dark day for the free will believers, though I think the ideas are still a bit contested.

Nick

Greenfield mentions those experiments. Interestingly, David Legge, one of our lecturers when I was studying psychology at Birkbeck over 30 years ago once mentioned something along those lines in connection with tennis players. He was of the opinion that they didn't think about how to hit the ball, the brain just did it without any conscious decision making. Something similar seems to happen in other sports, of course.

Leon

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 02:14 PM

Greenfield mentions those experiments. Interestingly, David Legge, one of our lecturers when I was studying psychology at Birkbeck over 30 years ago once mentioned something along those lines in connection with tennis players. He was of the opinion that they didn't think about how to hit the ball, the brain just did it without any conscious decision making. Something similar seems to happen in other sports, of course.

LeonRemarkable. You'd think something like a brain playing tennis would have shown up on YouTube by now. I may have to rethink all of this "the brain can't do it alone" nonsense.

What?

Oh, yeah, metaphors...

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 02:15 PM

Two identical things =/= one thing.

If nothing else, XYZ coordinates differentiate one person, one DVD, or one xerox copy from another. And in the scenario, person A is being killed. Person B lives on, and must know (because person A did) that he/she did this.

At the moment of copying, I maintain that the two brain states will be identical.

Leon

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 02:18 PM

At the moment of copying, I maintain that the two brain states will be identical.

Leon

I agree. They both know one of them will die.

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 02:26 PM

I agree. They both know one of them will die.

That's what I meant about the two being identical.

Leon

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 02:33 PM

That's what I meant about the two being identical.

Leon

My mistake, then; I read more into it than you intended. Looking back, I can see it easily...

...and I can also still see the ambiguity! :D

Mashuna

6th August 2008, 02:49 PM

Of course, I (Mercutio-B) would be very happy indeed, with the probable exception of the nightmares where I think about what I knowingly did to Mercutio-A.

You (Merc B) might be worried about the journey home, too.

westprog

6th August 2008, 03:23 PM

Of course, I (Mercutio-B) would be very happy indeed, with the probable exception of the nightmares where I think about what I knowingly did to Mercutio-A.

You'd be happy until you realised that a fly had crept into the transporter with you.

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 03:26 PM

You (Merc B) might be worried about the journey home, too.

Under these circumstances, there would be no reason for a journey home.
:cool:

westprog

6th August 2008, 03:31 PM

At the moment of copying, I maintain that the two brain states will be identical.

Leon

The problem with the experiment is that we don't know what it is that gives us our unique identity. We don't know if it's possible to "split" one person into two identical copies. We don't know if it's possible to rebuild someone in a different place in an identical state.

Funnily enough, we do know that it's possible to replace all of our body, almost without noticing. We don't mind that at all.

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 03:44 PM

cyborg

6th August 2008, 04:16 PM

Two identical things =/= one thing.

If nothing else, XYZ coordinates differentiate one person, one DVD, or one xerox copy from another.

If I take two objects only distinct in location and then hide them in two boxes which I shuffle how could you reassert their original identities once you lost track of their translational histories?

You'd be forced to take the position that you can't identify either object as the original in spite of the fact that one of them must be.

The assertion was not that 2 = 1, the assertion was that X = X, no matter how many instances of X you have.

Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

6th August 2008, 04:29 PM

Remember, "experience" is a reified categorical noun, encompassing any number of different actions. If you are looking for where "an experience" is, then any of the vast number of "rans" (to steal Darat's phrase) from my example will serve. That is to say, you may be looking at a whole bunch of trees, and asking where the forest is.
Merc, you do realize how brilliant this is, right? It is a completely practical and helpful use of my old adage:

You can't see the trees for the forest.

In this case, it's a fictional forest obscuring the trees.

~~ Paul

Belz...

6th August 2008, 04:34 PM

Nope.

Nope what ?

What if someone had replaced your body with an identical replica in the night?

Then I wouldn't be here to talk about it.

I found the question interesting, because it's like "OK, how actually would I know, as this body now. How would I know?" Think about it. Does it not change the feel of the teleporter question?

Nope.

If you want to check I think you'll find I very rarely use the c-word, except in quotes or paraphrased with "so-called." I don't know what the hell it's supposed to mean.

Look up a dictionary.

The answer's no. It won't be aware of what the other's thinking. Teleporter shouldn't induce telepathy as far as I can see. About awareness, what do you actually mean here. Do you mean the thoughts, images and feelings etc that are in awareness at the time you push the button?

I mean the self-awareness we've been talking about for 45+ pages. If your answer is "no" for the copy, then it must be "no" for the teleported Darat B.

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 04:35 PM

If I take two objects only distinct in location and then hide them in two boxes which I shuffle how could you reassert their original identities once you lost track of their translational histories?

You'd be forced to take the position that you can't identify either object as the original in spite of the fact that one of them must be.

The assertion was not that 2 = 1, the assertion was that X = X, no matter how many instances of X you have.

The last paragraph here was indeed my mistake, cleared up with Leon Heller. You also happen to be wrong about it. My inability to reassert their original identities in your example is based purely on my ignorance (because you intentionally hid it from me) of the ongoing locational coordinates. This is certainly not the case in the thought experiment. Person A enters the machine; Person B leaves it (or rather, leaves the exit machine, perhaps having experienced a sudden shift in visual perspective--"hey, wasn't I in Hoboken?") with the knowledge that, if the machine did what it was supposed to (and in thought experiments, they always work), Person A is dead. There is no similar "which box contains the real Person A?" sort of confusion at all.

Belz...

6th August 2008, 04:37 PM

When the copying takes place, the two brains are identical with identical brain states. Therefore the copy is "me".

So my laser blue Mazda Protégé 2003 LX is the same as another of the same model ?

Weird.

Two electrons are, for all intents and purposes, identical, but they are NOT the same electron.

Do you see where I'm going with this ? From an external point of view, it doesn't matter if the teleporter killed the original. I just don't want to be killed.

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 04:39 PM

Of course, if consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, as proposed by Penrose and Hameroff, the technique won't work.

Leon

That a thought experiment would not work would be the least of our problems--all of what we have discovered about neural function and synaptic transmission over the past centuries would be wrong! Fortunately, the burden of proof is on them, and is quite a burden indeed.

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 04:49 PM

That a thought experiment would not work would be the least of our problems--all of what we have discovered about neural function and synaptic transmission over the past centuries would be wrong! Fortunately, the burden of proof is on them, and is quite a burden indeed.

That's a completely different topic, of course. Their ideas are generally accepted as wrong. It's been pointed out that even if they are correct, it merely shifts the problem of consciousness (if there really is one) to a lower level. It doesn't really explain anything.

Leon

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 04:59 PM

So my laser blue Mazda Protégé 2003 LX is the same as another of the same model ?

Weird.

Two electrons are, for all intents and purposes, identical, but they are NOT the same electron.

Do you see where I'm going with this ? From an external point of view, it doesn't matter if the teleporter killed the original. I just don't want to be killed.

It's completely different from your example of the two cars.

But you won't be killed. At one moment in time you will be in the transmitter cubicle, you will then find yourself in the receiver cubicle. Are you proposing that there is some non-physical component that can't be transmitted.

Leon

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 05:18 PM

But you won't be killed.Yes, you will. That is crystal-clear.
At one moment in time you will be in the transmitter cubicle, you will then find yourself in the receiver cubicle.This is also true. But it does not negate the fact that you(A) will be killed. Indeed, were you(A) not killed, there would be two of you.
Are you proposing that there is some non-physical component that can't be transmitted.Location is a physical variable. In this case, an important one.

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 05:45 PM

Yes, you will. That is crystal-clear.
This is also true. But it does not negate the fact that you(A) will be killed. Indeed, were you(A) not killed, there would be two of you.
Location is a physical variable. In this case, an important one.

I still maintain that it is "me" that is transmitted. You can call the transmitted version Leon_B, but he will still be Leon_A in terms of his brain configuration.

If Leon_A was rendered unconscious before transmission, and they subsequently met one another, they wouldn't know which one was Leon_A and which one was Leon_B, each would probably assume that the other was the copy.

I don't see how location comes into it, at the instant of transfer the brain configurations will be identical.

Leon

Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

6th August 2008, 06:02 PM

If Leon_A was rendered unconscious before transmission, and they subsequently met one another, they wouldn't know which one was Leon_A and which one was Leon_B, each would probably assume that the other was the copy.
Sure they would know. Leon(B) is the guy who appeared in the target transporter and had to travel back to where Leon(A) is. Leon(A) doesn't have that memory.

If you kept them both unconscious until they met again in a neutral third place, then they wouldn't know who was who. Perhaps that's what you meant. But why would each assume the other was the copy, when they know exactly what transpired?

~~ Paul

leon_heller

6th August 2008, 06:31 PM

Sure they would know. Leon(B) is the guy who appeared in the target transporter and had to travel back to where Leon(A) is. Leon(A) doesn't have that memory.

If you kept them both unconscious until they met again in a neutral third place, then they wouldn't know who was who. Perhaps that's what you meant. But why would each assume the other was the copy, when they know exactly what transpired?

~~ Paul

I meant to say that they were kept unconscious until they were brought together. For this scenario, we don't really need a matter transporter, just a copying device. Leon_A is rendered unconscious, duplicated to form Leon_B, and they are both allowed to wake up next to each other. In that situation, I think that each would assume that the other was the copy.

Leon

Mercutio

6th August 2008, 06:43 PM

I meant to say that they were kept unconscious until they were brought together. For this scenario, we don't really need a matter transporter, just a copying device. Leon_A is rendered unconscious, duplicated to form Leon_B, and they are both allowed to wake up next to each other. In that situation, I think that each would assume that the other was the copy.

Leon
Or each would recognize that neither could know for certain. But of course, the technicians who performed the deed would know. So now, we have to specify another layer of blinding, all to get around the fact that the two are, in fact, original and copy. There is a difference between them (XYZ coordinates) even if they are identical. As Westprog said, Funnily enough, we do know that it's possible to replace all of our body, almost without noticing. We don't mind that at all. Turns out those XYZ coordinates are pretty important to us. Indeed, years of looking through the same set of eyes might well lead one to infer a continuity of self...

Belz...

6th August 2008, 07:57 PM

But you won't be killed.

Of course I will. The problem here is that you (and Nick, if I understand him correctly) seem to make humans different from other objects. If a copy of a computer program isn't the same as the original, and if a copy of an apple isn't the same, and a copy of an electron isn't the same, and a copy of a laser blue Mazda Protégé 2003 LX isn't the same, than a copy of a human isn't the same, either. It'll be identical, sure, but not the same person. I don't want to die.

At one moment in time you will be in the transmitter cubicle, you will then find yourself in the receiver cubicle.

Wrong. At one moment, Belz... will be in the transmitter cubicle, and then AlterBelz... will be in the receiver cubicle.

Again, let's come back to my alternate teleporter. The one that doesn't kill the original. When the copy is created, there are two of "you" ? Of course not. There is one you and one copy. In the original thought experiment, there is no longer a you. So why, in this case only, would the copy be "you" ?

Are you proposing that there is some non-physical component that can't be transmitted.

No, that would be nonsensical, and wouldn't follow from what I've said so far.

lupus_in_fabula

6th August 2008, 11:37 PM

[…]I think it's also interesting to consider the same question retrospectively. What if someone had replaced your body with an identical replica in the night? I found the question interesting, because it's like "OK, how actually would I know, as this body now. How would I know?" Think about it. Does it not change the feel of the teleporter question?

(bolding & underlying by lupus)… The way I think about that scenario is that it wouldn’t be the same entity that would wake up, although that entity would probably behave as the previous one when being awake.

In your scenario, when you say that your body is replaced… what exactly wouldn’t have been replaced; what would be waiting for the new body to arrive?

Darat

7th August 2008, 02:31 AM

Of course, I (Mercutio-B) would be very happy indeed, with the probable exception of the nightmares where I think about what I knowingly did to Mercutio-A.

I think, given the convenience of teleportation (and if the killing of DaratA was done out of sight of DaratB) given our remarkable ability to not really think about the consequences of what we are doing or what is happening around us, as a society of humans we'd soon accept teleportation on these terms.

westprog

7th August 2008, 03:30 AM

It's a thought experiment. I maintain that my copy which has been transmitted to another location is "me", having what you call my "unique identity". Do you believe that there is something other than brain state that is required?

Of course, if consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, as proposed by Penrose and Hameroff, the technique won't work.

Leon

That's precisely the problem - until we know where the consciousness lies, then we don't know what's involved in copying it.

westprog

7th August 2008, 03:36 AM

Of course I will. The problem here is that you (and Nick, if I understand him correctly) seem to make humans different from other objects. If a copy of a computer program isn't the same as the original, and if a copy of an apple isn't the same, and a copy of an electron isn't the same, and a copy of a laser blue Mazda Protégé 2003 LX isn't the same, than a copy of a human isn't the same, either.

A copy of a computer program is the same.

Darat

7th August 2008, 03:39 AM

That's precisely the problem - until we know where the consciousness lies, then we don't know what's involved in copying it.

The thought experiment states that it is capable of duplicating the body; unless you are of the view that "conciousness" is not part/is etc. of the body then by the terms of the thought experiment conciousness will also be duplicated.

A copy of a computer program is the same.

You live in a very strange world....

westprog

7th August 2008, 03:46 AM

You live in a very strange world....

A computer program is not a physical object. It's a pattern. It can be instantiated in various forms.

I can make multiple copies of Nicholas Nickleby. Each will be an individual object, but each will be a representation of the one text.

This is of course significant to the thought experiment, and many science fiction stories. If identity lies in the pattern, and not the physical body, then one can be downloaded into a computer and restored without losing anything.

Personally, I'm only interested in forms of immortality that don't involve my disintegration.

Darat

7th August 2008, 03:55 AM

A computer program is not a physical object. It's a pattern. It can be instantiated in various forms.

...snip...

Which does not support your assertion that "A copy of a computer program is the same."

I can make multiple copies of Nicholas Nickleby. Each will be an individual object, but each will be a representation of the one text.

...snip....

This argument is in fact an argument against your statement that "A copy of a computer program is the same." You acknowledge that the copy of the book is not the same as the original, the same holds for a copy of a computer program.

(This could of course be a matter of misunderstanding one another however I rather suspect it isn't.)

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 03:57 AM

Let's improve the technology, and use quantum teleportation:

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

Quantum teleportation has actually been achieved, over short distances, for various particles.

This removes the problem of what to do about the original version of the teleportee, because he can't exist any more. As the particles in the copy have exactly the same quantum state as the original, the copy and the original must be the same person, with his "consciousness" intact.

Leon

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 03:59 AM

Nick227

7th August 2008, 04:02 AM

Of course, I (Mercutio-B) would be very happy indeed, with the probable exception of the nightmares where I think about what I knowingly did to Mercutio-A.

Surely, by your reasoning, MercB hasn't done anything to MercA. Wouldn't he, from your perspective, be more grateful to A for his sacrifice?

I think it really comes down to what you consider is referred to by the word "I." If one says - well "I" is my whole organism and that's it, then it seems reasonable to me that you would absolutely not get in the transporter. However, if you consider "I" to be more the result of a brain process, rather than some innate and inviolable quality, then suddenly it doesn't necessarily look so bad. I figure the more actual examination of these things that you've done will make the difference.

Nick

Nick227

7th August 2008, 04:07 AM

:notm

Try again. You are being a dualist here. I am providing answers, not part of me.

If you believe my brain is doing the providing, I suggest you hunt for empirical evidence of a brain able to do any forum posting on its own. Any evidence at all.

Well, a brain and body seem to be doing it. I don't really see your point.

I wonder, if we said that the machine didn't replicate you in a new location but only replaced half of your cells with identical replicas, would you then consider you had changed significantly?

Nick

Darat

7th August 2008, 04:07 AM

I think he's referring to the information content. That is independent of the medium.

Leon

But you can't show me a computer program without a medium.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 04:09 AM

Greenfield mentions those experiments. Interestingly, David Legge, one of our lecturers when I was studying psychology at Birkbeck over 30 years ago once mentioned something along those lines in connection with tennis players. He was of the opinion that they didn't think about how to hit the ball, the brain just did it without any conscious decision making. Something similar seems to happen in other sports, of course.

Leon

Yes, the dorsal stream is I think non-conscious and handles a lot of this stuff. The ventral stream provides the graphics and makes it look as though we're doing it consciously.

Nick

Mashuna

7th August 2008, 04:17 AM

Yes, the dorsal stream is I think non-conscious and handles a lot of this stuff. The ventral stream provides the graphics and makes it look as though we're doing it consciously.

Nick

There's no need to bring dolphins into the conversation.

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 04:23 AM

Yes, the dorsal stream is I think non-conscious and handles a lot of this stuff. The ventral stream provides the graphics and makes it look as though we're doing it consciously.

Nick

That was new to me so I looked it up:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorsal_stream

It would explain what is happening.

Leon

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 04:26 AM

But you can't show me a computer program without a medium.

No, but the information is the same, and independent of the medium.

Leon

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 04:29 AM

Surely, by your reasoning, MercB hasn't done anything to MercA. Wouldn't he, from your perspective, be more grateful to A for his sacrifice?

I think it really comes down to what you consider is referred to by the word "I." If one says - well "I" is my whole organism and that's it, then it seems reasonable to me that you would absolutely not get in the transporter. However, if you consider "I" to be more the result of a brain process, rather than some innate and inviolable quality, then suddenly it doesn't necessarily look so bad. I figure the more actual examination of these things that you've done will make the difference.

Nick

"I" is a function of what my brain is doing. Whether or not the atoms it's made of are the same doesn't matter.

Leon

Nick227

7th August 2008, 04:43 AM

The problem with the experiment is that we don't know what it is that gives us our unique identity. We don't know if it's possible to "split" one person into two identical copies. We don't know if it's possible to rebuild someone in a different place in an identical state.

Funnily enough, we do know that it's possible to replace all of our body, almost without noticing. We don't mind that at all.

The problem, WP, if you ask me is that you don't want to actually look if there is any "unique identity." Identity is just a brain process. It can be created and recreated like any other process. It is not innate to the brain, to the body, to the organism, whatever you want to call it. It is just a generic function of brain activity. It's not mystical. It's not special. It's totally ordinary.

This issue of so-called "unique identity" is at the core of the whole so-called "consciousness" debate. Because people choose not to examine what's going on inside of their heads they end up convinced there is some special subjective uniqueness somewhere (somewhere, not quite sure where but it must be there!) and create these fantasies about "consciousness."

And then, of course, you just can't get them in the teleporter because they're convinced there is something so unique about them it's going to be lost! It's a simple lack of self-examination, if you ask me.

Nick

Nick227

7th August 2008, 04:52 AM

Do you see where I'm going with this ? From an external point of view, it doesn't matter if the teleporter killed the original. I just don't want to be killed.

"You", as in the experience of personal identity currently being had by the body called "Belz," are just a brain process. Identity is just a brain process, Belz. Not something innate to people or to matter. The organism experiences itself as "I", not because "I" is innate to its existence but because brain processes create this experience for it.

Nick

Nick227

7th August 2008, 04:55 AM

But you won't be killed.

Yes, you will. That is crystal-clear.

No you won't. The body will be killed but the functions of the brain that create the experience "I" will be preserved. You are again assuming that identity is innate to form. It is not. It is created by brain process.

Nick

Nick227

7th August 2008, 05:05 AM

"I" is a function of what my brain is doing. Whether or not the atoms it's made of are the same doesn't matter.

Leon

Absolutely. "I" is the result of brain process.

What Merc and Belz are doing, imo, is taking their experience of "I", from this brain process, at face value. They assume that "I" is innate to their organism. Thus, they conclude, that if their body is dematerialised then they die. This is simply superstitious nonsense.

If this body dematerialised and rematerialised right now it wouldn't make any difference to anything because the sensation I have right now, of being a person typing out my thoughts, would be preserved because it is being created by a brain function.

Nick

westprog

7th August 2008, 05:15 AM

Which does not support your assertion that "A copy of a computer program is the same."

This argument is in fact an argument against your statement that "A copy of a computer program is the same." You acknowledge that the copy of the book is not the same as the original, the same holds for a copy of a computer program.

(This could of course be a matter of misunderstanding one another however I rather suspect it isn't.)

Dickens wrote Nicholas Nickelby just once. There is only one novel of that name. There are any number of instantiations of the book.

If Martin Amis prints out his next novel twice, did he write two novels? Obviously not.

The ambiguity is in the word copy, which is partly my fault. It's not possible to copy a novel. It just is, once off. (Though Borges wrote a story about someone who wrote a novel which was word for word the same as Don Quixote). It's possible to print multiple representations of the text.

A computer program is a similar object. It can be represented multiple times, but it gets written once. This is a feature of digital information, such as numbers, novels and programs.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 05:17 AM

A copy of a computer program is the same.

Fascinating.

A computer program is not a physical object. It's a pattern. It can be instantiated in various forms.

You are confusing the program with the copy of the program. The program is a pattern, while one of its copies (including the original) is an instance. Each instance is a set of physical things on, say, a hard drive. It is very much a physical object, and is distinct from all other copies, although it is, usually, identical.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 05:18 AM

Belz...

7th August 2008, 05:21 AM

No, but the information is the same, and independent of the medium.

And therein lies the problem. You are conflating pattern and object. The two aren't the same. Two objects can have the exact same pattern, but they are not the same object, no matter how hard you try. Otherwise an exact copy of an apple is the same apple as the original even if they both exist simultaneously.

"I" is a function of what my brain is doing. Whether or not the atoms it's made of are the same doesn't matter.

No, "I", is a function of what "I" am doing. "Brain" is only a part of "I".

Belz...

7th August 2008, 05:23 AM

"You", as in the experience of personal identity currently being had by the body called "Belz," are just a brain process.

Even if I were to grant you this, which I don't, the fact remains that an exact copy of me will have his own "brain processes" and therefore mine won't be his. This is not hard to understand.

Identity is just a brain process, Belz. Not something innate to people or to matter.

Since when are people not made of brains or matter ?

The organism experiences itself as "I", not because "I" is innate to its existence but because brain processes create this experience for it.

You seem to have your own dualist belief, Nick. For some reason "brain process" is some magical property that perpetuates itself through copies of its medium. Like Leon, you are conflating pattern and object.

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 05:26 AM

Belz...

7th August 2008, 05:27 AM

What Merc and Belz are doing, imo, is taking their experience of "I", from this brain process, at face value. They assume that "I" is innate to their organism. Thus, they conclude, that if their body is dematerialised then they die. This is simply superstitious nonsense.

I don't see where superstition enters this, but it seems obvious to me that you can't reach a conclusion from your own premises. Allow me to help.

In my variant of the teleporter, the original person is NOT killed. There are two of them. I believe you admitted that they were not the same person. Why would the copy become the same person magically because the original was killed ? This makes no sense, because the process is the same.

If this body dematerialised and rematerialised right now it wouldn't make any difference to anything because the sensation I have right now, of being a person typing out my thoughts, would be preserved because it is being created by a brain function.

Nonsense. From a public point of view, there would be no difference. From YOUR point of view, your experiences would cease forever the moment you were dematerialised, and would never come back. From the COPY's point of view, his experiences would start at that moment, but he wouldn't notice.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 05:32 AM

Even if I were to grant you this, which I don't, the fact remains that an exact copy of me will have his own "brain processes" and therefore mine won't be his. This is not hard to understand.

Belz,

IMO, it would be useful if you could distinguish uniqueness from identity. You are conflating the two over and over again. Uniqueness is applicable to any individual thing. I would consider it innate. Identity is a brain function. It is not innate. It arises because those functions which create it in the brain are working.

If you were dematerialised and rematerialised right this second you would not even notice. Nothing would change because all you experience is a result of brain function.

Frankly, I think for you to experience the reality of this would be the only way to convince you.

Nick

Darat

7th August 2008, 05:40 AM

Absolutely. "I" is the result of brain process.

What Merc and Belz are doing, imo, is taking their experience of "I", from this brain process, at face value. They assume that "I" is innate to their organism. Thus, they conclude, that if their body is dematerialised then they die. This is simply superstitious nonsense.

...snip...

Nick this is just not the case, you are ignoring the number of people involved in the thought experiment. Forget all about "I"s for the moment and consider this.

We place a teapot that we will label teapotA in the teleporter.

TeapotA is duplicated giving rise to a new teapot, that we can label teapotB

I am sure you would agree that we now have two teapots, teapotA and teapotB when previously we only had one?

We then destroy teapotA.

We now have just one teapot which is teapotB.

Now teapotB may function exactly as teapotA did and indeed it even has an identical chip out of its spout just as teapotA did but it is not teapotA.

Once you create a copy of something you have two of that thing. In the thought experiment you create two "I"s and then destroy one of those "I"s.

From DaratB's perspective (i.e. his private behaviour) his "I" experience is that he went into a teleport booth in one location and stepped out in another however the fact is that DaratA's "I" was destroyed when DaratA was destroyed.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 05:40 AM

I don't see where superstition enters this, but it seems obvious to me that you can't reach a conclusion from your own premises. Allow me to help.

In my variant of the teleporter, the original person is NOT killed. There are two of them. I believe you admitted that they were not the same person. Why would the copy become the same person magically because the original was killed ? This makes no sense, because the process is the same.

They don't become the same person in the sense that the atoms of their bodies are the same atoms. That would be physically impossible. No one is suggesting overcoming tlop.

Nonsense. From a public point of view, there would be no difference. From YOUR point of view, your experiences would cease forever the moment you were dematerialised, and would never come back. From the COPY's point of view, his experiences would start at that moment, but he wouldn't notice.

The original body is destroyed, but you are not. Get back to me when you can understand this statement. Think about it.

Nick

Belz...

7th August 2008, 05:55 AM

IMO, it would be useful if you could distinguish uniqueness from identity.

Why ? We are not talking about identity.

Uniqueness is applicable to any individual thing. I would consider it innate.
Identity is a brain function. It is not innate. It arises because those functions which create it in the brain are working.

No, it arises from everything that is me. "Brain" is only a part of "me".

If you were dematerialised and rematerialised right this second you would not even notice. Nothing would change because all you experience is a result of brain function.

That is the same as saying that, if the original wasn't destroyed, I would experience both the original AND the copy's lives simultaneously. That makes no sense at all.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 05:56 AM

The original body is destroyed, but you are not.

I AM my body, Nick. I am not a pattern. I am an object.

Get back to me when you can understand this statement. Think about it.

This is why I can't stand condescending people.

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 05:58 AM

I don't understansd how you can contradict yourself in such a little bit of text and not see it. If it's a copy, then it is, by definition, NOT the original.

The term "copy" that I used is wrong. This is what I should have said:

Let's improve the technology, and use quantum teleportation:

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

Quantum teleportation has actually been achieved, over short distances, for various particles.

This removes the problem of what to do about the original version of the teleportee, because he can't exist any more. As the particles in the teleported person have exactly the same quantum state as the original, he must be the same person, with his "consciousness" intact.

Leon

Nick227

7th August 2008, 05:59 AM

Nick this is just not the case, you are ignoring the number of people involved in the thought experiment. Forget all about "I"s for the moment and consider this.

We place a teapot that we will label teapotA in the teleporter.

TeapotA is duplicated giving rise to a new teapot, that we can label teapotB

I am sure you would agree that we now have two teapots, teapotA and teapotB when previously we only had one?

Agreed.

We then destroy teapotA.

No we have just one teapot which is teapotB.

For sure.

Now teapotB may function exactly as teapotA did and indeed it even has an identical chip out of its spout just as teapotA did but it is not teapotA.

Absolutely.

Once you create a copy of something you have two of that thing. In the thought experiment you create two "I"s and then destroy one of those "I"s.

Yes.

From DaratB's perspective (i.e. his private behaviour) his "I" experience is that he went into a teleport booth in one location and stepped out in another however the fact is that DaratA's "I" was destroyed when DaratA was destroyed.

"I" is just the result of brain function. It is a subjective sensation created by brain function. Thus it cannot be considered in the same terms as the teapot. It is immaterial and it is not innate to the material from which it arises. If the function which creates "I", largely imo the discursive aspect of brain, stops doing it for a while then Darat no longer experiences "I." If it starts again then Darat starts experiencing it again.

Nick

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 06:01 AM

And therein lies the problem. You are conflating pattern and object. The two aren't the same. Two objects can have the exact same pattern, but they are not the same object, no matter how hard you try. Otherwise an exact copy of an apple is the same apple as the original even if they both exist simultaneously.

No, "I", is a function of what "I" am doing. "Brain" is only a part of "I".

It's the other way round - "I" is constructed by the brain.

Leon

Nick227

7th August 2008, 06:06 AM

Why ? We are not talking about identity.

No, it arises from everything that is me. "Brain" is only a part of "me".

The experience you have of being "I" is created by brain functions. If those brain functions stop for a while then you stop experiencing it. It doesn't particularly matter. If it starts again then you start experiencing it again.

When you write "it arises from everything that is me" how would you substantiate this statement? Reference to any neurological work would be fine. Good luck with that one!

That is the same as saying that, if the original wasn't destroyed, I would experience both the original AND the copy's lives simultaneously. That makes no sense at all.

The notion "I" is not innate! Bangs head against wall. It is just happening because the brain functions that create it are working. There is no one in your head experiencing things. This is just an effect being created by those brain functions.

Nick

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 06:28 AM

Merc,

How does this explain the phenomena of the "experiencer?" As in "experience" and "experiencer?" I am not disputing the evolutionarily-derived biological function of the brain. I'm asking you to empirically justify your statement that the body is the "experiencer," as opposed to a simple processor of information, and the creator through illusion of an experiencer. From what I have read so far my opinion is that you are assuming this aspect to be innate, whereas I consider it an illusion created by other biological brain processes. Very happy to be corrected if I'm wrong.

Nick

IMO, the process is the experience, anything else is a ghost in the machine.

skiba

7th August 2008, 06:29 AM

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 06:31 AM

Agreed.

For sure.

Absolutely.

Yes.

"I" is just the result of brain function. It is a subjective sensation created by brain function. Thus it cannot be considered in the same terms as the teapot. It is immaterial and it is not innate to the material from which it arises. If the function which creates "I", largely imo the discursive aspect of brain, stops doing it for a while then Darat no longer experiences "I." If it starts again then Darat starts experiencing it again.

NickSo, "I" is just the result of brain function, and yet, although you are destroying one brain, you do not see that "I" as dying. Interesting.

I think Darat would agree that DaratB remembers DaratA's childhood, and has a continuity of experience with DaratA. But that does not diminish the fact that DaratA has been killed.

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 06:35 AM

I think, given the convenience of teleportation (and if the killing of DaratA was done out of sight of DaratB) given our remarkable ability to not really think about the consequences of what we are doing or what is happening around us, as a society of humans we'd soon accept teleportation on these terms.

This may be the saddest and truest thing I have read in a while.

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 06:35 AM

The way I see it "I experience" is a thought, generated by the brain, being articulated by the body in speaking or writing. If I read you right, you are saying that the "I" here refers to the whole organism. This answer is also the result of brain processing. I am simply querying whether these answers that your brain is providing can be in any way empirically substantiated. I have not seen you do this yet.

Nick

There is only one organism with multiple parts. The idea of an *I* is cognition, the experience of an *I* is mainly due to memory, some association and the perceptions. There is no *I* other than the body at a particular point and state in space time. There is some continuity in the tissues ,habits, emotions, associations, conditioning and memories. But the experience is the same as saying "the RPM", it is a description of the process of the machine.

There is plenty of research into body distortion, disassociation, false memories, confabulation and the effects of memory of the *I* experience.

westprog

7th August 2008, 06:47 AM

But you can't show me a computer program without a medium.

That goes for any information. We still distinguish between the information and the medium. Copying an apple and copying a computer program are entirely different operations in concept.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 06:49 AM

I can see both sides being right here, but im not sure Nick understand Belz's POV.

Nick, lets say you use the teleporter and it malfunctions. It creates a copy, but does not destroy the original. Would it be totally OK with you if the copy came over and said

"sorry, there was a problem with the teleporter and now I'll have to kill you, but dont worry, "you" will live on"

Would you (the original) rather kill the copy? or does it matter at all which one lives?

I don't see that it makes any difference whatsoever to the original experiment. It doesn't matter if the experiment malfunctions, if copies kill one another, present each other with all sorts of moral dilemmas or emotive scenarios.

The basic point is this - It is possible for your body to be destroyed but for you to live. Not because there exists some immaterial aspect which is you, but because the experience "you" is being created by a brain function.

IMO, what's happening with Belz and Merc is that they are confusing their experience with what we know of reality. Selfhood and identity are not innate to matter. Neither to form. Neither to life. Neither to humans. They are just recreatable processes. They are not innate. Uniqueness is innate to all of these things but selfhood and identity are just brain processes.

Thus it is possible, in a materialist monist reality, for your body to be entirely destroyed and replicated, and for you to live. No transference need take place. No jiggery pokery. No magic.

The thing with selfhood issues is that our own self-beliefs are so deeply entrenched within us that it's very hard to overcome what our intuitive judgment is telling us even in the face of overwhelming empiric evidence. Researchers with big strings of letters after their names, who can use 20 digit words with flair, who can dazzle audiences, haven't necessarily grasped the reality of selfhood at all. Dennett picks up on this. Blackmore picks up on this. They've both really looked and they know it's not an easy thing to go into.

The reality concerning selfhood is so counter-intuitive it is a major personal hurdle for nearly any researcher. It's a big thing.

Nick

westprog

7th August 2008, 06:49 AM

The problem, WP, if you ask me is that you don't want to actually look if there is any "unique identity." Identity is just a brain process. It can be created and recreated like any other process. It is not innate to the brain, to the body, to the organism, whatever you want to call it. It is just a generic function of brain activity. It's not mystical. It's not special. It's totally ordinary.

You may assert that but...

This issue of so-called "unique identity" is at the core of the whole so-called "consciousness" debate. Because people choose not to examine what's going on inside of their heads they end up convinced there is some special subjective uniqueness somewhere (somewhere, not quite sure where but it must be there!) and create these fantasies about "consciousness."

And then, of course, you just can't get them in the teleporter because they're convinced there is something so unique about them it's going to be lost! It's a simple lack of self-examination, if you ask me.

Nick

...I'm still not going to let myself be disintegrated. Sorry.

westprog

7th August 2008, 06:57 AM

Fascinating.

You are confusing the program with the copy of the program. The program is a pattern, while one of its copies (including the original) is an instance. Each instance is a set of physical things on, say, a hard drive. It is very much a physical object, and is distinct from all other copies, although it is, usually, identical.

Then lets avoid using the word "copy". An instance of the computer program is not the computer program. A paperback of Nicholas Nickleby isn't the same thing as the novel.

When we wipe a hard drive and lose one set of MP3's, we haven't lost the information if we have a backup. If we have two identical apples and we destroy one, we have one less apple.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 06:57 AM

So, "I" is just the result of brain function, and yet, although you are destroying one brain, you do not see that "I" as dying. Interesting.

That's because there is no actual "I." There is just the belief in "I." It is what Dennett refers to as the "centre of narrative gravity." It appears that it exists because the brain is constantly referring to it via the word "I" or inferring its presence via the word "my" - but it does not actually exist.

You cannot kill something which does not exist. But you can recreate the conditions in which the belief in it prevails.

Nick

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 07:22 AM

That's because there is no actual "I." There is just the belief in "I." It is what Dennett refers to as the "centre of narrative gravity." It appears that it exists because the brain is constantly referring to it via the word "I" or inferring its presence via the word "my" - but it does not actually exist.

You cannot kill something which does not exist. But you can recreate the conditions in which the belief in it prevails.

Nick There is an I--there is just no dualistic I. There is no homunculus, but there certainly is a Mercutio-A. And this device kills him--er, me. The fact that it simultaneously generates another version does not make that version Mercutio-A.

If our machine hiccups, and spits out two dozen new Mercutios, each will believe he is Mercutio-B (Mercutio-A would be dead, and each of them would know it, of course, remembering their decision to enter the machine in the first place). Now, though, we have 24 people with equal claim to life; would you seriously have no compunction about killing 23 of them? How would you choose? Is the important thing that one--and only one--stream of awareness remains intact? Each of the 23 killings would end a unique life, even if the memories and identities were not unique. And since they meet the same fate as Mercutio-A, yes, he--er, I--have been killed.

As Dancing David has just said ("just", as I write, that is), individual life does not "begin"; it continues. All life is, in one sense, shared. In another sense, and the sense that is important to Mercutio-A, I don't care if "life" is shared by planaria, sunflowers, warthogs and Mercutio-B's; I only get one go-round. When I have shuffled off this mortal coil, that's it; I won't be around to know that there is a Mercutio-B thanking me for making the decision.

And of course, yes, I will be around, thanking Mercutio-A for giving up his life for me. It was, after all, my decision, and the right one to make.

The machine makes two I's. It kills one of me. I can't get around that, because that is what it does.

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 08:21 AM

It's a thought experiment. I maintain that my copy which has been transmitted to another location is "me", having what you call my "unique identity". Do you believe that there is something other than brain state that is required?

Of course, if consciousness is a quantum phenomenon, as proposed by Penrose and Hameroff, the technique won't work.

Leon
ETA:
******** Leon has already responded to this moot point**********

As synaptic functioning occurs upon the base of QM, but the neurotransmitters and the ions that pass through ion channels are macro size compared to QM.

What evidence is there for this 'magic' attribution to QM?

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 08:24 AM

Well, a brain and body seem to be doing it. I don't really see your point.

I wonder, if we said that the machine didn't replicate you in a new location but only replaced half of your cells with identical replicas, would you then consider you had changed significantly?

Nick

the brain and the body, they are the same. the brain is part of the body, not seperate.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 08:25 AM

The term "copy" that I used is wrong. This is what I should have said:

Let's improve the technology, and use quantum teleportation:

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

Quantum teleportation has actually been achieved, over short distances, for various particles.

This removes the problem of what to do about the original version of the teleportee, because he can't exist any more. As the particles in the teleported person have exactly the same quantum state as the original, he must be the same person, with his "consciousness" intact.

It's still a copy, whether you use the word or not.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 08:27 AM

It's the other way round - "I" is constructed by the brain.

An interesting assertion. How is your "I" independent from the rest of the body ? I'm sorry, but my "I" comprises my arms and eyes and stomach, too.

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 08:28 AM

No, but the information is the same, and independent of the medium.

Leon

Another moot point: the information is rarely the same and often corrupted. It is cleaned up and made robust to overcome this, hence all the 'handshaking'.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 08:31 AM

"I" is just the result of brain function. It is a subjective sensation created by brain function. Thus it cannot be considered in the same terms as the teapot. It is immaterial and it is not innate to the material from which it arises.

It is "immaterial" ? If that's not dualism, I don't know what is.

If the function which creates "I", largely imo the discursive aspect of brain, stops doing it for a while then Darat no longer experiences "I." If it starts again then Darat starts experiencing it again.

Not to DaratA, it doesn't. Again, you're assuming that his "awareness" shifts from his old body to the copy. Why ?

The experience you have of being "I" is created by brain functions. If those brain functions stop for a while then you stop experiencing it. It doesn't particularly matter. If it starts again then you start experiencing it again.

Within the same object, yes. Your reasoning is flawed because you're using events that occur with the same object (me) and extrapolating that the same thing would happen between that object and a copy of it.

When you write "it arises from everything that is me" how would you substantiate this statement? Reference to any neurological work would be fine. Good luck with that one!

Why don't YOU find me a brain in a vat that has a sense of "I".

The notion "I" is not innate!

English please.

It is possible for your body to be destroyed but for you to live.

That's because you talk about the person as a pattern, not an object. I don't see why you'd do this, except to be contrarian. Westprog does the same thing when he speaks about computer programs. Who cares about the pattern ? Patterns don't exist. Objects do.

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 08:32 AM

The problem, WP, if you ask me is that you don't want to actually look if there is any "unique identity." Identity is just a brain process. It can be created and recreated like any other process. It is not innate to the brain, to the body, to the organism, whatever you want to call it. It is just a generic function of brain activity. It's not mystical. It's not special. It's totally ordinary.

...

Nick

I agree totaly, however there is the caveat that some of the brain's programming is sort of hidden in the neuron in the conditioning of the neuron to the synaptic patterns. The 'threshold' for a specific neuron is regulated by it's contingent history in the neural matrix. So it is dependant upon the body very specificaly in that a lot of the programing is based upon that contingent conditioning, and those specific in place neurons and thier learned conditioning..

So it is dependant upon the specific cells in the network, however given an imaginary boundless technology that could be encoded as well.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 08:35 AM

That goes for any information. We still distinguish between the information and the medium. Copying an apple and copying a computer program are entirely different operations in concept.

Why ? What's the difference ? We're making copies of a physical thing.

Then lets avoid using the word "copy".

Why ? That's exactly what we're talking about: copies.

An instance of the computer program is not the computer program. A paperback of Nicholas Nickleby isn't the same thing as the novel.

Then we're not talking about the same thing. Nick, Leon and yourself are talking about the pattern of me being preserved by the teleporter. I'm talking about the original ME being killed by the darn thing.

When we wipe a hard drive and lose one set of MP3's, we haven't lost the information if we have a backup.

We haven't lost the pattern, but we've lost the object. In that case it doesn't matter to us, but if the program were somehow sentient, I'm sure IT'd mind.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 08:37 AM

The reality concerning selfhood is so counter-intuitive it is a major personal hurdle for nearly any researcher. It's a big thing.

If you wouldn't mind dying so long as the pattern of "you" continued to exist, fine. I'd mind. And that machine raises serious ethical issues.

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 08:40 AM

It could even be argued that there isn't any such thing as an invariant "I" that remains the same over time. "I" am constantly changing as my brain takes in information and processes it, and generates its own version of reality, changing its own structure as it does it. It even goes on doing it whilst I am asleep. When I wake up "I" am someone else.

Leon

yes yes yes, as the AHB (alleged historic buddha) taught, there is no self because it is always changing in the transitory sense.

Annatta: no-self (as in no atman)

Annica: impermanence.

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 08:41 AM

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 08:43 AM

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 09:08 AM

It's still a copy, whether you use the word or not.

Not with quantum teleportation, that's the whole point. A teleported particle is the original particle.

Leon

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 09:12 AM

Then we're not talking about the same thing. Nick, Leon and yourself are talking about the pattern of me being preserved by the teleporter. I'm talking about the original ME being killed by the darn thing.

But the new improved quantum teleporter doesn't kill you, the particles you are made of are unchanged.

Leon

Nick227

7th August 2008, 09:21 AM

There is an I--there is just no dualistic I. There is no homunculus, but there certainly is a Mercutio-A. And this device kills him--er, me. The fact that it simultaneously generates another version does not make that version Mercutio-A.

Well, up to you. But I bet on Dennett, Parfit, & Blackmore on this anytime over these idiotic ego theories. Ego theories are highly intuitive. They feel totally right, but they can't be substantiated empirically. Bundle theories of selfhood hammer them in terms of validation. If you ask me it's a no contest.

Mercutio-A is an organism. That organism has inherited a mechanism to create for itself the illusion of "I." In Mercutio-A's case it seems to have done a very good job of this!

If our machine hiccups, and spits out two dozen new Mercutios, each will believe he is Mercutio-B (Mercutio-A would be dead, and each of them would know it, of course, remembering their decision to enter the machine in the first place). Now, though, we have 24 people with equal claim to life; would you seriously have no compunction about killing 23 of them? How would you choose? Is the important thing that one--and only one--stream of awareness remains intact? Each of the 23 killings would end a unique life, even if the memories and identities were not unique. And since they meet the same fate as Mercutio-A, yes, he--er, I--have been killed.

I'm not denying that all sorts of morally-challenging scenarios can be created by the experiment. I'm just not clear why you and others choose to go off on this tangent.

As Dancing David has just said ("just", as I write, that is), individual life does not "begin"; it continues. All life is, in one sense, shared. In another sense, and the sense that is important to Mercutio-A, I don't care if "life" is shared by planaria, sunflowers, warthogs and Mercutio-B's; I only get one go-round. When I have shuffled off this mortal coil, that's it; I won't be around to know that there is a Mercutio-B thanking me for making the decision.

And of course, yes, I will be around, thanking Mercutio-A for giving up his life for me. It was, after all, my decision, and the right one to make.

The machine makes two I's. It kills one of me. I can't get around that, because that is what it does.

Well, both of them seem to be living in the Dark Ages!

Nick

Nick227

7th August 2008, 09:29 AM

You can kill the body, the *I* being an illusion can't be killed or recreated.

That depends on the type of illusion something is. "I" is not a substantial illusion. The presence of "I" is cognitively inferred by the activities of the brain, but it is analogous to a centre of gravity. A hole like this has no substantive qualities aside of what surrounds it. It is defined by the brain activity that seems to infer its presence. You can recreate it.

Nick

Darat

7th August 2008, 09:38 AM

Darat

7th August 2008, 09:38 AM

Nick227

7th August 2008, 09:43 AM

It appears that some here think that the thinking is the I; others think that the thinking organism is the I. I have to side with the latter; thinking does not happen without a thinking organism. Darat did not buy his "ran" on eBay.

Thinking does not happen without a thinking organism. This is correct. However, simply because the thought "I" exists does not mean that either the thought or the thinking organism are "I." Descartes made similar assumptions some years ago.

Nick

Darat

7th August 2008, 09:47 AM

Thinking does not happen without a thinking organism. This is correct. However, simply because the thought "I" exists does not mean that either the thought or the thinking organism are "I." Descartes made similar assumptions some years ago.

Nick

Apart from the about 6 billion separate pieces of evidence that refute this concept!

Nick227

7th August 2008, 09:51 AM

Nick what you are saying is that an original teapot and its duplicate are two teapots but a an original person and his duplicate are only one person. Sorry but this isn't us arguing about a philosophical point, it's about one of us not being able to add up!

1 + 1 = 2

I am not saying DaratA and DaratB are one person. I am trying to explain to you the considerable difference between a physical existing object such as a teapot and an insubstantive illusion who's apparent existence arises only through inference.

Try reading modern writers on selfhood like Blackmore and Dennett (http://cogprints.org/266/0/selfctr.htm). Things have changed a little since Descartes.

Nick

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 09:56 AM

Darat

7th August 2008, 09:57 AM

As I said this hasn't got anything to do with philosophy it's rather elementary maths i.e. 1 + 1 = 2 and 2-1 = 1.

Darat

7th August 2008, 10:00 AM

There are two bodies, but they have identical brains following duplication. Therefore they are the same person.

Leon

This makes no more sense then saying "there are two bodies with red hair therefore they are the same person".

Nick227

7th August 2008, 10:02 AM

Apart from the about 6 billion separate pieces of evidence that refute this concept!

The non-egoic model of selfhood is extremely counter-intuitive. No doubt about it. Many writers have noted this. Unfortunately the intuitive model just doesn't stand up in the light of empiric research. Other theories of selfhood, from Hume onwards, have developed. How about reading Dennett on "Self as a Centre of Narrative Gravity?"

Nick

Belz...

7th August 2008, 10:03 AM

Not with quantum teleportation, that's the whole point. A teleported particle is the original particle.

But that's not what you said:

This removes the problem of what to do about the original version of the teleportee, because he can't exist any more. As the particles in the teleported person have exactly the same quantum state as the original, he must be the same person, with his "consciousness" intact.

You speak of this teleported person as having "the same quantum state as the original", meaning that it is NOT the original.

If I move, physically, from point A to point B, then I AM the original. Same with wormholes, which I would step into. I'm not sure your teleporter qualifies. Would you elaborate ?

Darat

7th August 2008, 10:06 AM

Darat

7th August 2008, 10:06 AM

Belz...

7th August 2008, 10:07 AM

There are two bodies, but they have identical brains following duplication. Therefore they are the same person.

So my laser blue Mazda Protégé 2003 LX is the SAME car as another of the same model, assuming their molecular arrangements are identical ?

Belz...

7th August 2008, 10:08 AM

I am not saying DaratA and DaratB are one person. I am trying to explain to you the considerable difference between a physical existing object such as a teapot and an insubstantive illusion who's apparent existence arises only through inference.

It's not under dispute that humans and organisms have a certain form of awareness.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 10:12 AM

Let me put it back into the teleport thought experiment.

We run the teleport and DaratA is not destroyed and DaratB is created in an identical cubicle, we pipe in a lovely pine scent into the cubicle that DaratB's was created in and DaratB "experiences the smell of pine".

What does DaratA experience at the moment DaratB is "experiencing the smell of pine"?

Nothing. Nick and Leon keep confusing pattern and object. Patterns don't exist. This "person" concept they keep talking about does not exist. Only DaratA and DaratB exist. Therefore, when DaratA is gone, he has been killed.

Darat

7th August 2008, 10:12 AM

The non-egoic model of selfhood is extremely counter-intuitive. No doubt about it. Many writers have noted this. Unfortunately the intuitive model just doesn't stand up in the light of empiric research. Other theories of selfhood, from Hume onwards, have developed. How about reading Dennett on "Self as a Centre of Narrative Gravity?"

Nick

I have - and I strongly suspect that if you have read it you have totally misunderstood what he is arguing since it doesn't apply in the slightest to your confusion regarding what 1 + 1 equals!

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 10:16 AM

So my laser blue Mazda Protégé 2003 LX is the SAME car as another of the same model, assuming their molecular arrangements are identical ?

Of course not! But the two brains would have the same neuronal connections etc.

Leon

Nick227

7th August 2008, 10:23 AM

I have - and I strongly suspect that if you have read it you have totally misunderstood what he is arguing since it doesn't apply in the slightest to your confusion regarding what 1 + 1 equals!

How does it not apply? Neither DaratA nor DaratB's sense of "I" have any substantive existence. Both are illusions created only through inference.

What you're saying is that 1x0 + 1x0 = 2x0. It's meaningless.

When DaratB is replicated so DaratA's narratives recommence within him, taking shape and form as his brain processes information. The sensation of there being a narrative centre naturally appears with them though it has no substantive existence itself.

Nick

cyborg

7th August 2008, 10:25 AM

Yet again I feel compelled to point out that you are continuing to talk past each other:

One set of people say "I" is class, the other set are saying "I" is an instance.

cyborgA and cyborgB are both cyborg. cyborgA is not instance cyborgB.

You can argue all day about which is more "cyborg".

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 10:28 AM

But that's not what you said:

You speak of this teleported person as having "the same quantum state as the original", meaning that it is NOT the original.

If I move, physically, from point A to point B, then I AM the original. Same with wormholes, which I would step into. I'm not sure your teleporter qualifies. Would you elaborate ?

The quantum teleporter moves the actual atoms etc.. Therefore you would simply be transported as if you entered a wormhole and came out somewhere.

In quantum theory, all particles with the same quantum state are identical, anyway.

Leon

Belz...

7th August 2008, 10:55 AM

Of course not! But the two brains would have the same neuronal connections etc.

Correction: they would have identical connections.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 10:56 AM

In quantum theory, all particles with the same quantum state are identical, anyway.

Identical but not the same. Again with the Mazda...

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 11:03 AM

Identical but not the same. Again with the Mazda...

What about the quantum teleporter? Would you use it?

Leon

westprog

7th August 2008, 11:21 AM

Why ? What's the difference ? We're making copies of a physical thing.

Why ? That's exactly what we're talking about: copies.

Then we're not talking about the same thing. Nick, Leon and yourself are talking about the pattern of me being preserved by the teleporter. I'm talking about the original ME being killed by the darn thing.

Well, clearly we are at cross purposes. You talked about copying a computer program, I'm talking about copying a computer program.

We haven't lost the pattern, but we've lost the object. In that case it doesn't matter to us, but if the program were somehow sentient, I'm sure IT'd mind.

If consciousness/identity is identical with a computer program, then it really would be exactly the same if we were to copy the exact state of the program.

That, incidentally, is one reason why I don't think consciousness is a function of a computer program. But if it is, two identical instances of the program are the same.

If we say that it makes a difference what hardware is running the program, when it's running, etc, then we are admitting that identity isn't purely algorithmic. That's a rebuttal of Strong AI.

I'm not putting forward any position here apart from doubt/scepticism - but I think we can consider the implications of the different possibilities.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 11:30 AM

What about the quantum teleporter? Would you use it?

Leon

I'd just chuck him in the normal one. He'd be right as rain with it once he'd been through a few times.

Nick

westprog

7th August 2008, 12:30 PM

Identical but not the same. Again with the Mazda...

I think that particles with the same quantum state are identical. That's why a quantum transporter couldn't create multiple copies.

There may be an issue with leptons, but generally there is only allowed to be one particle in existence with a given quantum state. I'd use a quantum transporter.

If changing one's location changed one's identity, then I wouldn't walk across the room.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 12:53 PM

What about the quantum teleporter? Would you use it?

If it merely moves me, sure.

Belz...

7th August 2008, 12:56 PM

I'd just chuck him in the normal one. He'd be right as rain with it once he'd been through a few times.

No, I wouldn't, because I couldn't go through it more than once.

Incidently, one of my copies would push you into one, while another unplugs the receiving unit. ;)

ETA: That certainly raises other issues. Murder isn't murder anymore because you can use the last record of somebody's teleportation to recreate him. Of course, that's assuming that the object was the pattern, which is clearly not true.

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 12:57 PM

If it merely moves me, sure.

The original quantum states are lost, of course.

Leon

Belz...

7th August 2008, 12:57 PM

If consciousness/identity is identical with a computer program, then it really would be exactly the same if we were to copy the exact state of the program.

It would be identical, but not the same object. You seem to have difficulty grasping that.

If we say that it makes a difference what hardware is running the program, when it's running, etc, then we are admitting that identity isn't purely algorithmic.

It isn't. Nothing is algorithmic because numbers don't exist.

I think that particles with the same quantum state are identical.

That sounds dangerously mystical to me.

If changing one's location changed one's identity, then I wouldn't walk across the room.

If the quantum teleporter merely moves the particles, without dissassembling them, then sure. But that's not the same thing as killing Belz... to make AlterBelz...

Belz...

7th August 2008, 12:59 PM

The original quantum states are lost, of course.

Meaning ? I seem to remember you saying they had the same quantum states.

What does it mean, "original quantum states are lost" ?

Belz...

7th August 2008, 01:02 PM

We are clearly at an impasse, Nick. If we can't agree on whether a pattern and one of its instances are the same, we can't progress in this discussion.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 01:13 PM

No, I wouldn't, because I couldn't go through it more than once.

You need the experience, that's what I figure. Once you'd been in you'd be fine. It's like chucking a child in the swimming pool only you don't need to do anything to get through it.

Incidently, one of my copies would push you into one, while another unplugs the receiving unit. ;)

:D

more like you'd be overwhelmed with gratitude to me for helping you get through your fear!

Nick

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 01:24 PM

Meaning ? I seem to remember you saying they had the same quantum states.

What does it mean, "original quantum states are lost" ?

When a particle is teleported, the original particle is scanned by one of an entangled pair of particles and is disrupted by the scanning process. The particle data are then transmitted and combined with the other entangled particle to create the teleported particle. According to quantum theory, the teleported particle is an exact replica of the original particle, and is indistinguishable from it. Nothing has actually been destroyed.

Leon

lupus_in_fabula

7th August 2008, 01:30 PM

You need the experience, that's what I figure. Once you'd been in you'd be fine. It's like chucking a child in the swimming pool only you don't need to do anything to get through it.

It wouldn’t remove the overall dilemma of always having to kill one entity.

Darat

7th August 2008, 01:34 PM

How does it not apply? Neither DaratA nor DaratB's sense of "I" have any substantive existence. Both are illusions created only through inference.

...snip...

Use his "centre of gravity" analogy and run that through the teleport. We can "infer" that DaratA has a centre of gravity, and that DaratB has a centre of gravity, destroy DaratA and you can no longer infer that DaratA has a centre of gravity...

What you're saying is that 1x0 + 1x0 = 2x0. It's meaningless.

No I'm not I am saying 1 + 1 = 2, whilst you keep insisting that 1 + 1 = 1.

When DaratB is replicated so DaratA's narratives recommence within him,

...snip..

DaratA's "narrative" is not DaratA.

taking shape and form as his brain processes information. The sensation of there being a narrative centre naturally appears with them though it has no substantive existence itself.

Nick

And if you go back you will see that I said that for DaratB his experience will be that he walked into a teleport booth, pressed a button and walked out in a new location. However as far as reality is concerned that is not what happened, what happened is that there was a rather messy intermediate part to the process in which DaratA was killed.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 01:54 PM

Use his "centre of gravity" analogy and run that through the teleport. We can "infer" that DaratA has a centre of gravity, and that DaratB has a centre of gravity, destroy DaratA and you can no longer infer that DaratA has a centre of gravity...

If DaratA is destroyed then his brain is no longer functioning, it cannot create narratives, and thus there is no apparent centre of narrative gravity. This is true.

No I'm not I am saying 1 + 1 = 2, whilst you keep insisting that 1 + 1 = 1.

You are trying to apply forms of logic in situations where they do not apply. There is no actual "I." There is only the feeling that it must exist. This feeling will be replicated.

DaratA's "narrative" is not DaratA.

No. It's a story the brain tells itself, and others.

And if you go back you will see that I said that for DaratB his experience will be that he walked into a teleport booth, pressed a button and walked out in a new location. However as far as reality is concerned that is not what happened, what happened is that there was a rather messy intermediate part to the process in which DaratA was killed.

Yes. But you won't die. You cannot kill something which does not exist. And we can exactly replicate the situation that gives rise to the illusion.

Nick

Nick227

7th August 2008, 01:58 PM

It wouldn’t remove the overall dilemma of always having to kill one entity.

The degree of moral dilemma depends on your personal view of selfhood.

Nick

skiba

7th August 2008, 02:37 PM

The degree of moral dilemma depends on your personal view of selfhood.

Nick

This is what I was pointing at with the malfunctioning teleporter, where the teleporter fails to vaporize the original.

Once you knew there was an identical copy of you, would you die willingly, with out any hesitation? Wouldn't there be an "I" that would resist dying?

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 02:58 PM

This is what I was pointing at with the malfunctioning teleporter, where the teleporter fails to vaporize the original.

Once you knew there was an identical copy of you, would you die willingly, with out any hesitation? Wouldn't there be an "I" that would resist dying?

They would only be identical at the instant of transmission. After that the two brain states will start to diverge and there will be two different individuals. From that point of view it would be morally wrong to kill the original. This conflict doesn't arise if the machine is functioning properly.

Leon

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 03:02 PM

Well, up to you. But I bet on Dennett, Parfit, & Blackmore on this anytime over these idiotic ego theories. Ego theories are highly intuitive. They feel totally right, but they can't be substantiated empirically. Bundle theories of selfhood hammer them in terms of validation. If you ask me it's a no contest.
I've met Blackmore, and spoken about these things, at the Mind, Brain, and Consciousness meeting. I've read enough Dennett to know that he misrepresents the Behaviorist position (and very likely does not understand it). Parfit escapes me for the moment; I'll have to check my books to see if I am merely blanking on the name. I am not defending my view out of ignorance of their superior views; I am quite comfortable saying that mine is every bit as defensible as theirs, and perhaps more so.

Mercutio-A is an organism. That organism has inherited a mechanism to create for itself the illusion of "I." In Mercutio-A's case it seems to have done a very good job of this!
Why do you persist in reductionistic language? You are functionally a dualist here. Blackmore warned of the seduction of dualistic language.

I'm not denying that all sorts of morally-challenging scenarios can be created by the experiment. I'm just not clear why you and others choose to go off on this tangent.
Gee, maybe because I thought it made my point. It is not the number of thought narratives, but the number of thinking organisms. In the case of humans, the body is integral to the "program"; the hardware/software analogy falls apart! Some elements of our perceiving are completely dependent on the whole organism--they are no more stored programs than is Darat's "ran". They exist because they help constitute a behaving organism, not because they are controlling that behaving organism.
Well, both of them seem to be living in the Dark Ages!
Your ignorance of my view is not reciprocated, I assure you.

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 03:07 PM

They would only be identical at the instant of transmission. After that the two brain states will start to diverge and there will be two different individuals. From that point of view it would be morally wrong to kill the original. This conflict doesn't arise if the machine is functioning properly.

Leon
So if my glitch-produced 24 Mercutio-B's were dispatched a moment or two (or more) after the glitch, it is wrong, but if they are killed instantaneously, all is well? A perceived lifetime of experience is irrelevant when it comes to killing Mercutio-A at Time ZAP, but anything after Time ZAP makes it immoral to kill Mercutio-Bv1-23?

Easy to say from the perspective of someone who is not Mercutio-A.

Darat

7th August 2008, 03:08 PM

The degree of moral dilemma depends on your personal view of selfhood.

Nick

Nick do you mean to say that if you were DaratA in my example (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3923412#post3923412) you would press the red vaporise button?

beeksc1

7th August 2008, 03:16 PM

Yep, consciousness is mysterious.

The real conundrum of consciousness?

Frank Zappa

What's the ugliest part of your body?
Some say, "Your nose."
Some say, "Your toes."
But I think it's your mind.

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 03:21 PM

So if my glitch-produced 24 Mercutio-B's were dispatched a moment or two (or more) after the glitch, it is wrong, but if they are killed instantaneously, all is well? A perceived lifetime of experience is irrelevant when it comes to killing Mercutio-A at Time ZAP, but anything after Time ZAP makes it immoral to kill Mercutio-Bv1-23?

Easy to say from the perspective of someone who is not Mercutio-A.

Yes, because I consider that they are the same person. I don't see any difference between disposing of the unwanted M-Bs instantly and disposing of the original M-A at the moment of transmission. As long as we end up with one M-B I think we are OK from a moral point of view. If there is any delay we should allow the 23 M-Bs to survive.

Leon

INRM

7th August 2008, 03:29 PM

Well in my opinion all you need is a bunch of feedback-loops.

We have many in our brain. You take those, and you couple them with a feedback loop connecting to the memory centers and you get a conscious entity with the sentience us humans feature.

You damage the memory center, you end up with a person in a black-out... conscious but not "experiencing" because no feedback from the memory centers. There are other feedback loops going on which sustain the consciousness, but no "experiencing" because no memory.

My thought at least.

INRM

skiba

7th August 2008, 03:58 PM

They would only be identical at the instant of transmission. After that the two brain states will start to diverge and there will be two different individuals. From that point of view it would be morally wrong to kill the original. This conflict doesn't arise if the machine is functioning properly.

Leon

It isn't morality that I'm concerned here, but how one would react in that situation. The result is the same in both scenarios, in the other death is more "in your face". No matter what the philosophical mind set of the indivitual, I would say that most wouldn't want to die.

In most cases there is the "I" that wants to survive. It dosen't really matter if there's an "I" that thinks " "I" is only an illusion". It dosent matter because it remains as a concept and not actuality.

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 04:38 PM

Yes, because I consider that they are the same person.
Interesting use of "they are", then. Seems like it might take more than just one bullet.

I don't see any difference between disposing of the unwanted M-Bs instantly and disposing of the original M-A at the moment of transmission. I agree; there is no difference. In both cases we are killing someone (or more than one).
As long as we end up with one M-B I think we are OK from a moral point of view. Here we disagree, of course. See Darat's suicide button example and see how it applies here.
If there is any delay we should allow the 23 M-Bs to survive.

LeonWhy? What is more special about the one second after ZAP than the lifetime before it? From the point of view of any of the 23 M-Bs or the M-A, they are peppered, I warrant, for this world.

Nick227

7th August 2008, 04:57 PM

This is what I was pointing at with the malfunctioning teleporter, where the teleporter fails to vaporize the original.

Once you knew there was an identical copy of you, would you die willingly, with out any hesitation? Wouldn't there be an "I" that would resist dying?

You don't need an "I" to resist. Plenty of unthinking creatures resist death. And anyway there is no "I" in the first place. It is simply that for a thinking human being resistance can be articulated "I resist."

Nick

leon_heller

7th August 2008, 04:58 PM

Interesting use of "they are", then. Seems like it might take more than just one bullet.
I agree; there is no difference. In both cases we are killing someone (or more than one).
Here we disagree, of course. See Darat's suicide button example and see how it applies here.
Why? What is more special about the one second after ZAP than the lifetime before it? From the point of view of any of the 23 M-Bs or the M-A, they are peppered, I warrant, for this world.

Not one second after, but at the instant of transmission. They are all identical at that stage. Then brain states will diverge and they will become individuals.

Leon

Nick227

7th August 2008, 05:00 PM

Nick do you mean to say that if you were DaratA in my example (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3923412#post3923412) you would press the red vaporise button?

A deal is a deal! Without your word you're nothing in this life. I would push it.

Nick

Nick227

7th August 2008, 05:17 PM

I've met Blackmore, and spoken about these things, at the Mind, Brain, and Consciousness meeting. I've read enough Dennett to know that he misrepresents the Behaviorist position (and very likely does not understand it). Parfit escapes me for the moment; I'll have to check my books to see if I am merely blanking on the name. I am not defending my view out of ignorance of their superior views; I am quite comfortable saying that mine is every bit as defensible as theirs, and perhaps more so.

Fair enough. But to me your view sounds like a complete fudge, no disrespect. IMO I've heard it a load of times before viz..."OK so there's no homunculus, that's well understood these days, I can't possibly believe that. So I will consider my whole organism to be the experiencer." This is my judgment. Perhaps I'm wrong. But I've listened to this argument a heap of times and never been remotely convinced for the simple reason that it has no empiric substantiation. When a thought is created by the brain, how is that an articulation of the whole organism? It's patent nonsense. The statement "I believe it's not nonsense," for example. How is that an articulation of the whole organism?

Why do you persist in reductionistic language? You are functionally a dualist here. Blackmore warned of the seduction of dualistic language.

I like duality. I think all "I"'s like duality. Maybe I'm wrong.

Gee, maybe because I thought it made my point. It is not the number of thought narratives, but the number of thinking organisms. In the case of humans, the body is integral to the "program"; the hardware/software analogy falls apart! Some elements of our perceiving are completely dependent on the whole organism

Which are those?

--they are no more stored programs than is Darat's "ran". They exist because they help constitute a behaving organism, not because they are controlling that behaving organism.Your ignorance of my view is not reciprocated, I assure you.

Well, the "I" can create a feeling of self-control, I guess.

Nick

Nick227

7th August 2008, 05:21 PM

Yes, because I consider that they are the same person. I don't see any difference between disposing of the unwanted M-Bs instantly and disposing of the original M-A at the moment of transmission. As long as we end up with one M-B I think we are OK from a moral point of view. If there is any delay we should allow the 23 M-Bs to survive.

Leon

Let's face it, if teletransporters ever became available then you'd have to start rewriting moral codes. Either that or make sure they couldn't go wrong. They have the power to present humans with scenarios never before faced.

Nick

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 05:44 PM

Not one second after, but at the instant of transmission. They are all identical at that stage. Then brain states will diverge and they will become individuals.

Leon

Um... that was my point. You are saying that one second after ZAP is enough to call each person an individual. So, each M-B is different by one part in roughly 1.16 billion (that second divided by the seconds of M-A's life), if indeed they are "the same person". One difference in 1.16 billion is enough to spare their lives. But 100% difference (in XYZ coordinates), is utterly irrelevant as to whether they are or are not the same person.

Twenty-four men show up in a room with you, and if "an instant" passes, they all get to live... You know what the difference between them at that point is? XYZ coordinates.

Mercutio

7th August 2008, 05:55 PM

Fair enough. But to me your view sounds like a complete fudge, no disrespect. IMO I've heard it a load of times before viz..."OK so there's no homunculus, that's well understood these days, I can't possibly believe that. So I will consider my whole organism to be the experiencer." This is my judgment. Perhaps I'm wrong.Yes, you are.
But I've listened to this argument a heap of times and never been remotely convinced for the simple reason that it has no empiric substantiation.You are looking at the wrong level of explanation.
When a thought is created by the brainAn odd assertion... "when" this happens presupposes a view of the process that is wholly at odds with what actually happens. You can probe brains all you want, and you will not find "a thought" hiding anywhere. Platonic copy theory is not consistent with what we have learned about brain function; you say you have read Blackmore--what does she say about the cartesian theatre?
, how is that an articulation of the whole organism? It's patent nonsense.Please show me the brain that has done it on its own.
The statement "I believe it's not nonsense," for example. How is that an articulation of the whole organism?
Was your brain a part of, or independent of, your body while you were taught language by your verbal community? Did your parents speak directly to your brain about its thoughts, or to the whole you about your actions?

In the real world, brains do not pop out of machines fully programmed to say "I believe it's not nonsense"; brains are an integral part of organisms that must learn both language and context before that sentence will be uttered.

I like duality. I think all "I"'s like duality. Maybe I'm wrong.
In a word, yes.

Which are those?
Any that require us to learn to label our private states based on the verbal interaction with our community and reference to public behavior. So, the vast majority, if not all.

Well, the "I" can create a feeling of self-control, I guess.

NickI can tell it's a guess.

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 05:57 PM

That depends on the type of illusion something is. "I" is not a substantial illusion. The presence of "I" is cognitively inferred by the activities of the brain, but it is analogous to a centre of gravity. A hole like this has no substantive qualities aside of what surrounds it. It is defined by the brain activity that seems to infer its presence. You can recreate it.

Nick

That would depend on the imaginary super technology.
It would be meaningless anyhow, if *I* (state 9567342) is the one copied and the original body *I*(state 9567342) then becomes *I*(state 9567343),*I*(state 9567344),*I*(state 9567345), it raises the question of why you would say that an *I* had been recreated, it is *I*(state 9567342), it is not the prior state *I*(state 9567341), nor is it the following state *I*(state 9567343).

So if the *I*(state 9567342), is 'recreated, what meaning does it have, the original body is now is some divergent state, the new body will become *I*(state 9567342)(1), *I*(state 9567342)(2) and so on.

So which of the *I* has been recreated from whatever state you wish to freeze a transitory and fluid process. You have recreated a new body that is copy of the original body. they imedeatly diverge and are two seperate *I* that will contain a common past but a divergent future.

So which *I* is recreated and why does it matter?

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 05:59 PM

Thinking does not happen without a thinking organism. This is correct. However, simply because the thought "I" exists does not mean that either the thought or the thinking organism are "I." Descartes made similar assumptions some years ago.

Nick

now that is just silly. :)

The body is the common *I*, it is unique and interdependent, it has a contingent history. It is identifiable to some extent and quite unlike any other body.

Dancing David

7th August 2008, 06:01 PM

There are two bodies, but they have identical brains following duplication. Therefore they are the same person.

Leon

they are divergent from the point of creation, they are not identical, and as time passes they are less identical. i am not even the same body i was three minutes ago, much less if I had a duplicate body translated in space.

westprog

8th August 2008, 02:24 AM

It would be identical, but not the same object. You seem to have difficulty grasping that.

A Computer program isn't an object. It's a pattern. From that pattern, objects can be created. They will of course be different, because seperate objects cannot be identical.

It isn't. Nothing is algorithmic because numbers don't exist.

Well, there it is in a nutshell. How can you have multiple copies of something that doesn't exist?

That sounds dangerously mystical to me.

It may be that I'm misrepresenting the facts - I'm not an expert - but AFAIAA that's totally conventional physics. Nothing mystical about it beyond the oddness of the quantum itself.

If the quantum teleporter merely moves the particles, without dissassembling them, then sure. But that's not the same thing as killing Belz... to make AlterBelz...

The quantum teleporter is a far more practical device, but it lacks the moral dilemmas necessary for a thought experiment.

westprog

8th August 2008, 02:27 AM

A deal is a deal! Without your word you're nothing in this life.

Pressing the disintegrate button would certainly make you nothing.

I would push it.

Nick

If absolutely certain that the "I" is an illusion, why not push it anyway, regardless of whether NickB exists or not.

leon_heller

8th August 2008, 03:40 AM

Um... that was my point. You are saying that one second after ZAP is enough to call each person an individual. So, each M-B is different by one part in roughly 1.16 billion (that second divided by the seconds of M-A's life), if indeed they are "the same person". One difference in 1.16 billion is enough to spare their lives. But 100% difference (in XYZ coordinates), is utterly irrelevant as to whether they are or are not the same person.

Twenty-four men show up in a room with you, and if "an instant" passes, they all get to live... You know what the difference between them at that point is? XYZ coordinates.

Their brain states don't depend on where they are in space, therefore they are the same person, momentarily.

If we had a brain in a vat constituting a "person", and made two copies of it, the two persons would be identical at the moment of copying. They'd start to become two individuals immediately, because of random noise effects and so on.

Leon

Nick227

8th August 2008, 05:03 AM

If absolutely certain that the "I" is an illusion, why not push it anyway, regardless of whether NickB exists or not.

You don't need an "I" to enjoy life. Indeed believing you have one usually creates a lot more hassles for people than fun. People who need a reason to live and just depressed or thinking too much if you ask me.

Nick

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:21 AM

You need the experience, that's what I figure. Once you'd been in you'd be fine. It's like chucking a child in the swimming pool only you don't need to do anything to get through it.

No, I wouldn't. First, because Belz... would be gone, and second because AlterBelz..., having the same memories, wouldn't want to die, either.

more like you'd be overwhelmed with gratitude to me for helping you get through your fear!

Correction: AlterBelz... would be grateful.

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:22 AM

When a particle is teleported, the original particle is scanned by one of an entangled pair of particles and is disrupted by the scanning process. The particle data are then transmitted and combined with the other entangled particle to create the teleported particle. According to quantum theory, the teleported particle is an exact replica of the original particle, and is indistinguishable from it. Nothing has actually been destroyed.

Except that I've been torn apart and reassembled. Ergo: killed.

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:25 AM

You are trying to apply forms of logic in situations where they do not apply.

Pray tell, in which situations does logic not apply ?

Yes. But you won't die. You cannot kill something which does not exist. And we can exactly replicate the situation that gives rise to the illusion.

People don't exist, now ?

So, now, when I say "I", I'm no longer talking about my body ? I'm talking about something that doesn't exist ? What's my body then, if not me ?

We're far too deep into philosophical nonsense, at this point. With philosophy, you can believe anything you want. That's why we got rid of it in favour of science.

Nick227

8th August 2008, 05:26 AM

An odd assertion... "when" this happens presupposes a view of the process that is wholly at odds with what actually happens.

What actually does happen in thinking? I'm very interested.

You can probe brains all you want, and you will not find "a thought" hiding anywhere. Platonic copy theory is not consistent with what we have learned about brain function; you say you have read Blackmore--what does she say about the cartesian theatre?

I haven't seen her relate it to thinking. Generally I haven't found much neurological information on thinking and feeling.

Please show me the brain that has done it on its own.

Well, it's needs stimulation.

Was your brain a part of, or independent of, your body while you were taught language by your verbal community? Did your parents speak directly to your brain about its thoughts, or to the whole you about your actions?

Well, the feeling was that there was some inner agency who was responsible for what I was doing that was being communicated with. Certainly I wouldn't have considered it the whole organism. Would you complain to someone's leg about being kicked? The organism is an integral whole but the sensation in communication is that there is some persisting ego or self inside who is directing things. This has been my experience and that of many others I've known.

I submit that you are maintaining the intuitive, ego position and simply transfering it onto the whole organism. I don't have so many value judgements about this but this to me is all you are doing.

In the real world, brains do not pop out of machines fully programmed to say "I believe it's not nonsense"; brains are an integral part of organisms that must learn both language and context before that sentence will be uttered.

But does the whole organism learn language and context?

Language offers a means to articulate and communicate through the egoic milieu, which I say the brain constructs through thinking. It creates narratives of selfhood. It creates experiences and experiencers.

To me you are again so refusing to allow any level of reductionist asessment as to virtually render any question meaningless. Your answer to everything seems to be that it is simply a function of the whole.

Nick

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:26 AM

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:29 AM

Yes, because I consider that they are the same person.

You mean "he".

I don't see any difference between disposing of the unwanted M-Bs instantly and disposing of the original M-A at the moment of transmission.

I do. One is first degree murder and the other is MASS murder.

If there is any delay we should allow the 23 M-Bs to survive.

"Allow" ?

How exactly do you view the right to live, here ?

Nick227

8th August 2008, 05:30 AM

Pray tell, in which situations does logic not apply ?

You cannot apply simple mathematics when you are dealing with things that do not exist. Adding one thing that does not exist to another thing that does not exist does not necessarily make two things that do not exist.

Nick

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:32 AM

Not one second after, but at the instant of transmission. They are all identical at that stage. Then brain states will diverge and they will become individuals.

So they are not individuals not because they are not separate but because they are identical ? That's pretty twisted.

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:38 AM

A Computer program isn't an object. It's a pattern. From that pattern, objects can be created.

Yes, but the program itself doesn't exist until the object does. "Me" isn't a pattern, it's an object. I think this is where you, Nick and Leon differ from Mercutio, Darat and myself.

They will of course be different, because seperate objects cannot be identical.

Precisely. Two copies of me aren't the same even if they're identical down to the last molecule.

The quantum teleporter is a far more practical device, but it lacks the moral dilemmas necessary for a thought experiment.

It no less kills you than the other teleport. It just doesn't kill you after making a copy. It kills you then makes a new you.

Nick227

8th August 2008, 05:39 AM

now that is just silly. :)

The body is the common *I*, it is unique and interdependent, it has a contingent history. It is identifiable to some extent and quite unlike any other body.

I like reductionism. Contextualism, systems theory and holism are for pussies if you ask me.

Reductionist:
"Is there actually an I? Look!"
"OK, no there isn't"
"OK, deal with it!"

Systems:
"Is there actually an I? Look!"
"OK, no there isn't"
"OK, so it must be an emergent phenomenon created by a contextual heirachy disappears off into endless spooling gobbledegook"

I know which approach I prefer.

Nick

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:39 AM

You cannot apply simple mathematics when you are dealing with things that do not exist.

Of course you can.

Adding one thing that does not exist to another thing that does not exist does not necessarily make two things that do not exist.

That is dishonest, Nick. Since you keep talking about "person" and how one is replaced by the other, we are most certainly speaking of things that, at least in the thought experiment, exist.

Nick227

8th August 2008, 05:49 AM

That is dishonest, Nick. Since you keep talking about "person" and how one is replaced by the other, we are most certainly speaking of things that, at least in the thought experiment, exist.

No one is disputing that two people are involved. The dispute was over whether DaratA's "I" and DaratB's "I" represent two "I"s. I said that they do not unless both are living at the same time. DaratA disagreed with me. This is what it was about. My point is that since the "I" is a certain type of illusion vaguely analagous to a hole or an inferred centre of gravity the usual principles of maths dont' apply. Without the narratives to infer the existence of a central referent there is no "I."

Maybe one day DaratB will agree with me. I also look forward to BelzB. It's interesting that those who won't go through the teletransporter are those who would likely change their beliefs about selfhood if they did, isn't it? What does this infer?

Nick

Belz...

8th August 2008, 05:57 AM

No one is disputing that two people are involved. The dispute was over whether DaratA's "I" and DaratB's "I" represent two "I"s.

Since the "I" is a person I don't see how it could not be. Just like DaratA's and DaratB's "ran" would be separate.

My point is that since the "I" is a certain type of illusion vaguely analagous to a hole or an inferred centre of gravity the usual principles of maths dont' apply.

Fascinating. You're adding useless entities to what is essentially a simple problem. "I" IS the body.

It's interesting that those who won't go through the teletransporter are those who would likely change their beliefs about selfhood if they did, isn't it?

That's a nice assumption on your part. How would you know if Darat or I would be more or less likely to change our opinions about this issue ?

westprog

8th August 2008, 06:06 AM

Yes, but the program itself doesn't exist until the object does. "Me" isn't a pattern, it's an object. I think this is where you, Nick and Leon differ from Mercutio, Darat and myself.

No, you're missing my point. I am not claiming that human beings are computer programs. But if they are, then any given instance is exactly the same as any other instance. For example, the hibernate option on Windows switches off a program and starts it again.

Far from saying that human beings are computer programs, I think that they are something else entirely, and that whatever they are, they don't like being disintegrated.

Precisely. Two copies of me aren't the same even if they're identical down to the last molecule.

It no less kills you than the other teleport. It just doesn't kill you after making a copy. It kills you then makes a new you.

I will have to look up exactly what it does, but AFAIAA it doesn't disintegrate you, it moves you. As it only works with single particles at present, that's not really a dilemma.

leon_heller

8th August 2008, 06:08 AM

It no less kills you than the other teleport. It just doesn't kill you after making a copy. It kills you then makes a new you.

It doesn't kill you during the teleportation process; it makes an identical copy of each particle. Nothing is really destroyed, as it could be done a particle at a time. Would you use it?

Leon

Darat

8th August 2008, 06:10 AM

...snip...

Maybe one day DaratB will agree with me.

...snip...

Unless DaratB is denied knowledge of the mechanism of the teleporter he could never agree with you because he knows he contacted someone and told them they could go ahead and commit suicide by pressing the big red button.

Now of course DaratB might be quite happy with that... until it comes the time for him to make the return journey; somehow I suspect he may decide to take the train!

leon_heller

8th August 2008, 06:19 AM

Here's a very good account of quantum teleportation:

http://www.research.ibm.com/quantuminfo/teleportation/

Leon

Mercutio

8th August 2008, 06:43 AM

Well, the feeling was that there was some inner agency who was responsible for what I was doing that was being communicated with.Someone here (I don't know if it was you) already posted the observation that this feeling was not reported before dualist models were popularized. Your analysis is tremendously colored by your lifetime in a verbal community that uses dualistic language. Do you honestly think that your parents and teachers were talking to part of you, and not to you? Did they focus their eyes a centimeter or so beneath your skin? What gave it away?
Certainly I wouldn't have considered it the whole organism. Yes, I am sure you wouldn't have.
Would you complain to someone's leg about being kicked?Thank you for illustrating my point. We do not separate the leg and complain to it, nor do we separate the brain and communicate to it. We complain to the person who kicked, by talking to the person.
The organism is an integral whole but the sensation in communication is that there is some persisting ego or self inside who is directing things. This is a product of your language community, not a necessary element of human consciousness. Oddly enough, Blackmore claims to no longer feel this way. I suppose I must agree with her, because I really can't imagine what it is you are talking about.
This has been my experience and that of many others I've known.
And yet, not of others.

I submit that you are maintaining the intuitive, ego position and simply transfering it onto the whole organism.I submit that precisely the opposite is happening. While it is very clear that whole organisms communicate with one another (indeed, no one has ever observed brains directly communicating, let alone hypothetical invisible constructs like egos or minds directly communicating), it is a construction of language that something must be going on beneath the surface that is the reason for that communication.
I don't have so many value judgements about this but this to me is all you are doing.No offense taken; you are quite simply wrong.

But does the whole organism learn language and context?
Yes. Any other division is arbitrary. Any division that places the control in the hands of a circularly inferred hypothetical entity (whether a simple mind or a chomskyan Language Acquisition Device) is multiplying entities needlessle

Language offers a means to articulate and communicate through the egoic milieu, which I say the brain constructs through thinking. It creates narratives of selfhood. It creates experiences and experiencers.
Verbal behavior is shaped by its contingencies, as is any other behavior. Its meaning is in its use. Again, there is no evidence for a platonic copy theory of language.

To me you are again so refusing to allow any level of reductionist asessment as to virtually render any question meaningless. Your answer to everything seems to be that it is simply a function of the whole.

I have no problem with neurology. Neurology is not what you are doing. Neurology looks at the "how" of behavior, and is completely compatible with my view (again, at the Mind, Brain, and Consciousness meeting, there were plenty of researchers presenting neurological research, including Koch, who has been mentioned on this thread, McNamara, Sejnowski, and others whose names escape me at present; some of that is available online). You are not merely being reductionistic; you are "reducing" behavior to the action of a hypothetical entity, whose existence you are inferring from its alleged actions, and from nothing else. This is circular reasoning, and it has no place in science.

Belz...

8th August 2008, 07:58 AM

No, you're missing my point. I am not claiming that human beings are computer programs. But if they are, then any given instance is exactly the same as any other instance. For example, the hibernate option on Windows switches off a program and starts it again.

Each time you reboot your computer, a new COPY of the program is loaded into memory. It isn't the same copy as last time, although it (usually) does exactly the same thing.

Belz...

8th August 2008, 08:00 AM

It doesn't kill you during the teleportation process; it makes an identical copy of each particle. Nothing is really destroyed, as it could be done a particle at a time.

It makes copies of particles and moves them one by one ? Hoes does it not eventually kill me ?

Would you use it?

Shuttlecraft.

Nick227

8th August 2008, 08:23 AM

Someone here (I don't know if it was you) already posted the observation that this feeling was not reported before dualist models were popularized. Your analysis is tremendously colored by your lifetime in a verbal community that uses dualistic language. Do you honestly think that your parents and teachers were talking to part of you, and not to you? Did they focus their eyes a centimeter or so beneath your skin? What gave it away?

I would agree that our concepts of selfhood are culturally conditioned into us, to a degree. There are other social aspects and biological factors too.

As to being spoken to. I don't think that my parents or other folk were speaking to some point beneath my skin. They made eye contact (well as near as eye contact as most Brits can manage!)

BTW, could you give me some insights into how thoughts come to be? You said you knew how this happened earlier.

This is a product of your language community, not a necessary element of human consciousness. Oddly enough, Blackmore claims to no longer feel this way. I suppose I must agree with her, because I really can't imagine what it is you are talking about.

Well, I take more the position that the word "I" refers to nothing. I can imagine fully your perspective. No problem.

It is this that makes me suspicious of your viewpoint. If I read Blackmore it's clear she would grasp what I'm writing. She's been there. You have not. You have not considered the possibility that nothing is referred to by the word "I", this is why you cannot imagine what it would be like. Your brain has not allowed you to go there.

Nick

Darat

8th August 2008, 08:28 AM

...snip... Your brain has not allowed you to go there.

Nick

Which you is this that hasn't been allowed to go somewhere? A little man sat in the middle of Merc's brain?

Nick227

8th August 2008, 08:29 AM

Unless DaratB is denied knowledge of the mechanism of the teleporter he could never agree with you because he knows he contacted someone and told them they could go ahead and commit suicide by pressing the big red button.

Now of course DaratB might be quite happy with that... until it comes the time for him to make the return journey; somehow I suspect he may decide to take the train!

I'm not so sure. In his time of being alive and seeming continued existence DaratB very likely imo would have spent quite a while evaluating just what death really means in this new kind of situation.

Nick

Nick227

8th August 2008, 08:31 AM

Which you is this that hasn't been allowed to go somewhere? A little man sat in the middle of Merc's brain?

Just using language. How about "MercA's brain has not allowed itself to go there?"

Nick

Nick227

8th August 2008, 08:33 AM

It makes copies of particles and moves them one by one ? Hoes does it not eventually kill me ?

If half of the cells in your body could be instantly replaced, would it still be you?

Nick

leon_heller

8th August 2008, 09:12 AM

It makes copies of particles and moves them one by one ? Hoes does it not eventually kill me ?

Shuttlecraft.

At what stage are you killed? This relates to Nick's post, above.

The body is constantly renewing its cells. This doesn't happen with nerve cells, of course (although stem cells might be induced to do it), but if neurones could replace themselves, would you consider that as the body killing itself?

Leon

Mercutio

8th August 2008, 09:33 AM

I would agree that our concepts of selfhood are culturally conditioned into us, to a degree. There are other social aspects and biological factors too.
Agreed. Note, please, that all of these are environmental factors--elements outside the organism--and perfectly legitimate as causal factors for our behavior. (Biological factors, of course, having been selected for over the species' history by elements in the environment, at the level of the organism and population, not by selection of individual neurons.)

As to being spoken to. I don't think that my parents or other folk were speaking to some point beneath my skin. They made eye contact (well as near as eye contact as most Brits can manage!)
Yes, they spoke to you. The one they could actually see.

BTW, could you give me some insights into how thoughts come to be? You said you knew how this happened earlier.
*sigh* First, "thoughts" do not come to be. "Thoughts" are a reification of a process. Thinking happens. And yes, we know quite a bit about that. I wish the session two videos from the Mind, Brain, and Consciousness conference were available online; the Sejnowski presentation was a wonderfully accessible introduction to the neurology of thinking. He presents, among other things, the learning of flower location in bees (mediated by octopamine, the equivalent of our dopamine); it turns out that this learning, observable even at the level of the firing of individual neurons, is precisely what would be predicted by the Rescorla-Wagner model of associative learning (which uses a whole-organism approach). Thus, this whole-organism model is supported by neurological research, unlike dualistic models.

He goes on to a much more complicated task, a monkey performing a visual discrimination task. The whole task is necessary, from presentation of visual stimulus in environment, to the pressing of the appropriate button by the monkey acting on its environment. The whole task *is* thinking, although the elements of that task can be (to some extent, but always imperfectly) dissected out. Sejnowski's model is, of course, incomplete, as it shows only a snapshot of the fully trained monkey (I do not blame Sejnowski--this is a complicated enough picture, with at least 13 separate brain areas interacting dynamically and spontaneously, responding to both the immediate stimulus and to learning history, to metabolic processes (without which the spontaneous brain activity cannot occur) and changes in environment (both public and private).

Importantly, there is no segment of the task that can be dissected out and labeled "a thought". There is no unified presentation of a qualia (nor any egoic entity to present it to), no discrete package, other than perhaps its function in the environment, that separates this thinking from other thinking. That happens at the level of the active organism in its environment. A car's engine runs whether the car is idling, going north, south, forward, reverse... Higher-order explanations are sometimes the appropriate ones.

Well, I take more the position that the word "I" refers to nothing. I can imagine fully your perspective. No problem.
Fascinating. Nothing takes that position? Nothing can imagine my perspective? Your sentences only make sense if you begin with the assumption of a dualistic I, which you then eliminate (quite reasonably). But your parents were talking to someone. Someone is writing these posts. Rather than denying the I, I think it is far more reasonable to recognize that we have a learning history referring to people as whole organisms, of real actual you and I and Darat and maybe even Dancing David. I do exist. I suspect you do to.

It is this that makes me suspicious of your viewpoint. If I read Blackmore it's clear she would grasp what I'm writing. She's been there. You have not. You have not considered the possibility that nothing is referred to by the word "I", this is why you cannot imagine what it would be like. Your brain has not allowed you to go there.

NickAnd what has not allowed my brain to allow me to go there?

It amuses me to think that you assert these things about me. The very fact that I was at that conference ought to give you a bit of a clue that I have considered quite a few such possibilities.

Now... why would you *not* say that my learning history has not allowed me to go there? It says essentially what yours does, without artificially neglecting the majority of me. You really and truly are a functional dualist.

Nick227

8th August 2008, 09:49 AM

Fascinating. Nothing takes that position? Nothing can imagine my perspective? Your sentences only make sense if you begin with the assumption of a dualistic I, which you then eliminate (quite reasonably). But your parents were talking to someone. Someone is writing these posts. Rather than denying the I, I think it is far more reasonable to recognize that we have a learning history referring to people as whole organisms, of real actual you and I and Darat and maybe even Dancing David. I do exist. I suspect you do to.

It's highly reasonable, for sure, but a reasonable position is not so much what I was seeking. My brain was conditioned, by whatever forces, to regard that it had a personal identity and limited selfhood, that it had an "I", that it was "an experiencer." In self-examination it is quite clear that none of this is so. Now I suppose it could say "ah well, let's be reasonable about the whole thing and say that actually the "I" is the whole organism. Why not do that?" But then one is still left with accepting a position which actually is a lie.

I find it personally more acceptable to accept the reality that there is no "I." And to also accept ones needs as a social being regardless.

Nick

Mercutio

8th August 2008, 09:55 AM

It's highly reasonable, for sure, but a reasonable position is not so much what I was seeking. My brain was conditioned, by whatever forces, to regard that it had a personal identity and limited selfhood, that it had an "I", that it was "an experiencer." In self-examination it is quite clear that none of this is so. Now I suppose it could say "ah well, let's be reasonable about the whole thing and say that actually the "I" is the whole organism. Why not do that?" But then one is still left with accepting a position which actually is a lie.

I find it personally more acceptable to accept the reality that there is no "I." And to also accept ones needs as a social being regardless.

Nick
Well, in one sense I agree completely. If you are looking for an "I" solely within your brain, then it is indeed an illusion.

I find your view astonishing. You assume X, find things that do not work, and yet refuse to reject your assumption, and have the gall to say that rejecting X would be "accepting a position which is actually a lie" because it does not agree with X.

Belz...

8th August 2008, 10:31 AM

Well, I take more the position that the word "I" refers to nothing.

Excellent! Then we can stop talking about this nonsensical "I" thingy and focus on the person itself.

If half of the cells in your body could be instantly replaced, would it still be you?

That's a difficult question to answer. If you want to look at it from an absolutist perspective, even one molecule being replaced changes who "me" is. Therefore I am not the me I was when I started this sentence.

However, it's a whole lot closer to the "me" that began this sentence than any copy of me could ever be.

Belz...

8th August 2008, 10:33 AM

The body is constantly renewing its cells. This doesn't happen with nerve cells, of course (although stem cells might be induced to do it), but if neurones could replace themselves, would you consider that as the body killing itself?

See my previous post.

I do believe they discovered a short while ago that neurones do indeed get replaced.

Belz...

8th August 2008, 10:35 AM

Rather than denying the I, I think it is far more reasonable to recognize that we have a learning history referring to people as whole organisms, of real actual you and I and Darat and maybe even Dancing David.

:(

Damn! I don't exist.

leon_heller

8th August 2008, 11:04 AM

That's a difficult question to answer. If you want to look at it from an absolutist perspective, even one molecule being replaced changes who "me" is. Therefore I am not the me I was when I started this sentence.

However, it's a whole lot closer to the "me" that began this sentence than any copy of me could ever be.

Consider a scenario where each particle in your body is teleported somewhere and then teleported back, effectively replacing each particle in your body with a copy of it.

What percentage of your body would have to be copied before "you" became "not you"? Is it a gradual process, or does it happen suddenly?

Leon

rocketdodger

8th August 2008, 11:05 AM

Shuttlecraft.

You might be interested in my teleporters then, Belz -- they are far superior!

I prevent the copy problem by doing the teleportation slowly and insuring that changes on either end are instantly reflected at the other. Since your consciousness is simply the information flowing across neurons, by linking the neurons (or partial neurons, whatever) at either end you are still a continuous piece of information processing rather than merely a perfect copy.

Thus, your consciousness remains the same and your perception of the event is one location slowly (and strangly) transforming into another.

ALTERNATIVELY,

I have another type of teleporter that simply teleports you picometers towards the destination at a time, in a continuous fashion. Your continuity is also preserved, but since this type requires a spacesuit most people choose the former type.

Nick227

8th August 2008, 11:57 AM

Well, in one sense I agree completely. If you are looking for an "I" solely within your brain, then it is indeed an illusion.

I find your view astonishing. You assume X, find things that do not work, and yet refuse to reject your assumption, and have the gall to say that rejecting X would be "accepting a position which is actually a lie" because it does not agree with X.

Well, there was another factor too. What I started to become aware of was that this "I" thing seemed to be being caused by thinking. In articulating, or identifying, with a string of thought so it was created and when the thoughts slackened off it went away again. This created a bit of a new dynamic, in that by articulating anything "I" is created, so articulating that there was no "I" became tricky!

Anyway, I assumed that there was an "I" and for many years did not bother to look. Upon seeking for it...it wasn't there. Thus "I" don't reject "I" in that such a thing is a non-sequituur, but just point out that it doesn't exist.

eta: btw, thanks for the info about thinking. I will check it out.

Nick

Mercutio

8th August 2008, 12:34 PM

Well, there was another factor too. What I started to become aware of was that this "I" thing seemed to be being caused by thinking. In articulating, or identifying, with a string of thought so it was created and when the thoughts slackened off it went away again. This created a bit of a new dynamic, in that by articulating anything "I" is created, so articulating that there was no "I" became tricky!
I would suggest that the "I" you speak of (that is, the fictional I) was caused more by communication than by thinking. You had to be taught to label your private behaviors; the language community that taught you to do so used dualistic language. See how easy it is to talk about "thoughts" or "memories" as things instead of processes, while Darat's "ran", simply another process, sounds strange to the ear?

You were told* "I changed my mind" instead of "I decided differently"; "He has his mind made up" instead of "he has decided"; "She can do it if she puts her mind to it" instead of "she needs to focus on the task", and the metaphorical language became the way you literally interpreted your world. When you found that it was not literal but metaphor, you chose to throw out the "I" utterly, instead of realizing that the I was, literally, you. There certainly is an organism deciding, focusing, seeing, hearing, thinking. Why not allow that organism the courtesy of referring to itself in the first person singular?

Anyway, I assumed that there was an "I" and for many years did not bother to look. Upon seeking for it...it wasn't there. Thus "I" don't reject "I" in that such a thing is a non-sequituur, but just point out that it doesn't exist.

Nick"It", the fictional part of you that you circularly inferred controlled your actions, doesn't exist. You, however, do. And you do think, and hear, and see, and all the things that you used to credit that entity for.

Your brain does not control your body; it is part of your body. The steering wheel does not control your car, it is one mechanism by which the driver controls your car. The environment determines your behavior; the brain's activity is part of that determined behavior, but not all of it, and certainly not an independent part, separate from the rest of your behavior.

*ETA: Of course this is speculation; I was not there to witness.

Nick227

8th August 2008, 12:57 PM

I would suggest that the "I" you speak of (that is, the fictional I) was caused more by communication than by thinking. You had to be taught to label your private behaviors; the language community that taught you to do so used dualistic language. See how easy it is to talk about "thoughts" or "memories" as things instead of processes, while Darat's "ran", simply another process, sounds strange to the ear?

The labelling of private behaviours could still take place through third-party terminology, such as Nick or Merc, it seems to me. What happens when the "I" is applied is that the organism identifies with the behaviour through articulation. It's interesting because this act creates the inevitable notion of an "experiencer." But is the experiencer actually real or simply a construct of the brain?

You were told* "I changed my mind" instead of "I decided differently"; "He has his mind made up" instead of "he has decided"; "She can do it if she puts her mind to it" instead of "she needs to focus on the task", and the metaphorical language became the way you literally interpreted your world. When you found that it was not literal but metaphor, you chose to throw out the "I" utterly, instead of realizing that the I was, literally, you. There certainly is an organism deciding, focusing, seeing, hearing, thinking. Why not allow that organism the courtesy of referring to itself in the first person singular?

Well, I am doing that. I'm also interested in what's going on behind the curtain and trying to take a look.

Nick

Belz...

8th August 2008, 01:03 PM

Consider a scenario where each particle in your body is teleported somewhere and then teleported back, effectively replacing each particle in your body with a copy of it.

What percentage of your body would have to be copied before "you" became "not you"? Is it a gradual process, or does it happen suddenly?

I don't understand your scenario. I must be missing something.

Mercutio

8th August 2008, 01:08 PM

The labelling of private behaviours could still take place through third-party terminology, such as Nick or Merc, it seems to me. What happens when the "I" is applied is that the organism identifies with the behaviour through articulation. It's interesting because this act creates the inevitable notion of an "experiencer." But is the experiencer actually real or simply a construct of the brain?

Nick

Why do you find it so easy to consider the experiencer to be a subset of the brain, rather than to find the brain a subset of the experiencer?

leon_heller

8th August 2008, 01:19 PM

Originally Posted by leon_heller View Post
Consider a scenario where each particle in your body is teleported somewhere and then teleported back, effectively replacing each particle in your body with a copy of it.

What percentage of your body would have to be copied before "you" became "not you"? Is it a gradual process, or does it happen suddenly?

I don't understand your scenario. I must be missing something.

Each particle is replaced by a copy of it, a particle at a time. At the end of the process, your entire body will have been copied in situ.

Leon

Nick227

8th August 2008, 01:30 PM

Why do you find it so easy to consider the experiencer to be a subset of the brain, rather than to find the brain a subset of the experiencer?

Well, I consider that the experiencer may be a creation of the brain. I don't know that this is really the same as "subset."

It seems to me that a machine processes information. It does not experience information. Thus, in considering the option that the brain is simply a machine, it seems reasonable to ask how real the notion of an experiencer actually is.

Nick

Mercutio

8th August 2008, 01:44 PM

Well, I consider that the experiencer may be a creation of the brain. I don't know that this is really the same as "subset."

It seems to me that a machine processes information. It does not experience information. Thus, in considering the option that the brain is simply a machine, it seems reasonable to ask how real the notion of an experiencer actually is.

Nick

Once again you are caught up in the trap of language--that word, "experience", is a handy thing, but it is a stand-in for a whole bunch of specific actions. There is a machine now (built by the good people at Nescafe) that smells coffee, and can accurately report which espressos will taste better to humans. It literally smells coffee; it has experienced many thousands of sniffs by now, in precisely the same sense as we can say that you or I have experienced smelling coffee (that is, independent sensors detect ratios of several different aromatic compounds to one another, just as our olfactory lobe and associated cortex do). Certainly, there is no homunculus in the machine, but there is none in us either. We could (to the best of my knowledge we have not, yet, but I may simply be ignorant of it) trace the nerve pathways in this task every bit as well as in Sejnowski's report of the visual discrimination task in Monkeys, from input to report.

There is no part of the brain that is the experiencer, but it is quite literally true that this particular experiencer (me, having sampled quite a few espressos in my day) does have a brain as part of himself (I've even seen it on a scan, just to make sure I was not merely assuming). As I have said before, you are trying to reduce your explanation when it is already at a lower level than it should be!

Nick227

8th August 2008, 03:26 PM

Once again you are caught up in the trap of language--that word, "experience", is a handy thing, but it is a stand-in for a whole bunch of specific actions.

.........

There is no part of the brain that is the experiencer, but it is quite literally true that this particular experiencer (me, having sampled quite a few espressos in my day) does have a brain as part of himself (I've even seen it on a scan, just to make sure I was not merely assuming). As I have said before, you are trying to reduce your explanation when it is already at a lower level than it should be!

I like reductionism. I feel kind of indebted to reductionism. It's even taken away my fear of teletransporters. Reductionism only ever showed me myself, far beyond the point that can be expressed. It has allowed me to put thought itself into perspective.

What I like about life is that even the sense of un-naturalness that can be created by the brain, through its construction of an experiencer, can be alleviated by merciless self-investigation. At some point the experiencer is enjoying itself too much to any longer question.

Nick

Mercutio

8th August 2008, 04:21 PM

I like reductionism. I feel kind of indebted to reductionism. It's even taken away my fear of teletransporters. Reductionism only ever showed me myself, far beyond the point that can be expressed. It has allowed me to put thought itself into perspective.
I like reductionism too. Not least because it shows when something is wrong--if I can't find, say, an equivalent of id, ego, and superego at a biological level, I can begin to think Freud was wrong if he meant them literally, and to remember the limits of metaphor if he meant them figuratively. But even though "driving to the hardware store" can certainly be reduced to the physics of combustion, transfer of kinetic energy, gear ratios, coefficients of friction, etc., knowing about all of those things in detail does not give me directions to the hardware store. Some problems, when phrased in the language of a non-reduced level, can only be answered in that non-reduced level.

We observe the behavior of those around us, and from it infer consciousness, even using the word to label some of our private behaviors that are associated with those other public behaviors. The initial information about consciousness is, and can only be, at the level of an organism acting in its environmental (and especially social, more especially linguistic) context. It is not a question that arose initially from the study of the brain. Indeed, the study of the brain itself does not point to consciousness at all--to answer any questions about consciousness, we must look at the brain in the active organism--thus the neurologists speak of "the physiological correlates of consciousness". Remember, though, this correlation is not necessarily a meaningful correlation with a reductionist level--the correlation may be (and, I submit, is) with the behaviors (both public and private) of the person, active in the environment.

What I like about life is that even the sense of un-naturalness that can be created by the brain, through its construction of an experiencer, can be alleviated by merciless self-investigation. At some point the experiencer is enjoying itself too much to any longer question.

NickIt has often been said that "if the brain were simple enough for us to understand it, we would be simple enough that we could not." It is trivially true that there are things even more complex than the brain, though, as each of us has a brain as a subset of ourselves, and [one can make the argument that] two or more people interacting is even more complex than any subset of any one of those two or more.

The incredibly vast variety of life cannot possibly come from a mechanism as simple as natural selection. And yet, it does. The incredibly vast variety of human experience cannot possibly be a simple matter of the body (including the brain) at work. And yet, it is. In both cases, the simple explanation is a bit of a smoke-screen; natural selection has taken billions of years to get to today, and your experience is the result of both natural and artificial selection, imitative and rule-governed and contingency-shaped learning over your entire lifetime (and in the case of imitative and rule-governed learning, you are able to borrow the life lessons of many previous generations!). Sure, it feels like magic! But ask Penn & Teller--it takes a lot of behind-the-scenes work, and a whole lot of practice, to make magic look like magic.

Dancing David

8th August 2008, 10:26 PM

:(

Damn! I don't exist.

On Mon, Wed, and Fri I exist as a monist body organism, on Tue, Thur and Sat I am a Wiccan High Priest, on Sunday i am whatever my wife tells me.

;)

Dancing David

8th August 2008, 10:30 PM

I find it personally more acceptable to accept the reality that there is no "I." And to also accept ones needs as a social being regardless.

Nick

there is a unique body with it's contingent history, it contains the processes of the thoughts, emotions, perceptions and habits, it is one body, ever changing and then dying.

there is no *I* beyond the body, there is no transcendent or permanent *I*, anymore than the river Sangamon is the same after you swim in it. There is a river, yes, a label applied to a changing dynamic body of water. there is a body.

Dancing David

8th August 2008, 10:36 PM

Why do you find it so easy to consider the experiencer to be a subset of the brain, rather than to find the brain a subset of the experiencer?

it is cultural, there is the whole hellenistic zoraster duality thing to overcome.

many people don't realise how dependant the 'emotions' are upon the perception of the peripheral nervous system or the gradations of 'levels of consciousness' (I didn't really think about it until I worked with someone who was capable of water toxicity), there is a huge impact that the brain and the body have on each other, being part and parcel.

The body is the experience. yes, and i am still an M-zombie.

Dancing David

8th August 2008, 10:38 PM

Nick227

9th August 2008, 07:50 AM

I like reductionism too. Not least because it shows when something is wrong--if I can't find, say, an equivalent of id, ego, and superego at a biological level, I can begin to think Freud was wrong if he meant them literally, and to remember the limits of metaphor if he meant them figuratively. But even though "driving to the hardware store" can certainly be reduced to the physics of combustion, transfer of kinetic energy, gear ratios, coefficients of friction, etc., knowing about all of those things in detail does not give me directions to the hardware store. Some problems, when phrased in the language of a non-reduced level, can only be answered in that non-reduced level.

I basically agree with all that you write, on a social or behavioural level. I consider the egoic reality a necessary centre of the human universe and that excessive travels from it are frequently undertaken because the traveller does not wish to see or feel what is in front of him as an ego.

This said, it is not all there is. There must be a whole world of activity going on underneath the ego - a world where no one exists and there is no experiencer. If they ever get those teletransporters onto the production line more people are going to be interested in it.

Nick

Dancing David

9th August 2008, 09:00 AM

This said, it is not all there is. There must be a whole world of activity going on underneath the ego - a world where no one exists and there is no experiencer. If they ever get those teletransporters onto the production line more people are going to be interested in it.

Nick

Sorry, but you really seem hung up on this experiencer language, there are other modes that exist all the time.

Now it might appear that you are caught in the Freudian immaginary word trap and the false dualism again.

The human body is a web of organs, they are interconnected and chemicaly interpentrate each other.

the human process is the same way, there is no 'unconscious' process, there is no process 'underneath' the ego. these are all artifacts of words. the processes of human experience are more like a water fall cascading down a hillside. the process is the process, the attention to some aspects of consciousness does not lend credence to the false analogies inherent in language.

you can learn to be aware of the multivariate nature of perceptions and attention, some processes are very automatic, others can be more of the rational. (actualy all the processes are automatic but i am drawing a distinction about how the verbal/logic portion is not the sole process)

there is no top or bottom, there is no unconsiouss vs. consciouss, those are all artifacts of language. there are verbal processes, there are processes of judgement, there are intuitive and associative processes, they all co-occur all the time.

Nick227

10th August 2008, 12:02 PM

Sorry, but you really seem hung up on this experiencer language, there are other modes that exist all the time.

Now it might appear that you are caught in the Freudian immaginary word trap and the false dualism again.

The human body is a web of organs, they are interconnected and chemicaly interpentrate each other.

the human process is the same way, there is no 'unconscious' process, there is no process 'underneath' the ego. these are all artifacts of words. the processes of human experience are more like a water fall cascading down a hillside. the process is the process, the attention to some aspects of consciousness does not lend credence to the false analogies inherent in language.

you can learn to be aware of the multivariate nature of perceptions and attention, some processes are very automatic, others can be more of the rational. (actualy all the processes are automatic but i am drawing a distinction about how the verbal/logic portion is not the sole process)

there is no top or bottom, there is no unconsiouss vs. consciouss, those are all artifacts of language. there are verbal processes, there are processes of judgement, there are intuitive and associative processes, they all co-occur all the time.

In self-observation one can become aware of decision-influencing factors that one was not previously aware of. Maybe a guy is always attracted to certain kind of woman because there is something in her behaviour which unconsciously reminds him of an issue he had with his mother. If he becomes aware of this then he will have more choice in partners in future. Whilst this doesn't demonstrate the existence of an unconscious, I think it shows that the mind behaves as though there is. The more you become aware of unconscious processing like this the less reactive the mind is. I like the Freudian model and its close relatives, because they offer self-transcendence in this manner.

Nick

Mercutio

10th August 2008, 12:42 PM

In self-observation one can become aware of decision-influencing factors that one was not previously aware of. Maybe a guy is always attracted to certain kind of woman because there is something in her behaviour which unconsciously reminds him of an issue he had with his mother. If he becomes aware of this then he will have more choice in partners in future. Whilst this doesn't demonstrate the existence of an unconscious, I think it shows that the mind behaves as though there is. The more you become aware of unconscious processing like this the less reactive the mind is. I like the Freudian model and its close relatives, because they offer self-transcendence in this manner.

NickI would argue that you can get far better information by conducting a functional analysis, noting the environmental antecedents and consequences of your behavior (public and private). The Freudian model and its close relatives are fun, but suffer a bit from being complete BS.

Nick227

10th August 2008, 12:49 PM

I would argue that you can get far better information by conducting a functional analysis, noting the environmental antecedents and consequences of your behavior (public and private). The Freudian model and its close relatives are fun, but suffer a bit from being complete BS.

But following an awareness-based model, whether actually Freudian or not, to my mind works better than functional analysis. For a start you functionalists still seem to be scared to get into a teletransporter, believing you are going to die. Someone following an awareness-based model, assuming they've followed it to a reasonable degree, is not going to be believing this.

Perhaps you might say that these are simple features of the differing viewpoints of self created by the two models. But to my mind any model which offers no possibilities for self-transcendence is acutely limited, to say the least!

Nick

Nick227

10th August 2008, 01:06 PM

Mercutio

10th August 2008, 01:32 PM

But following an awareness-based model, whether actually Freudian or not, to my mind works better than functional analysis. For a start you functionalists still seem to be scared to get into a teletransporter, believing you are going to die. Someone following an awareness-based model, assuming they've followed it to a reasonable degree, is not going to be believing this.
I would not base my "works better" assessment on how a model influences a decision on a hypothetical thought-problem. I'd rather look at how consistent the model is with the actual evidence.

Perhaps you might say that these are simple features of the differing viewpoints of self created by the two models. But to my mind any model which offers no possibilities for self-transcendence is acutely limited, to say the least! Does the teletransporter only kill you if the model of reality you subscribe to regards selfhood as innate?

NickThe transporter kills (and creates) you regardless of your model. And I would like to see evidence for "self-transcendence" (please define) before I base my evaluation of a model on whether or not it supports this construct.

Suppose I believe that the Fountain of Youth is somewhere in Florida. To date, of course, there is no evidence that this is the case, but it is still my belief. Does that make a map that contains the approximate location of the Fountain a better map than one that does not? I suppose it is less limited than the other maps, which are "acutely limited" by the requirement that they conform to what is actually known.

Nick227

10th August 2008, 01:59 PM

I would not base my "works better" assessment on how a model influences a decision on a hypothetical thought-problem. I'd rather look at how consistent the model is with the actual evidence.

That's fair enough. However there is a "verticality" to the awareness-based model that gives it the possibility go beyond assuming selfhood as innate.

The transporter kills (and creates) you regardless of your model.

No, the transporter will kill you but it will not kill me.

Not because I am physically different from you in any meaningful way, but because my understanding of selfhood is different from yours.

And I would like to see evidence for "self-transcendence" (please define) before I base my evaluation of a model on whether or not it supports this construct.

In considering selfhood not as a given, innate to any thinking human, but as simply as an aspect of awareness, so there are possibilities not present with your model. To be fair, this does not mean that an awareness-based model is inherently better at all. There will no doubt be many areas where it is not as good. But it does offer more hope for those who would like to be able to theoretically travel in teletransporters but are currently afraid! (Thus it's handy for phobias that CBT can't deal with!)

Nick

Mercutio

10th August 2008, 04:03 PM

That's fair enough. However there is a "verticality" to the awareness-based model that gives it the possibility go beyond assuming selfhood as innate.
We do not assume that; to the extent that we speak of selfhood at all, it is a conclusion, not an assumption.

No, the transporter will kill you but it will not kill me.

Not because I am physically different from you in any meaningful way, but because my understanding of selfhood is different from yours.
Tell that to the people who find Nick227A's corpse.

In considering selfhood not as a given, innate to any thinking human, but as simply as an aspect of awareness, so there are possibilities not present with your model. To be fair, this does not mean that an awareness-based model is inherently better at all. There will no doubt be many areas where it is not as good. But it does offer more hope for those who would like to be able to theoretically travel in teletransporters but are currently afraid! (Thus it's handy for phobias that CBT can't deal with!)

NickYou are still using "selfhood" in a very different, and fatally dualistic, manner. On first thought, I suppose my usage of it is darned close to simply "existence". Awareness is clearly a subset of selfhood, and not the reverse.

I will gladly cede the ability to deal with hypothetical phobias, so long as I can keep the success rate we enjoy with real ones!