Without yet going back to look at what I was responding to, it sounds like I'm talking about the self. I don't think there's a soul-ish kind of thing inhabiting the body that is the true self, and it is why we have a feeling of a continuous self from our earliest memories. I think, for humans, consciousness is the subjective experience of all of our mental abilities. At least that's the most important part of what humans experience. What gives us the feeling of a continuous self is our memories. We have in our memories, some more clear and more detailed than others, a chain linking us to every part of our past. And what we do influences what we do next, and what we become. So we can look back on our chain and see how we came to be as we are.Inheriring memories is how the persistence of consciousness is accomplished. It's not an illusion. It's just not what people generally think it is if they haven't thought or read/heard much about it.
— Patterner
Are you totally sure? I've not read the proceeding conversation, but this seems to be a little bit off the mark to me.
We don't, generally, look at a person suffering from Alzheimer's or similar as lacking consciousness. Is that the take you go for? Not a problem if you say yes - legit position, I just don't see it. — AmadeusD
Excuse me, but I don't think you understand your own question. That's not an answer. — SolarWind
Cryonics costs many thousands of dollars. You expect to see the world in a hundred years, not a copy of yourself walking around. — SolarWind
You are yet again talking from your implicit soul perspective, where "instance of consciousness" is your word for soul. — hypericin
Assuming psychological continuity is key, you survive only to the degree that the new person's psychology resembles the old. Abraham Lincolns would not resemble it at all, so you would be completely extinguished.
This is the line we're interested in in the imperfect transporter. Where is that line: how does the universe decide, and how can we know where it is? — Mijin
And so partial survival is not some abstract construct, it is already part of everyday reality. — hypericin
It's a difficult thing to figure out. I don't know much about it, but I assume the storage systems are still there, but access to it is very spotty, and sometimes gone for good. If the person no longer remembers anyone they knew, and acts different than they ever had before, then how do we judge them to be the same person? Yet I know I'd still go see my loved one, hoping they'd recover access to themselves. And wanting to be there to help them be less afraid if they did. It's all very Notebook, eh?That lucidity likely makes it impossible to say the person is no longer there. — AmadeusD
I think the key for my objection (its not really an objection proper) is that the concept of survival is a 1 or 0. — AmadeusD
What do you regard as the necessary and sufficient conditions (or properties) for being you? I suggest that this is a central issue in the transporter scenario. — Relativist
We both know there is no line.
You want to say, in the imperfect transporter, if survival is possible at all, there must be a line between survival and death, as death is surely possible given enough imperfection. There is no such line, any such line must be arbitrary. Therefore survival isn't possible.
But this is only true if survival is binary. If we think of survival in terms of a body living or dying, it is binary. If we think in terms of a soul transmigrating or not, it is binary. But if we think in terms of psychological survival (which is the only way anyone can survive a transporter) it is not. Survival in this case is a continuum between 0-1, not a binary on-off. — hypericin
Yes, The person stepping into the transporter will be 0.0 alive after the process. Their atoms were dispersed. There is no way to disperse someone's items without them dying.So, to put it in your "continuum" terms, Napoleon's level of alive is 0.0. And, in the imperfect transporter, the proposition that we are interested in, that is binary, is whether the person stepping into the transporter will be 0.0 alive after the process. — Mijin
Yes, The person stepping into the transporter will be 0.0 alive after the process. Their atoms were dispersed. There is no way to disperse someone's items without them dying. — Patterner
And it is very problematic for the position of psychological continuity for the reasons given; the line is arbitrary, yet important, and further yet: unknowable. — Mijin
You are thinking in terms of bodily survival. — hypericin
It's as clear an answer as I can give: I don't know, but the best supported theory of consciousness right now is that there is no such thing as continuity of consciousness. I am (numerically) not the same consciousness as went to bed last night, or began this sentence, and I won't be the being that wakes up from cryonics later. — Mijin
I agree.In the context of this discussion on continuity of the self? Nothing. What I mean is: the most defensible position on the self is that consciousness is just a momentary phenomenon that comes packaged with the illusion of continuity. — Mijin
It's as clear an answer as I can give: I don't know, but the best supported theory of consciousness right now is that there is no such thing as continuity of consciousness. I am (numerically) not the same consciousness as went to bed last night, or began this sentence, and I won't be the being that wakes up from cryonics later.
— Mijin
You think the you that's waking up tomorrow morning isn't really you? That if you go on a bender, you won't have to suffer the hangover? Someone else will? That's so obviously wrong. — RogueAI
but the best supported theory of consciousness right now is that there is no such thing as continuity of consciousness. — RogueAI
Assume psychological continuity is correct. If on your terms, if any degree of survival counts as survival, then if Napoleon came out of the teleporter, and he had the faintest, most fleeting and occasional memory of the teleportee, well then for you that is full survival. — hypericin
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