Everything below in quotes is not my work.

Can someone try to explain the author perceptive.
Are there any flaws in defining the self the way the author does?

Take the sorties paradox. To summarize the sorties paradox how many grains of sand can i remove till there is no longer a heap of sand. Is 2 still a heap? What about 44 grains? What exact grain is not a heap It has to do with vagueness

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/

My question is when exactly can't you compute new experiences? What exact change to the brain from stroke or other cause?




"In that post I lay out an elaborate metaphor between the existence of a view (say, a mountain scene) and the existence of my experience of self. Both are things we think of as "just there" in a particular time and place, but in fact, both are the result of a large amount of computation that ones brain performs. They do not exist without that computation, because they are the result of the computation.

The objects that appear in the scene (the mountains, the sky, trees) are present whether anyone is there to look at them or not. But the scene itself, the experience of objects arranged in space, is not.

The memories and linguistic patterns and perception filters that my life's experiences have created in my brain are present whether my brain is alive and functioning, or not. Of course, if the cells of my body or brain were no longer alive, my brain would soon decay and those patterns would be lost. Those patterns are not lost, though, if I am merely asleep for a while, or under anesthesia, or if they were somehow erased from my brain but re-created in another machine.

My experience of those patterns does not occur, though, when I'm unconscious.

Experience, as best I can tell, does not move through time; it merely exists in the moment while my brain is computing it, just like the mountain scene exists when my brain is computing it. My experience does seem to move through time, because part of those remarkable computations my brain does without apparent effort is to generate a chronological narrative from a variety of types of memory. But there is nothing to indicate that experiences, as distinct from the existence of the patterns in the brain and the existence of the process of computation, persist over time.

So, to understand this, you have to carefully distinguish between not two things (brain and mind), but three: the brain's stored patterns, the brain's computation, and subjective experience. Respectively, a collective physical thing, an active process, and an abstract thing created from the patterns (and from sensory input) by the computation.

The analogy is this:
Mountains, trees, sky --> sensing and computation --> the scene
Memories and other stored patterns (+ current sensory input) --> computation --> my experience

If the body dies, the brain's computation stops, so no further subjective experiences are computed from the stored patterns.

If the body dies, the brain's stored patterns eventually disintegrate, so no further experiences can ever be computed from them.

If the brain stops computing (such as, if I am rendered unconscious or frozen in a cryogenic chamber), but the stored patterns are not destroyed, then further experiences can be generated if the computation is restarted.

If the stored patterns are moved or copied elsewhere, and some device (another brain, or a computer) makes the same sort of computation possible using the copied patterns, then further experiences can be generated. (This is of course not actually possible at present.)

The condition of being unable to compute any further experiences is as good a definition as any, of "dead." That applies if the stored patterns are lost, or if the brain becomes unable to perform computation. Either condition is sufficient for death.

If the stored patterns are lost but the brain is still able to compute, that still counts as death by my definition. (The term in science fiction would be "mind wiped.") However, such a brain could, in theory, begin computing new experiences. Since the old patterns are gone, though, it wouldn't be in any way a continuation of the person's previous life. (Also, again, though "wiping" a computer is not only possible but routine, there is no known way for that to actually happen to a brain, at present. Amnesia is never so complete as to erase all patterns of perception, and when degradation is that complete, as might happen in advanced stage dementia, the computing capability of the brain is also destroyed.)

As far as experiences are concerned, though, there are only two possible conditions: experiences that have occurred, and experiences that have not occurred. Experiences that have not occurred (just like scenes that have not been seen/computed) do not exist. Experiences that have occurred have at least existed at a particular time. Whether those that I think of as having occurred in the past still exist in some way (that is, whether the passage of time is illusory or not) is a mystery that has not been fathomed yet.

But note that "experiences exist for a while and then die" is not a coherent statement. Memories of experiences (that is, patterns in the brain) exist for a while and then (when the patterns disintegrate) do not, but it does not follow that the experiences themselves either "live" or "die."

A disclaimer:

For me this is all hypothetical, though it appears to be consistent with everything I know. It is not generally agreed truth in most "systems of practice" (the various assortments of beliefs, modes of thought, terminology, experiences, and practices by which people understand and teach one another about the world), and in fact is understood by relatively few, and should be considered pretty advanced thinking. Most people still think of the body and brain as puppets operated by the mind, rather than thinking of the experiential mind as a result of computations that evolved because they help keep the body and brain alive."






Parts in quotes Still not my work.


"- your physical body and brain
- your brain's ability to function as a brain; that is, to compute
- the patterns (memories, perception filters) recorded in your brain
- the potential to compute new experiences from those patterns
- existing (past) experiences
- new (present) experience

If your brain is destroyed but downloaded into a computer, the first and second "yous" cease to exist (that is, die). The third and fourth "yous" continue to exist in their new instantiation in the computer. The fifth "you" continues to exist as much as it ever did, being an abstract entity in the past in any case. The sixth "you" might exist if the computer your brain patterns were downloaded into is running so as to generate present experience.

Most people regard the first "you" as their puppet self (including most who believe in an afterlife, who regard the body as discarded and no longer needed after death), and the sixth "you" as their "real self." I regard the fourth as my "real self."
"