The Zombie Poll

[jmercer]

But what if the robot thought it was you?

I said that, didn't I? " If a robot thought that he was me" covered it, I thought.

But that's my point - belief and perception doesn't define reality, no matter who it is that's believing.

 

[Darat]

I said that, didn't I? " If a robot thought that he was me" covered it, I thought.

But that's my point - belief and perception doesn't define reality, no matter who it is that's believing.

Whoops don't know how but I missed a teeny-weeny bit in my response...

"But what if the robot thought it was you? And there was no way to tell you [both] apart?"

 

[Apathia]

But what if the robot thought it was you?

I watched Solaris (The George Clooney version)a few days ago. There's the crewman whose visitor is an exact replica of himself. he immediately tries to kill it, but the replica wins the fight and kills him.

The replica of the Psycholgist's wife tells him she has all these memories of their times together, but they don't feel like they're her own memories.

And then there's the Star Trek transporter accident thing where oops we have two Reicher's. Will the real Will Reicher please stand up. Both stand up.

Then we just have to get pragmatic. Reicher(1) and Reicher(2).
As time goes on they have their own seperate experinces around which to build their own seperate identity lives.

In the STNG episode one of the Reichers taks the name Tom for social convenience.

 

[chriswl]

But I don't see how you can justify that without being able to fully identify exactly what processes generate and support consciousness. Replacing something - even on a cell-by-cell basis - could easily cause an alteration in someone's consciousness. Take a look at how many current mental illnesses exist to chemical imbalances in the brain; that alone would make me question the premise that simply replacing cells with components of equivalent non-biological-based functionality could actually be done.

You're mixing up two things in this paragraph, consciousness and functionality. The assumption is that we can, in principle, do the replacement in such a way that functionality is unaffected (forget consciousness for the moment). If you are not willing to even entertain that as a hypothetical situation then there is nothing further to say.

You say that replacing someone's brain cell-by-cell "could easily cause an alteration in someone's consciousness". Yes, that would certainly seem possible, we don't want to prejudge this before we start. What the thought experiment does is investigate what the implications are of that belief and the alternative beliefs when we try to apply them to this scenario.

I'm afraid that I must disagree with this; I don't think that it's speculative at all. I believe that an individual who had their brain replaced would absolutely be a different person.

Yes, it's very clear that you "believe" this, but you haven't explained what this belief is based on. Or why you point-blank refuse to consider the alternatives.

The speculative part of this thought experiment is the idea that they wouldn't be a different person, because that implies that our consciousness and self is strictly materialistic.

How on earth does it imply this? Even if minds are entirely separate things to brains they are still associated with brains in some way. It is quite easy to think of the the question in a dualist way - does the same mind inhabit the brain continuously throughout the replacement of its neurons or is the brain at some point occupied by a different mind? Or does the artificial brain have no mind at all? The same problems still apply to anything but the first possibility - at what point in the process does the mind cease to exist or get switched and does this happen suddenly or gradually?

 

[chriswl]

The replica of the Psycholgist's wife tells him she has all these memories of their times together, but they don't feel like they're her own memories.

I hate it when they do poorly-thought-out stuff like that. I mean, what could it mean to have a memory but feel it wasn't your memory? It sounds like a weird neurological disorder.

 

[I less than three logic]

I hate it when they do poorly-thought-out stuff like that. I mean, what could it mean to have a memory but feel it wasn't your memory? It sounds like a weird neurological disorder.

Or the morning after having too much fun partying at the bar. No, wait that might be more like wishing it wasn't your memory.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Depersonalization. Happens sometimes with temporal lobe epilepsy (sporadically) and sometimes with some migraines.

The other great weird one is Korsakoff's with severe anterograde amnesia and confabulation of memory. It's a kind of anosagnosia where the memory problem is not recognized by the person suffering from the condition so they create new memories of non-existent events.

So don't drink too much.

 

[jmercer]

Ok, folks... I get the feeling that I'm arguing with 2 - and possibly 3 - different POV's, so I think I'm going to defer further responses until I can quietly read what you've written at home. (High interruption rate at work. )

 

[Apathia]

How on earth does it imply this?

I too am having difficulty seeing how je gets to this, unless he's taking it that his personal identity is something that resides in the organism and would be lost if the organism were replced by an artificial one. And that an artificial organism wouldn't be able to have a person residing in it, and what's more saying that it could reduces what it means to be a person to a matter that can be materalistically generated rather than hosted.

Anyway, that the OP's thought experiment is an argument to demonstrate Materialism is a dubious misunderstanding.

Jmercer, please correct my nonsense with a clear explaination of where you are comming from.
It's OK by me if it's a Dualist perspective, an Idealistic one, an different kind of Materialism(?), or the ever unpopular Neutral Monism.

 

[jmercer]

I too am having difficulty seeing how je gets to this, unless he's taking it that his personal identity is something that resides in the organism and would be lost if the organism were replced by an artificial one. And that an artificial organism wouldn't be able to have a person residing in it, and what's more saying that it could reduces what it means to be a person to a matter that can be materalistically generated rather than hosted.

Yes, I'm saying my original identity would be lost if the organism were replaced by an artificial one.

To the second point - no, an artifical organism can have a person residing in it; simply not the same one that exists in the biological one. In essence, the artifical version would be a perfect copy of the original; but the original would not exist anymore in this thought experiment.

Suppose we didn't replace my organic brain, but cloned my body and added an artificial brain into the clone by the same process that would allow in-place replacement in me. As the artificial brain was created, everything that would have been kept in an "in-place" replacement is be copied into the clone's new brain, and my original biological one is left intact.

Now... are there two of me? Or two people, one who is jmercer and the other one who is jmercer(1)?

In the case of the "in-place" version, jmercer would die, and jmercer(1) would take his place.

Anyway, that the OP's thought experiment is an argument to demonstrate Materialism is a dubious misunderstanding.

Possibly. One reason I'm taking a step back and re-reading the thread.

Jmercer, please correct my nonsense with a clear explaination of where you are comming from.
It's OK by me if it's a Dualist perspective, an Idealistic one, an different kind of Materialism(?), or the ever unpopular Neutral Monism.

I don't know what an Idealistic or Neutral Monistic viewpoint is, so I can't speak to that. However, what I've described above doesn't embrace either dualistic or materialistic, because I don't address the question of where my identity actually resides; I merely point out that the death of the organic brain ineveitably brings about the physical cessation of my original personality and identity, even if a perfect copy is made as a part of the process of dying.

I have no way of telling if the total that makes me up is purely physical or if it's a dualistic combination of physical and spiritual.

 

[Apathia]

Yes, I'm saying my original identity would be lost if the organism were replaced by an artificial one.

To the second point - no, an artifical organism can have a person residing in it; simply not the same one that exists in the biological one. In essence, the artifical version would be a perfect copy of the original; but the original would not exist anymore in this thought experiment.

Suppose we didn't replace my organic brain, but cloned my body and added an artificial brain into the clone by the same process that would allow in-place replacement in me. As the artificial brain was created, everything that would have been kept in an "in-place" replacement is be copied into the clone's new brain, and my original biological one is left intact.

Now... are there two of me? Or two people, one who is jmercer and the other one who is jmercer(1)?

In the case of the "in-place" version, jmercer would die, and jmercer(1) would take his place.


Possibly. One reason I'm taking a step back and re-reading the thread.


I don't know what an Idealistic or Neutral Monistic viewpoint is, so I can't speak to that. However, what I've described above doesn't embrace either dualistic or materialistic, because I don't address the question of where my identity actually resides; I merely point out that the death of the organic brain ineveitably brings about the physical cessation of my original personality and identity, even if a perfect copy is made as a part of the process of dying.

I have no way of telling if the total that makes me up is purely physical or if it's a dualistic combination of physical and spiritual.

OK, I see your point clearly now. You're really saying something very simple, but the metaphysical muddle starts when yourself and others try to frame it in the relation to the positions of Materialism, Idealism, Dualism, and what not.

I suggest getting a hold on what these terms generally mean. An encyclopedai of Philosophy or even Wikipedia for a start. One of the benifits of these threads for me has been the homework they have forced me to do.

Your view is the premise of a part of a story I began and haven't finished.
In the future space travel is done by transmission, because there are no warp drives, quantum drives, or any other tricks to fake faster than light speed travel. But the process of tearing apart and recreating a person elsewhere is understood by the Catholic Church to be a death. So, a priest who intends to be the first missionary to another world must get a papal indulgence for what is the equivilant of suicide. He becomes a "martyr."

My own personal identity has already been lost and lost again. I have no personality that is fixed and static. I have no eternal Platonic essence of my name. Conventional identification memory, and some leftover brain cells are the only things that bind me to the different persons I was in the past.
I would not feel I was killing myself by subjecting to the OP's hypothetical process, since natural processes have already taken that conceptual attachment away.

 

[jmercer]

OK, I see your point clearly now. You're really saying something very simple, but the metaphysical muddle starts when yourself and others try to frame it in the relation to the positions of Materialism, Idealism, Dualism, and what not.

I suggest getting a hold on what these terms generally mean. An encyclopedai of Philosophy or even Wikipedia for a start. One of the benifits of these threads for me has been the homework they have forced me to do.

Your view is the premise of a part of a story I began and haven't finished.
In the future space travel is done by transmission, because there are no warp drives, quantum drives, or any other tricks to fake faster than light speed travel. But the process of tearing apart and recreating a person elsewhere is understood by the Catholic Church to be a death. So, a priest who intends to be the first missionary to another world must get a papal indulgence for what is the equivilant of suicide. He becomes a "martyr."

My own personal identity has already been lost and lost again. I have no personality that is fixed and static. I have no eternal Platonic essence of my name. Conventional identification memory, and some leftover brain cells are the only things that bind me to the different persons I was in the past.
I would not feel I was killing myself by subjecting to the OP's hypothetical process, since natural processes have already taken that conceptual attachment away.

Glad we could clear that up.

Thought experiments are interesting things, and often useful. In fact, some of the greatest scientific discoveries began that way, and some of the biggest upheavals in science came from thought experiments that demonstrate that a generally accepted theory is fundamentally flawed.

My intention was to point out that the basic premise was impossible.

Materialism and Dualism I understand; Idealism and Neutral Monistic are new to me. Beyond googling, are there any threads here that describe what those two terms mean?

And I love your book idea. Creating a literary device to allow the Pope to countenance suicide and martyrdom will be a challenge - but the questions raised by a priest being killed and resurrected (possibly soullessly!) utterly dwarf the issues about clones.

Does a transported priest have a soul? And if not, can a soulless priest save anyone? The list is endless - wish I'd thought of it.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

So, a priest who intends to be the first missionary to another world must get a papal indulgence for what is the equivilant of suicide. He becomes a "martyr."

Interesting story idea. How are you going to deal with the issue of the priest's resurrection? Will this negate the role of God in resurrection, or will this amount to original sin -- man wanting to be God or be like God? Could old copies of everyone transported be re-created so that we never die? Would this amount to us finally finding the Tree of Life? When they go to use the transporter will there be a flaming sword before it?

 

[chriswl]

Suppose we didn't replace my organic brain, but cloned my body and added an artificial brain into the clone by the same process that would allow in-place replacement in me. As the artificial brain was created, everything that would have been kept in an "in-place" replacement is be copied into the clone's new brain, and my original biological one is left intact.

I'm a little confused about what you mean by "clone" here. Assuming you don't mean a literal atom-for-atom copy but another human who is merely genetically identical to you then you are describing a different situation. The original biological brain in the clone would be very unlike your brain at the detailed neuronal level. There would be no one-to-one correspondence between his neurons and yours so you couldn't transform his brain into a copy of yours one neuron at a time. All you could really do is replace the whole thing in one go.

The point of Chalmers' original argument was that there is a fundamental difference between creating a copy in parallel to you in one go and the gradual transformation of a brain into a functionally identical brain that may use some slightly different components. Two physically separate individuals have separate identities, even if they are identical copies. One person who undergoes a process that leaves his character, beliefs, abilities and memories completely unchanged clearly hasn't had a change of identity.

If you doubt that this gradual replacement preserves identity then you should have similar doubts about the molecular level replacement that happens in our brains all the time. Yes the two processes are different, but you have no basis on which to decide which type of replacement is better at preserving this "identity" that you can't even define.

I merely point out that the death of the organic brain inevitably brings about the physical cessation of my original personality and identity, even if a perfect copy is made as a part of the process of dying.

The organic brain never dies in the replacement process anymore than the brain you had ten years ago died at some point because it has its molecules replaced.

Death is when your brain irreversibly ceases to function (if it can be revived with no loss of function then it didn't really die). There is no loss of function in the neuron-by-neuron replacement example.

 

[Apathia]

Does a transported priest have a soul? And if not, can a soulless priest save anyone? The list is endless - wish I'd thought of it

.

You motivate me to continue working on that story. It's just that I have others on my plate right now.
This is one of the questions Papal scholars would be getting headaches over. And there would be differences of opinion on this. Asuming the usual Christian worldview, only God can create a soul, but they are already in trouble because tradition said that only God could create life.
Will they trust God to transfer his soul to the new body. Or will they assume a zombie or automaton on the other end, that God can use nevertheless?
A priest is a conduit of Grace, but God can use any created thing as such.
So the Pope makes a pragmatic decision though not all questions are answered.
So Thomas Spencer(1) becomes a martyr for the faith, and Thomas Spencer(2), whatever he is, becomes a missionary intrument to the Ormola.

That's their headache, not mine. I go with the simplistic and practical Sci-Fi view that the new body/mind created from the information in the "pattern buffer," is to all extents and purposes the same person and regards herself as so. Spencer finds greater challenges to his Christian worldview than just that.
Dang, I should get crackkin on this story again.

As for souls. I already made the mistake of using the word soul in a more generic and secular sense in a post. But the word has too much religious baggage. I don't believe in immortal souls. But using the term as it appears in the phrase "Old King Cole is a merry old soul," we don't have souls, we are souls. All that is soulwise about us, our depth of feeling, our capcity for intimacy, isn't apart from our physicality. I would suffer soul loss with the replacement of my body with android parts, unless these were able to somehow simulate the complex hormonal and biochemical systems that give us emotions. Artificial neurons amounting to and/or gates aren't an engineering challenge. But a neuron with its variety of receptors for different neurotransmitters is far from simple and does much more than just switch is on or switch is off.

I assume being self-conscious could be apart from emotions. I.E. and A.I. that was aware of itself, but didn't have feelings. But I'm sure that we yet know the hardware needed, much less the software, for self-consciouness.
The OP's thought experiment somewhat assumes that as a prelude to an argument that says we aren't computers of the sort we are making now or have any idea of how we could make in the future.

But I like android stories, so I hope Dr. Frankenstien will win in the end.

 

[Apathia]

Interesting story idea. How are you going to deal with the issue of the priest's resurrection? Will this negate the role of God in resurrection, or will this amount to original sin -- man wanting to be God or be like God? Could old copies of everyone transported be re-created so that we never die? Would this amount to us finally finding the Tree of Life? When they go to use the transporter will there be a flaming sword before it?

There is the traditional Sci-Fi strain of Human technological progress being a kind of hubris. Bad luck with Science makes good stories.
I'm more postitive about what can be done. I don't see technology as a hubris, but I am concerend with how we misuse it.

The Christian Religion is going to continue to evolve to accomdate sceintific discoveries. But Nostrilldumass predicts that there will always be a pocket of fundamentalists who keep their heads buried in the sand (and believe that ostriches do that).

 

[Apathia]

And I love your book idea. Creating a literary device to allow the Pope to countenance suicide and martyrdom will be a challenge - but the questions raised by a priest being killed and resurrected (possibly soullessly!) utterly dwarf the issues about clones.

Does a transported priest have a soul? And if not, can a soulless priest save anyone? The list is endless - wish I'd thought of it.

I can't possibly keep up with what has been done in Sci-Fi literature. Chances are good someone has already addressed this in a story.
If you want to write your own, be my guest.
My story contains a number of other complications I didn't mention so will be whatever, it's own thing.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Agreed. But it seems to me if the church was concerned about the priest dying such that they needed to provide an indulgence, they should be equally concerned about his resurrection and what that would mean. To each his own, I suppose.

Just to completely derail this thread, one of the things that always bothered me about Star Trek was that if we had this transporter technology, why was it never used as a weapon? We westerners always seem to turn all our technologies into weapons, so if we had transporter technology, why couldn't we transport off a piece of someone else's hull, or create a means of transporting an entire ship into the center of a planet?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Regardless, I have to second jmercer.....I think it's a great story idea. You could have a lot of fun with it.

 

[Apathia]

Agreed. But it seems to me if the church was concerned about the priest dying such that they needed to provide an indulgence, they should be equally concerned about his resurrection and what that would mean. To each his own, I suppose.

Just to completely derail this thread, one of the things that always bothered me about Star Trek was that if we had this transporter technology, why was it never used as a weapon? We westerners always seem to turn all our technologies into weapons, so if we had transporter technology, why couldn't we transport off a piece of someone else's hull, or create a means of transporting an entire ship into the center of a planet?

Oh, sorry. I wasn't dissmissing your point about ressurrection. There would be argument about whether it had a soul, and I'll make that point as a part of the confusion about the whole idea of sending a missionary that way. I suppose some would suggest it better to send missionary robots.

I was a college student back when Carl Sagan began his science writing career. He did an award winning article on black holes. I loaned a copy of it to a guy who after reading it said, "There first thing you know, they'll be making those things and dropping them on Russia!"

Sometimes in Star Trek they would transport explosives, tribbles, or what not into other ships, and your're right, we always go for the military application.