Proof of Immortality II

[John Jones]

- Ok. One step at a time.

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
- Anyone disagree with that?

There is no recipe of ANY kind that would bring you (or 'YOU') back to life. This statement is scientific because it represents the best available evidence, has predictive power, and is falsifiable.

So prove me wrong.

 

[Giordano]

- Ok. One step at a time.

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
- Anyone disagree with that?

Hate to give you the news, but if you mean brain dead, right now there is nothing, biochemical, physical, or non-physical that will bring you back.

I cannot exclude the idea that at some point in the distant future people will be able to reanimate your physical brain very precisely before it rots too much, and therefore bring much of your illusion of self back to life. Or create a computer simulation of how you think. But that would have to be in the distant future using physical methods yet unheard of.

 

[Toontown]

So you've got nothing but a verbose excuse for having nothing. I'm not surprised to see that nothing has changed. Try using concise prose.

You're welcome!

Nope. Nothing you'd be interested in. You'd think it was a Texas sharpshooter fallacy, which I already predicted, and you promply interpreted to suit your own personal agenda.

And if I had something I wouldn't want to give it to you. Wouldn't even want to try. That would be like trying to force-feed a turtle.

 

[Slowvehicle]

- Ok. One step at a time.

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
- Anyone disagree with that?

Good Morning, Mr. Savage.

I agree, and yet would go further: Once the neurosystem of which "you" are an emergent property dies, "you" will die, and nothing will bring "you" back to life (do note that NDEs are not "dying", but "nearly dying"--if the neurosystem is "brought back to life" it was not "dead").

 

[pakeha]

- Ok. One step at a time.

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
- Anyone disagree with that?

ME is a sense of self, part of an emergent property of a functioning neurosystem, remember?
Your question makes no sense at all.

 

[jsfisher]

- Ok. One step at a time.

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
- Anyone disagree with that?

A question you have been dodging for a while bears on your question:

You step into a ooh-shiny box that somehow assembles an identical copy of you, atom for atom. Two you's exit the box.

Which one is YOU? Do the two of you agree? How? How can the rest of us tell you apart?

 

[Giordano]

- Ok. One step at a time.

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
- Anyone disagree with that?

I have a bad feeling about this. But at least we are not back to inside the duplication machine. Yet.

 

[Jabba]

- Do any of you who agreed with #1, disagree with #2?

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
2. That being the case, there is no bio-chemical recipe exclusive to ME. That is, following my recipe would produce an identical me, but would not reproduce ME.

 

[Loss Leader]

- Do any of you who agreed with #1, disagree with #2?

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
2. That being the case, there is no bio-chemical recipe exclusive to ME. That is, following my recipe would produce an identical me, but would not reproduce ME.

No. It's nonsense.

"Me" is a process, not a thing. If you drive 65 miles an hour, stop, and then get back up to 65 again, is the second 65 mph different than the first?

You still want "me" to be an unchanging thing. It isn't. It's a constantly changing process of a physical set of circumstances. Not only can you not be brought back to life, but you from 2 seconds ago is gone forever and can never be brought back. There is no "me," there is no "recipe" and there is no immortality.

 

[Mojo]

- Do any of you who agreed with #1, disagree with #2?

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.

As Louis Jordan put it, "you only live but once, and when you're dead you're done".

2. That being the case, there is no bio-chemical recipe exclusive to ME. That is, following my recipe would produce an identical me, but would not reproduce ME.

Your consciousness is the result of your biochemistry. Reproducing that biochemistry exactly (were such a thing possible) would produce a consciousness indistinguishable from yours. So it would reproduce you, but the result would not be you, it would be a reproduction of you.

Actually, you seem to have those two statements reversed, in that the first follows from the second rather than the second following from the first. Exactly reproducing your biochemistry would produce a replica of you rather than you, so it follows that exactly reproducing your biochemistry after you die would not bring you back to life.

 

[godless dave]

- Ok. One step at a time.

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
- Anyone disagree with that?

Reanimating your corpse would bring you back to life. That's because you are your body. Your consciousness is inseparable from your brain.

I suggest you read xtifr's most recent post. It really is a great explanation of why we disagree with you.

 

[pakeha]

- Do any of you who agreed with #1, disagree with #2?

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
2. That being the case, there is no bio-chemical recipe exclusive to ME. That is, following my recipe would produce an identical me, but would not reproduce ME.

No, Jabba.
You seem to be stuck on the idea of ME being other than an emergent property of a functioning neurosystem.
Why is that?

 

[godless dave]

- Do any of you who agreed with #1, disagree with #2?

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
2. That being the case, there is no bio-chemical recipe exclusive to ME. That is, following my recipe would produce an identical me, but would not reproduce ME.

We've already been through this, Jabba.

What makes you you is that the "recipe" was followed at a particular time and place. That doesn't mean there is a 1/infinity likelihood of you existing.

 

[jond]

Jabba: the self is not an actual thing. We've been through this. There is no recipe, because it isn't a separate entity, it is a constantly changing process. There is one, and only one potential self than can result from the union of sperm and eggs that create a person. Do you understand this?

 

[George]

- Ok. One step at a time.

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
- Anyone disagree with that?

Ah! A new and exiting 'Got ya' setup.

- Do any of you who agreed with #1, disagree with #2?

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
2. That being the case, there is no bio-chemical recipe exclusive to ME. That is, following my recipe would produce an identical me, but would not reproduce ME.

I was wrong on both counts.

 

[Giordano]

- Do any of you who agreed with #1, disagree with #2?

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
2. That being the case, there is no bio-chemical recipe exclusive to ME. That is, following my recipe would produce an identical me, but would not reproduce ME.

Me! Me! Pick me!

I knew your original post was so you could play dishonest gotcha!

There is no method of any kind, right now, that would bring you back to life. When you are dead you are dead. As I thoughtfully mentioned in my last post, there might be a way to revive you in some distant future, if your brain hadn't rotted too much. If you are asking if in some even more distant future people can assemble all the chemicals, all the bio-molecules, all the electrical waves, all the unique synapses that form your cells, make them alive, and make "you" into "you" after you rot than I suppose there would be technically a biochemical mixture/recipe that would create someone who starts in your coffin, thinks they exactly as you do, and thinks that they, Jabba, have been brought make. Some of the starting materials might be parts of your current brain and body. But the process would have to reverse/replace all of the damage to your physical brain that occurred after you were dead and rotted. Would it be you at that point? Well it would think it was you and behave just like you. If it were could be done in practice, it would certainly not require some sort of metaphysical self to be mixed in to do this.

Is an axe in which the blade was replaced twice and the handle three times still George Washington's axe?

 

[Giordano]

Let me try once again:

1. Your are completely your biochemistry (including structural components, enzymes, action potentials, etc.) Some of that "biochemistry" relates to the precise 3-D structures in your brain and body (for example the synapses and action potentials have to be in the right places in your brain to make you "you"). Some people would call this cell biology, but for all purposes let's call it all biochemistry. There is no non-physical part of Jabba that is required to make you "you."

2. Sense of self is an emergent property of a functioning neurosystem. The practical problem with solving your question 2 is "only" in restoring a dead neurosystem. If we could somehow do that exactly to the physical specifications of the current alive Jabba neurosystem, we would also exactly restore your sense of self. No non-physical "self" would be required; it would provide its own "sense of self" once turned on. If the neural system was exactly that of a today's Jabba, the "sense of self" would exactly be that of today's Jabba. Remember a sense of self is a process, not a thing,

When, if ever, we can do that, you might want to place an order for a younger Jabba neural system and body. Why not? It shouldn't be any harder that restoring you are you are now. How does 20 sound?

 

[Giordano]

I was wrong. We are still on the Jabba duplication issue, but now proposing to kill the original, using many of his molecules and atoms, and duplicating the physical specifications based on the live Jabba. Beam me up from my grave, Scotty (but use my 20 year old specifications in the transporter)!
Jabba: why do I have the feeling that you will not admit to the equivalence?

Boy, are we stuck!

 

[Giordano]

Jabba,

To make it even more simple, there is no non-physical self, soul, sense of self, consciousness: nothing non-physical that makes you "you." You are entirely the result of physical processes. Your "sense of self" is completely based on the correct function of your physical neurosystem. If your physical neurosystem dies, your sense of self dies with it. If anyone here, lurker or participant, disagrees, please say so now. Thanks.

By the way. what exactly are the traits that make you "you," and that you believe will be reincarnated?

 

[xtifr]

- Do any of you who agreed with #1, disagree with #2?

1. Once I die, there is no bio-chemical recipe, which followed, would bring ME back to life.
2. That being the case, there is no bio-chemical recipe exclusive to ME. That is, following my recipe would produce an identical me, but would not reproduce ME.

I already provided a counterexample for #2!

If you are teleported to a new location, and a perfect copy is created at your original location, all within the shortest period of time possible, it is indistinguishable from simply copying you. Indistinguishable in every sense. Atoms don't have distinguishing marks, so the fact that the copy has a completely different set of atoms doesn't matter. It would be you (and YOU).

Once you eliminate the variable of location, then, there is a "recipe" (really poorly chosen word, that) for ME.

Of course, realistically speaking, we can't eliminate the variable of location; unless we find a way around the speed of light, my thought-experiment is completely impractical. But then so is the whole notion of making perfect copies.

Still, if we ignore the variable of location, then once again your whole argument falls apart. Because aside from space-time coordinates, your copy is just as much you (including the process of self-awareness/experiencing) as the original. Experientially, they're both contiguous with the original (subjectively, both are ME), and aside from the difference in location, there's no particular reason to label one the original and the other the copy. We just suddenly have two identical-but-separate MEs. Indistinguishable-but-distinct.