[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Reanimation of Humans...

[Adrian Tymes]

--- "Terry W. Colvin" <fortean1 at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Now, consciousness is a monastic, not dualistic phenomonea. That is, 
> there is no such thing as "soul" or "spirit" in the usual mystical 
> sense. Consciousness exists as a pure physical phenonomea that is
> rooted 
> in *this* universe, not in some supernatural or metaphysical "plane".

> That is to say, the corpus becomes static, just
> like 
> a library, etc. The physical organization of the neurons, etc., are 
> preserved, but there is no activity. The person -- the consciousness
> -- 
> no longer exists.

My perspective:

The process that is the person is no longer active, but instead is on
pause - and can be resumed.  Analogous to a software program that's
running, then stops.  Will it ever start again?  Certain stop
conditions (which preserve the program's information) allow it to start
again; others do not (or, at least, not that instance).  Where is that
instance of the program in the mean time?  In storage, frozen - and
certainly not "active" or "living" if those terms could usually be
applied to it - but it does exist.

> It is, for all practical purposes, the functional equivalent of 
> producing an exact duplicate of a person. The duplicate would be 
> indistinguishable from the original, but clearly would have a new 
> consciousness that is obviously not the same as the old.

Only if you assume the continued-stream-of-consciousness model.  Quite
a few of us do not assume that, therefore to us it obviously *is* the
same as the old, just as "obviously" as it is not the same to you.

I wonder if we could make it required thinking, for all those who would
pose problems with interruption or translation of consciousness
eliminating one "person" and creating a "duplicate", to take into
consideration those who believe the process is the "person", rather
than the given instance which can artificially be stopped and replaced
with an "identical duplicate" who is somehow not the same person
despite being the same in all measurable respects.