[extropy-chat] Death is irreversible v.1.1

[Heartland]

Heartland:
>> The point of "you would experience nothingness" is to help the
>> audience imagine
>> that experience. I'm just using poetic license here to make that
>> particular point
>> across.

Samantha:
> When you are supposedly attempting to be more rigorous is a poor time
> to wax poetic.


You've got a point there.


Samantha:
> The cessation of consciousness  does not allow you to
> experience anything including that cessation.   All cessations of
> consciousness are not death.


Absence of subjective experience is still an absence regardless of whether your
organs still work or when you don't exist at all.


Heartland:
>> It's absolutely the case that, "subjective experience of
>> nothingness <=> subjective
>> experience doesn't exist." Or just "subjective experience doesn't
>> exist."

Samantha:
> No, it isn't.


I disagree.


Heartland:
>>>> Life - Subjective experience of being in the present moment. It is
>>>> the presence of
>>>> that part of mind process/activity which is responsible for
>>>> producing subjective
>>>> experience.

Samantha:
>>> Huh?  This is the total of your definition of "life"?

Heartland:
>> Remember that this argument deals exclusively, as it should, with
>> the physical
>> substance of life, not its *content* or meanings of that content.
>> So, physically,
>> that's precisely what life is.

Samantha:
> No, it isn't.  Your definition is subjective, not physical, not
> objective and is woefully incomplete.


The presence of an objectively verifiable, physical process is not objective and
physical? It's precisely that. What is your objective and physical definition of
life, if you don't mind me asking?


Heartland:
>> You misinterpreted the definition. Mind isn't a "subset of all
>> matter." It's a
>> subset of all "activity of matter in time and space," that produces
>> the mind.
>> There's a huge difference. I will adjust this definition to better
>> reflect the true
>> meaning.

Samantha:
> Same objection.  You are defining "mind" using "mind" as part of the
> definition.


Not really, but I see how you would think so. It's an admittedly sloppy definition.

Here's a better one. Mind is an activity of matter in time and space. I know this
is very general definition (so you can't use it to build artificial minds, for
example), but yet necessary and sufficient to make the conclusion valid in the
context of this argument.


Heartland:
>> Mind, as any process/activity, requires matter, among other things,
>> to exist. When
>> I say "mind object," it gives the audience wrong impression that
>> mind is *just*
>> static matter. It's not fair to "other things that allow activity
>> to exist" to
>> leave them out of the term.

Samantha:
> I did not have this impression.  The problem is your tenuous link
> between brain and mind.


This was done on purpose. There should be no link between the two because mind is
not a brain. You are allowed to treat matter of the mind as a subset of all matter
of the brain but a distinction between mind and brain must be made. Why? To
separate between what is static and not relevant from what is dynamic and relevant.
If brain were considered a part of the mind, then an extrapolation of this logic
would force us to conclude that the universe must also be a part of the mind,
except my car - a part of the universe - wouldn't be mind, proving the assumption
wrong.

Samantha:
> The definition you use is a set up for the
> entire hypothesis you attempt to claim.  It is part of a
> rationalization rather than an attempt to get at truth.


It's just seems that way from the layout of "terms and definitions" before "the
argument" section. Note, that I'm not even using "mind" in the steps of the
argument. My strategic error in the original post was that the list of definitions
included ones like "mind" and "brain." I either shouldn't have listed them at all,
or should, at least, list them after the argument section.

Even if I hadn't included them before the actual argument, that argument would
still have worked. Why? Because the argument I made was not really about minds, but
about any kind of physical process. And since mind is definitely a physical
process, the argument applies to minds and all their subprocesses.


Heartland:
>> Objective observer uses trajectories to distinguish between
>> instances of matter or
>> activities of matter in time and space, including instances of the
>> same type,
>> across the entire existence of an instance.

Samantha:
> Would you like to rephrase?  That is still very murky.


Let me give you an example of what I mean instead. Two tennis balls roll slowly
toward each other on the surface of the court, and you are not sure if they will
collide or not. Pick an arbitrary point x,y,z,t as your origin. 4-D coordinates of
each location of each ball during their motion are recorded in the log. You look
away as soon as you see the balls rolling toward each other while 4-D coordinates
continue to fill the log. When you look back 20 seconds later, two balls are now
still. Now, how do you know which ball is which when you have no idea if the balls
collided and recoiled from the impact, missed each other, or didn't hit each other
at all, while you were not looking? As an objective observer, you go to the log of
coordinates and reconstruct logical progression of a trajectory of each motion and
find out which is which.

The point of trajectories is that it is theoretically possible for an objective
observer to distinguish between instances which proves the assertion that even
instances of the same type are always different.


>> Heartland:
>>>> Identity of an object - Unique trajectory of the object in time and
>>>> space.
>>
>> Samantha:
>>> Nope.  You can't have identity be the same as the trajectory because
>>> then you leave the question "trajectory of what" unanswered.

Heartland:
>> But that answer is always automatically assumed before the process of
>> distinguishing between instances can begin. Hence, "identity of an
>> object," instead
>> of "identity." We can't distinguish between things if we don't
>> already know what
>> these things are in the first place.

Samantha:
> Look.  You just wrote that identity of an object *is* the trajectory
> of an object where *an object* already implies/requires *identity of
> an object*.   This be messed up.


Identity should have nothing to do with what the object is. You can't assume
information-based definition of identity (information is matterless) and apply it
to the process of distinguishing things that are made of matter. It just doesn't
work that way. Any *object* is always made of matter, otherwise it wouldn't be an
object. Two identical tennis balls couldn't be distinguished if we assumed the
identity of each object to be "tennis ball." It's not cheating when I know what the
objects are before I try to distinguish between them.


>> Heartland:
>>>> Type - A category of things that share some characteristic. For
>>>> example, apples and
>>>> oranges are types of fruit. In this case "fruit" is the type.
>>
>> Samantha:
>>> All three are types.  Apple and Orange are more specific types of
>>> Fruit.

Heartland:
>> They are, but their instances would require matter to exist. Types are
>> dimensionless and matterless so they can't store matter. In other
>> words, types
>> (information) do not have physical presence in this universe. Only
>> instances
>> actually exist.

Samantha:
> Not so.  Concepts and categories are not non-existent, merely not
> physical.


Which is exactly my point. Concepts (information) are not physical so they can't
store matter, let alone activity of matter.


-----
My argument is valid if I can show that two things and only these two things are
true:

1. Instances of objects made of matter are distinguishable. (Trajectories show
that).
2. Physical activity necessarily requires matter, and that activity *itself* cannot
be stored in static information. (Shown in step (2) of the argument).

>From here on, the remaining steps are automatic. A combination of the above 2
assertions gives:

3. An instance of physical activity must be distinguishable from all other
instances of physical activity, including instances of the same type of activity.
(This combination of (1) and (2) is justified by required presence of matter in
both (1) and (2))

This, in turn, leads to:

4. Since a mind is a physical activity, all its subprocesses, including subjective
experience, must also be instances of physical activity. Therefore, all instances
of subjective experience are distinguishable AND impossible to encode in the static
information (3),(2).

And if so, then an absence of an instance is irreversible and no amount of static
information that remains about that instance can bring that instance back from
nonexistence.

In practice, this means that anytime subjective experience ends, it ends forever.
And since subjective experience is the only means by which, we, as sentient beings, 
can
experience reality, any absence of subjective experience means permanent inability
to access reality, or, simply death/nonexistence.
----

Good comments, Samantha. Thanks.

S.