[extropy-chat] Post-Carbon Survival?

[Ian Goddard]

Earlier today I was at a figure-drawing session and
noticed someone's sketch of the model's face that bore
a stunning resemblance to her! It was so good that at
some abstract level not only did it seem as if the
artist had captured her likeness, but that he'd
captured 'her' -- There *she* is! The neural
substrates of that sense of artistic 'capture' may be
output of a pattern-recognition function that maps
perceived patterns to conceived identities.

 In other words, we naturally associate pattern with
identity, perhaps even more than we associate raw
physical matter with identity. As such, even charcoal
smeared on paper can suddenly 'capture' a
flesh-and-blood human identity... but *only* if the
charcoal has been placed in the right pattern. This
then raises the question: In what sense is 'pattern'
real? 

 That question seems to underlie questions arising
from the hypothesis of post-carbon survival. Would a
copy of me merely capture my identity in the way a
charcoal sketch captures a model? It's my sense that
both forms of 'capture' are just the output of neural
pattern-recognition functions mapping patterns to
identities *in the minds of those thinking about
self-copies*. Likewise, I suspect that recognition of
one's own identity is also nothing more than such
output. In short, I suspect that the illusion of
'self' underlies an illusion of 'self-copy'. ~Ian


http://iangoddard.net 

"Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what
we think ourselves to be." -- Henri Amiel




 
____________________________________________________________________________________
Get your email and see which of your friends are
online - Right on the New Yahoo.com 
(http://www.yahoo.com/preview) 



 
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Check out the New Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster. 
(http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta)