[ExI] Continuity of experience.

[John Clark]

On Feb 23, 2010, at 1:09 PM, Spencer Campbell wrote:

> General anesthetics do not cause total cessation of activity in the brain.

There is always something going on in the brain, even beheading or a bullet to the brain won't stop chemical reactions continuing there, but the brain is not important, the mind is, and general anesthesia will totally stop the mind. But who cares, it'll start up again. I don't understand all this worry about continuity; if objectively your mind stops for a century or two, subjectively it will seem like it never stopped at all but the rest of the world made a discontinuous jump, and after all subjectivity is the only thing that's important.

> Two people can be me, sure, but I can't be two people!

Exactly.

> Fine distinction.

It's only puzzling if you think of "I" as a fixed unchanging thing. The you of yesterday and the you of today are not identical but they are both Spencer Campbell.

> You're right: the only difference is one of degree between my atomic
> makeup reconfiguring itself moment-to-moment and, say, clone-based
> teleportation.

I can't see how the rate of change could have any bearing, and after all even the reconfiguration given to you by a stick of dynamite would seem quite slow and plodding by some time scales. 

 John K Clark 



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