[ExI] Continuity of experience.

Spencer Campbell lacertilian at gmail.com
Mon Mar 1 00:18:08 UTC 2010


John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>:
> Philosophically speaking, and that's what we're talking about, why is that distinction important?

Man, John, it's disorienting to see you displaying such wanton
civility. I must be doing something right! Or wrong.

Anyway: it's a question of function. If you call information
processing philosophically important, then certainly there is a
philosophically important distinction to be made between gross
structure and fine chemical/electrical activity. When it comes to the
human brain, at least.

If the brain were clockwork, I wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Generally a clock can just keep ticking along regardless of, say, its
thermal conductivity. Generally, though, stripping a system of all but
its structural properties will almost always render it lifeless.

This is basically what happens in the case of plasticization.
Structure is preserved, but chemical and electrical properties are
radically altered. Read: removed. A plasticized brain no longer *does*
anything of note. It just kind of sits there.

As mentioned previously, I think the mind is an activity. So there you
go. No activity, no mind.

Now I realize what sparked Ben Zaiboc's quantized time argument! I
might never finish chewing on that thing. This whole subject is some
kind of Zenoan supertask of comprehension.


John Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>:
> Sometimes they do [wake up], and if they do subjectively the mind's existence has continued without a break even if it hasn't objectively.

There's a little more nuance to it, but, yeah. Basically.

I am forced to argue that when it comes to people who've woken up from
comas (say), the mind's existence has ALWAYS continued without a break
objectively. If that's the case, then it's a moot point.

It seems to me that subjective continuity and objective continuity
cannot be disentangled; one always implies the other. Mind scanning
does not preserve objective continuity, as more gradual uploading
methods do, and so subjective continuity is left as an open question.

The worst case scenario is that your subjective experience is dropped
directly into some kind of ill-defined eternal torment while some
other entity takes your place to think your thoughts, feel your
feelings, perceive your perceptions and conceive your conceptions. But
that would be rather silly. Logically possible, sure, but... silly.



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