[ExI] Continuity of experience.

[John Clark]

On Feb 28, 2010, at 7:18 PM, Spencer Campbell wrote:
> 
> If you call information processing philosophically important

I do.

> then certainly there is a philosophically important distinction to be made between gross structure and fine chemical/electrical activity.

I don't understand this philosophical distinction, it's all just a question of putting atoms (including electrically charged electrons) here rather than over there.

> 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.

But if you magnetize the clock's parts it will stop ticking, and thermal effects will change the length of a clocks pendulum and thus its speed. I don't get the philosophical point you are trying to make.

> 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.

Yes, but so what? If you stop a clock from ticking it will, ah, stop.

> I think the mind is an activity. So there you go. No activity, no mind.

Obviously. 

> 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.

Well that is just untrue, if you go into a coma on Monday and come out on Wednesday then objectively your mind did not exist on tuesday, but objectivity is of trivial importance, subjectivity is not. 

> It seems to me that subjective continuity and objective continuity cannot be disentangled

Well of course they can! If you put me under general anesthesia I'll swear up and down that it's Monday even though the calendar says it's Wednesday. 

> Mind scanning does not preserve objective continuity

I don't care.

> as more gradual uploading methods do

That would imply there is a preferred rate of change in the universe and the evidence for that is as good as there being a preferred reference frame in the universe. None. 
 
> Man, John, it's disorienting to see you displaying such wanton civility.

I don't know what you mean. I have been on the Extropian list for 15 years and in that time I have always treated fellow list members with all the respect they deserved. 
> 


 John K Clark


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