[ExI] Continuity of experience

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 23 February 2010 13:52, Spencer Campbell <lacertilian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Quoting from "How to Replace Uninjured Parts of the Brain":
>
> Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com>:
>> This should preserve continuity if you accept that continuity is preserved over an episode of general anaesthesia, for example.
>
> A very poor analogy! General anesthetics do not cause total cessation
> of activity in the brain. Preservation and destructive scanning; this
> is much more similar, if not identical, to resuscitation of the
> clinically dead. Yet, even clinical death is less dead than brain
> death. According to my cursory research, there is, in general, a
> period of several minutes between the two.
>
> A thought experiment is in order! (The audience: "aaaaagh noooo")
>
> What we are looking for, here, is continuity of experience. Let's
> suppose there exists some property, M (for "me"), such that continuity
> remains unbroken as long as the individual retains that property. Now,
> the first question is, what is necessary for M to be lost?
>
> Let's consider five states of increasingly severe unconsciousness:
> drunk, asleep, knocked out (as in general anaesthesia), comatose, and
> dead.
>
> In the first three cases, according to common knowledge, M is
> conserved. It may or may not disappear for a while, but it comes back
> if it does. I am still me after I wake up in the morning. So far, so
> good.
>
> Comas are more tricky. There is no guarantee that consciousness will
> return, but, if it does, common knowledge likewise dictates that M
> must be conserved.
>
> Death, in the sense of brain death, is totally impenetrable. Common
> knowledge says that M transfers from the body to some weird
> extradimensional medium which is thus far invulnerable to scientific
> inquiry, so we can't really trust common knowledge anymore. This is
> the state we're dealing with when we freeze or plasticize the brain.
>
> It's worth noting at this point that M is a purely metaphysical
> concept, not subject to measurement. I act the same with M as I do
> without M. There really isn't any way to prove that I remain myself
> even from second-to-second, let alone during transitions between gross
> mental states. Not even I would notice if my M suddenly evaporated.
> You might think that M could equally well stand for "memory", in which
> case it would be pretty easy to measure. It does not.
>
> To prove this is trivial, and that is where the experiment really
> begins. I think everyone can agree that M can only belong to one
> entity in the universe (at most) at any given time, no matter the
> nature of its existence. Yet, it is inarguably the case that, if we
> can scan a person's brain to reproduce their mind, we can do so as
> many times as we want. There is nothing in the laws of physics to
> prevent you from making two identical copies of me, or even three, but
> only one can possess M at any given time.
>
> So, due to some accident at the cloning facility, my mind is
> replicated twice. The two copies have EXACTLY the same memories, by
> definition, in the moment before they wake up. They begin to diverge
> immediately, unless also placed in identical virtual realities. It is
> unproblematic to claim that both of them really are the real me, in
> that case. I can be in two places at once.
>
> If you put them in real synthetic bodies, on the other hand, then the
> story is quite different. In the very first moment of operation, they
> experience different things (thanks to our old friend the Pauli
> exclusion principle); and so, they have different memories. Now they
> are definitely different individuals, though still indistinguishable
> to a casual observer. I can not be two people at once.
>
> This concludes the experiment. We're left with a final, troubling
> question: where is M?
>
> There are all kinds of answers you could come up with, but none of
> them are very convincing and all of them are pretty uncomfortable.
>
> Nolipsism says: nowhere, because M does not exist. Simple.
>
> Panpsychism says: everywhere, because individuality is a crock to
> begin with. Simple!
>
> Dualism says: there must be some arbitrary soul-sorting process, which
> of course we have no way to prove or disprove, built directly into the
> fabric of reality. Not so simple. All things considered, though,
> relatively appealing. You can see why most people go for this one.
>
> I tend to subscribe to nolipsism, but, in this case, I am
> superstitious. I will not be taking steps to preserve my brain,
> because I believe that I will stay dead even if a perfect copy of me
> is made. I have M0; my first copy has M1, my second M2, and so on.
>
> Being a selfish person at heart, I don't really care about blessing
> future generations with my knowledge. In fact, I would outright resent
> a duplicate of myself who gets to live while I remain dead. I'm not
> going to take any chances when it comes to potential supernatural
> complications. I just want to survive, as long as possible and as well
> as possible.
>
> All I can do is take solace in the fact that Pollock tells me it is
> pretty much a physical impossibility for me not to cling to this
> particular superstition, no matter how blatantly irrational it is. And
> it is pretty blatantly irrational. That doesn't mean it's false,
> though!

I wonder how it is that you can point out the stupidity of this
question so clearly:

> It's worth noting at this point that M is a purely metaphysical
> concept, not subject to measurement. I act the same with M as I do
> without M. There really isn't any way to prove that I remain myself
> even from second-to-second, let alone during transitions between gross
> mental states. Not even I would notice if my M suddenly evaporated.

And yet still come to this absurd conclusion:

> I tend to subscribe to nolipsism, but, in this case, I am
> superstitious. I will not be taking steps to preserve my brain,
> because I believe that I will stay dead even if a perfect copy of me
> is made. I have M0; my first copy has M1, my second M2, and so on.

Incidentally, the question of personal identity is not the same as the
question of existence of the self or of consciousness, and it is not
the same as what you call M. I am happy to say that there is no self
and no consciousness, in the sense meant by most of those people who
deny these things. In any case, I am happy to say that I am a
different self, person or consciousness from moment to moment, and
that the idea that I remain the "same" person is a delusion.
Nevertheless, it is very important to me that this delusion continue
in much the same way as it always has.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou