[ExI] Continuity of experience.

John Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Mon Mar 1 23:31:20 UTC 2010


On Mar 1, 2010, at 2:22 PM, Spencer Campbell wrote:

>> I don't think objectivity is trivial at all!

I don't care if objectively I'm dead as long as subjectively I'm not. Even when I was a kid I never understood why in some of those old horror movies at the end the hero is horrified to discover that he's really dead and the movie maker invites us to be horrified as well. It all seemed mystifying to me. Personally I'd be delighted to find out I'm dead because that would mean death is not nearly as important as I'd thought it was, I had always thought death meant oblivion but apparently not.

>> if you go into a coma on Monday and come out on Wednesday then objectively your mind did not exist on tuesday


> What makes you say my mind *objectively* did not exist on Tuesday? How are you measuring?

I'm measuring with the only tool any of us have in detecting other minds, the way they act; admittedly this tool is not perfect but it's all we have to work with. And you sure didn't act like you had a mind on Tuesday, so with as much confidence as I can say anything about minds other than my own I can state that objectively your mind did not exist on Tuesday. I might add that on Wednesday, when you consider the previous day, you would agree that you had no thoughts on that day; and a mind can not exist without thoughts, so subjectively your mind did not exist then anymore then it existed in the year 1642. So if objectively it didn't exist and subjectively it didn't exists I think it's safe to say it didn't exist.    

>>> Mind scanning does not preserve objective continuity, 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.
> 
> You could potentially convince me if you elaborated on that a bit,
> but, at first glance, I don't think I agree.

If you changed a biological neuron to a electronic neuron once a second it would take about 3000 years to change over the entire brain to the computerized version. That may seem like a long time but it depends entirely on the time scale used, from a cosmological viewpoint 3000 years would be virtually instantaneous. And there is no preferred time scale, it's just as valid to look at natural phenomena at the nanosecond level as the billion year level.    

> The rate of change doesn't really matter as far as I'm concerned. What
> matters is whether or not the old brain is in constant communication
> with the new "brain" right up until the old brain is completely gone

I agree, otherwise the new electronic brain would be missing the last thoughts the old biological brain had.

 John K Clark


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