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Old 10-30-2010, 01:37 AM   #448
whswhs
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
And minds depend on brains. So of brains have unique markers, they leave a 'footprint' on a mind too.
Haven't you just changed your criterion, from "overall similarity of information content" to "similarity with respect to certain critical identifying information"? They aren't necessarily the same.

And I'd also note that the question of "similarity as seen by who?" arises. On one hand, the precise bits that most distinctively fingerprinted the identity of a specific brain might be bits that were of no importance to the person whose brain it was, or even inaccessible to them. On the other hand, the bits that made you feel like you, and that, if changed, would make you no longer feel like you, could be bits that are the same, or close to it, in all human brains.

Or what if they weren't? We take your brain, and that of someone in Japan you've never met, and we change those bits in their brain to be yours, and vice versa. And suddenly you wake up and you're in an entirely different body, belonging, say, to a teenage girl in Osaka, and you've completely forgotten nearly all your current memories, and you no longer speak Ukrainian but are fluent in Japanese. But you still feel like you!

Bill Stoddard
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