12-14-2009, 05:01 PM | #101 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
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12-14-2009, 05:05 PM | #102 | |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
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If dogs don't have a worldview, I'm fairly sure I don't either. |
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12-14-2009, 05:43 PM | #103 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
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There's also experimental research that seems to tap the idea of a self-concept. If you anesthetize a chimpanzee and paint his earlobes with red varnish, and after he wakes up you allow him to see a mirror, he'll look surprised and feel his ears; a baboon won't. That looks to me like a very rudimentary manifestation of the idea of "it's me." As to the dog faking an injured leg, I don't think that requires a concept of "I'll appear to be injured." I think it's simple pragmatic learning: "When I moved like this I got rewarded, so I'll move like this again." Take a look at the case of Clever Hans for how far this sort of thing can go. Bill Stoddard |
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12-14-2009, 07:55 PM | #104 | ||||||||
Join Date: Apr 2006
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Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?
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Nevertheless, you say here that "my continuity of existence is primarily my continuity of bodily existence", suggesting that it is secondarily.. what? And I understand from your other posts that you would still consider yourself "you", and alive, if the majority of your body - say, everything from the neck down, leaving aside Loki's Wager - were replaced either with cybernetics or foreign tissue; is that correct? Quote:
To the extent that AIs are different from each other, they are individuals with individual identities. As long as they take their "personality" with them as well as their memories when they switch shells, I think they retain those identities. An AI is probably less likely to have a stubborn sentimental attachment to their initial shell, though. Quote:
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What is your body, anyway? Is it a doll-shape made of warm meat that senses temperature, pressure, and injury? If your personal identity relies on being able to feel pain with your own body, then replacing any part of you with cybernetics would be a fraction of murder. What if you were given an artificial leg; would you be 20% dead? Would you lose your old identity when you lost your old meaty perception? Quote:
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(*Or whatever form of communication replaces the role of speech.) It's also rather irrelevant to the larger question of self-concept. We don't know if dogs have self-concept, and we never really will until we're able to read dog minds or one of them starts talking to us. What we do know is that they exhibit behavior appropriate to entities that do have self-concept. Quote:
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12-14-2009, 08:21 PM | #105 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?
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Bill Stoddard |
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12-14-2009, 09:17 PM | #106 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: a crooked, creaky manse built on a blasted heath
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Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?
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Transhumanism = atheism + fear of death + a desire to replace a 'dead' God with 'Trans-humanity' There is serious speculation behind the technological assumptions and predictions of transhumanism, but the ideological thrust of the 'movement' is definitely mystical and religious in nature. YMMV, of course. Last edited by combatmedic; 12-14-2009 at 11:45 PM. Reason: tone, clarity |
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12-15-2009, 12:54 AM | #107 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?
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Science fiction then gives us imaginative visions of faster-than-light travel (giving us access to the entire physical universe), time travel (giving us access to the past and future), paratime travel (giving us access to what might have been), longevity (giving us access to the future by a different means), psi powers (expanding our minds to gain all those things), and so on. That is, it's a series of imaginative images of humanity being as big as the cosmos and perhaps more durable. Transhumanism is just taking the sfnal mythmaking and bringing it back into the real world as an ideological program. On the other hand, I think of Robert Anton Wilson thinking that when he was asked if he wanted to immanentize the eschaton, his answer was, "Yes, by Wednesday if possible." I really think that's a sensible answer. But then, there's C. S. Lewis's counterpoint: Far too long have sages vainly Glossed great Nature's simple text. He who runs may read it plainly: "Goodness = what comes next." By evolving, Life is solving All the problems we perplexed. On, then! Value means survival- Value. If our progeny Spreads and spawns and licks each rival, That will prove its deity (Far from pleasant, by our present Standards, though it well may be). Bill Stoddard |
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12-15-2009, 12:58 AM | #108 | |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?
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I had a dog that created her own hard cider by knocking down and burying apples. She would wait until they fermented and then gorge herself until quite drunk. She would recognize herself in the mirror as well. She knew that just because someone has always been allowed inside when owners are present does not mean that they are part of the pack and can enter at any other time. We must judge based on observed behavior, and if all means cannot tell the difference between an animal having a "human" trait and one that does not, then I think we should assume they do. |
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12-15-2009, 01:18 AM | #109 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?
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Continuity of identity, for me, rests partly in continuity of conscious experience, but also partly in continuity of physical existence: When I go to sleep, I wake up with the same familiar body. My consciousness is an activity of my body. If a different body engages in a similar activity, that's ITS consciousness and not mine. There is a possible handoff here. Suppose that you upload me, not by putting my brain into nanostasis, but by shaving off the top layer of my cortex, emulating it digitally, integrating the simulated neural input and output into the real input and output of the original brain, leaving the brain+simulation in control of the body. And suppose that you keep doing that, layer by layer, iteratively, until the digital simulation replaces the brain completely as controller of the body. And suppose then you acclimitize me to occupying a cybershell or bioshell or even a virtual environment instead of my physical body. If you maintained continuity of consciousness all the way through, I would say that my consciousness had been handed off to a new substrate. An interesting converse question is, given that memory is fungible to digital entities, under what circumstances can we say that digital entity A at time 1 and digital entity B at time 2 are the same entity? It can't be a question of B remembering being A! What would you require to say that B was the same individual as A? Bill Stoddard |
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12-15-2009, 01:26 AM | #110 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Is Transhuman Space a "silly" genre?
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I didn't say "sense of self"; I said "self-concept." Could you say to your dog, "Tell me how you figured out that trick with the apples?" and have her tell you the story? Could you ask her, "Do you think it's desirable to intoxicate yourself on fermented apples?" and have her discuss the tradeoffs being immediate pleasure and long-term displeasure, or long-term consequences from doing stupid things when drunk? Could you discuss with her whether she was drunk or not, or ask her how often she got drunk? Bill Stoddard |
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