Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Though if you hold this philosophy rigorously I think you really can't accept any sort of modification that touches your brain. This definitely does mean cellular regeneration is out of the question too, since it is going to have to replace a lot of cells or parts of cells in your brain.

It's allegedly done piecemeal at cellular levels and below, so that it is no more discontinuous than the original pre-adult growth and development.

Originally Posted by malloyd

One thing I haven't seen come up in these debates is this position also means cryo- or nano-stasis kills you. If self depends on continuous process, anything that breaks continuity does. Of course shutting down pieces of your brain by going to sleep or taking drugs should too. And maybe it does, there's no particular evidence the self that wakes up every morning is the "same" one that fell asleep. I'd expect that wrinkle to be ignored...

Bill and I have briefly discussed these issues here and at Pyramid the Second a couple of times. It's of particular interest to me as I suffer from sleep disturbances and some exacerbated absent-mindedness.

I think it can "count" as the same person for most purposes if the nexus of the mental processes and the brain structures performing them is suspended but not disrupted beyond where it can resume with a high degree of fidelity. How high? They may depend on which model of cognition is correct; perhaps "fidelity" can re-emerge, like the legal capacity to make binding decisions is considered to re-emerge after the condition of being drunk or ill passes.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

I think it can "count" as the same person for most purposes if the nexus of the mental processes and the brain structures performing them is suspended but not disrupted beyond where it can resume with a high degree of fidelity. How high? They may depend on which model of cognition is correct; perhaps "fidelity" can re-emerge, like the legal capacity to make binding decisions is considered to re-emerge after the condition of being drunk or ill passes.

The thing is that it assumes that "identity" is a mental thing, and I'm not convinced that that's the case. It sounds like mind-body dualism, which I don't believe in and don't regard as scientific.

Bill Stoddard

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The thing is that it assumes that "identity" is a mental thing, and I'm not convinced that that's the case. It sounds like mind-body dualism, which I don't believe in and don't regard as scientific.

One brain with one identity, indivisible? What if the brain *is* divided into separately-cogitating parts?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

One brain with one identity, indivisible? What if the brain *is* divided into separately-cogitating parts?

That does not seem to be the case for me. I'm not sure how a living organism could work with such a brain design.

Bill Stoddard

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That does not seem to be the case for me. I'm not sure how a living organism could work with such a brain design.

Not by design, but by accident or intervention, as in a split-brain patient. Which hemisphere has the original identity?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The thing is that it assumes that "identity" is a mental thing, and I'm not convinced that that's the case. It sounds like mind-body dualism, which I don't believe in and don't regard as scientific.

If it's not a mental thing then what is it? Given that it doesn't even appear to actually make "conscious" decisions (since multiple brain studies have shown the action potential of decision making happening before the subject is conscious of having decided), I'm still not convinced that "identity" is anything other than the rationalizing process that makes sense of unconscious thoughts. I don't see that as being mind/body dualism anymore than saying your operating system makes sense of the electronic processes of your PC is mysticism.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

If it's not a mental thing then what is it? Given that it doesn't even appear to actually make "conscious" decisions (since multiple brain studies have shown the action potential of decision making happening before the subject is conscious of having decided), I'm still not convinced that "identity" is anything other than the rationalizing process that makes sense of unconscious thoughts. I don't see that as being mind/body dualism anymore than saying your operating system makes sense of the electronic processes of your PC is mysticism.

In the first place, what you call "consciousness" seems to be "verbalization." I think that's an overly narrow definition.

I remember, for example, running a campaign set in the Discworld, where one morning, before I ran the latest session, it suddenly came into my mind that a logical plot development would be to have the murder victim reappear as a zombie and demand to know what had been done with her dresses and her jewelry. I didn't go through a process of verbal reasoning to come up with that; I was just walking about, thinking about the upcoming session, when the idea sprang fully realized into my mind. That is, it took shape before I was conscious of it, in the sense you mean. But it was still my idea! I am more than what I verbalize.

In the second place, what I mean by "identity" is the property of being the same physical object or system at two or more different points in time. Continuity of consciousness is a way of verifying this, but it's not the only one. I woke up less than an hour ago, after going to sleep the night before—so there was not continuity of consciousness—but I woke up knowing who I was, knowing that this is my body. I do not have the sensation that my left leg, for example, is some alien body part that I am dragging about with me for no apparent reason.

But what does it mean to say that a body is "the same" body? It's not like a rock, where the atoms and molecules are still the same ones thousands or millions of years later. The identity persists through changes of substance. But they must be gradual changes of substance.

There's an old joke about a family that are going to have a dinner part, so they buy six pounds of steak to serve. But then they both leave the kitchen, and when they return, there is their cat sitting on the counter, and no steak. "Oh, no," they say, "the cat ate the steak!" But the cat is very small. So they weigh the cat, and the cat weighs exactly six pounds. "Well, there's the steak," they say—but then they ask, "Wait a minute; where's the cat?"

Bill Stoddard

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by whswhs

In the first place, what you call "consciousness" seems to be "verbalization." I think that's an overly narrow definition.

Isn't anything else unconscious? If you aren't consciously aware of it it, it isn't consciousness. This seems tautological.

I remember, for example, running a campaign set in the Discworld, where one morning, before I ran the latest session, it suddenly came into my mind that a logical plot development would be to have the murder victim reappear as a zombie and demand to know what had been done with her dresses and her jewelry. I didn't go through a process of verbal reasoning to come up with that; I was just walking about, thinking about the upcoming session, when the idea sprang fully realized into my mind. That is, it took shape before I was conscious of it, in the sense you mean. But it was still my idea! I am more than what I verbalize.

Your idea, sure but not a conscious one. The process that generated that idea is apparently separate from the process that goes around believing it is Bill Stoddard. Both processes would be copied if you were ghosted. So Ghost Bill could have ideas that seem to appear in his awareness and he could go around believing that he is a version of you.

In the second place, what I mean by "identity" is the property of being the same physical object or system at two or more different points in time. Continuity of consciousness is a way of verifying this, but it's not the only one. I woke up less than an hour ago, after going to sleep the night before—so there was not continuity of consciousness—but I woke up knowing who I was, knowing that this is my body. I do not have the sensation that my left leg, for example, is some alien body part that I am dragging about with me for no apparent reason.

Sure, and like I've been saying that's the disconnect. You are talking about physical identity. This object is this object, and to copy it would only make a copy. The other side of this debate seems to be talking about another kind of identity. Either the identity that information has: this work is Bach's Magnificat in E minor, if you copy it or perform it remains Bach's Magnificat in E minor. Or the sense of identity that a person has: I am called "so-and-so", I am like "such-and-such", when I think am the "I" that does the thinking. Your kind of identity isn't meaningfully possessed by a Ghost but the other two kinds clearly are.

Why is the physical identity of the person the significant one for survival? If you were to suffer a massive brain injury that put you into a permanent vegetative coma would you still really be you? You don't strike me as the sort of person that would insist on indefinite life support in that case. If that's the case, how can it be? Your physical identity hasn't changed it is still the same (broken) brain in the same body. Yet the "you" that matters for continued survival is effectively dead. Yet that "you" is only an emergent property of a functioning brain, it's not even the whole of that brain's processes. It's mostly just the "verbalizing" process. It could be possible that the brain is still producing ideas about Discworld games, but is unable to make sense of them, and even in that case, I imagine you'd wish they'd pull the plug.

So the pro-ghosting side of this sees this emergent process of verbalization or consciousness or identity or the "I" or sense of self whatever you want to call it as the "self" that's most significant in "self preservation". It's not an idea that requires belief in mind-body duality or in a soul or in anything of sort. That sense of self is a phenomenon that we all experience, it "exists" though probably as a purely mental phenomenon as an emergent property of the brain's physical action.

If you are able to copy the physical processes of a brain, and it works, you will logically copy this "self" process too. It doesn't take a mystic to think this is the case.

[whswhs]

Sir Pudding:

I'm not going to try to do this as quotes and replies, because I think it would get too scattered, and it's already scattered enough in the points you make for me to have trouble processing it. I'm not sure I'll be able to cover everything, but I'm going to try to do it in the order my brain sorts it into.

In the first place, about "consciousness" and "verbalization," you seem to be assuming what I am saying is false, and what at least needs to be proven: That only what is verbalized is conscious. I don't find this to be true. I am quite capable of being conscious of things before I verbalize them, or without ever verbalizing them, or indeed in some cases without being able to verbalize them.

My awareness of myself as myself is not exclusively my awareness of myself as "<verbal label>." Indeed, the sense of identity can have a very strong somatic component. Consider, for example, that there are people who have a very strong sense of themselves as female, even though their anatomical configuration is male, and conversely. I am not just a string of text, or even of vocalizations; I am an embodied being.

And of course there are different types of identity here; I have been saying that for a long time. There is generic identity (a man and a tarsier both belong to the category of primates), specific identity (you and I both belong to the species Homo sapiens), and numerical identity (I am myself, and no one else is me). The first two can be subsumed in the larger category of identity of kind or form as contrasted to individual identity.

Now, to me, there is numerical identity of bodies, and there is identity of form of bodies. But there is also numerical identity of consciousness, and there is identity of form of consciousness. But consciousness is not an entity or substance in its own right; consciousness is on one hand an activity of certain kinds of body, and on the other hand a relationship between such bodies and the circumambient universe that the activity generates and maintains. Numerical identity of consciousness resides in the activity being carried on by the same body.

That is, when I lie down to sleep, I remember having in the past woken up after sleeping, and being conscious; and I remember always having woken up as the same familiar body. So in terms of inward experience, I can remember both the before and the after and associate them both with the same embodiment; and in terms of physical reality, I can observe other conscious beings and see that there is continuity of existence of their bodies when they sleep. So all my experience is consistent with the idea that numerical identity of consciousness goes with numerical identity of body.

What you are talking about seems to me to be identity of form of consciousness, and you seem to think that if there is identity of form, then there is identity. But I don't believe that is true. I think you're just rejecting the concept that defines continued consciousness.

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Coincidentally, today's xkcd is on-topic for the doomthread. (The alt-text is, anyway.)