10-29-2010, 03:46 PM | #441 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
Before whswhs' long post, I would say that in the nuance that souls do not follow the standard definition of, say, minds, by not needing a medium. But after the post, I no longer have the vaguest idea what a soul is.
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10-29-2010, 03:48 PM | #442 | |
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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10-29-2010, 04:14 PM | #443 | |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
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We could change that to: A faithful belief in soul is religious, a belief that when a life ends the information in the brain creates an entity you call a soul which has volition. |
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10-29-2010, 04:22 PM | #444 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
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As we develop computers that can emulate language, perception, self-awareness, and other "mental" functions, it will get less and less convincing that there is a mysterious invisible inner essence in human beings. Bill Stoddard |
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10-29-2010, 04:32 PM | #445 | |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
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The soul will become that which makes a person whose genes say he has an X percent chance of Y not get Y. We may call it chance and unknown variables. Others will call it a guardian angel. |
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10-30-2010, 01:02 AM | #446 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
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10-30-2010, 01:07 AM | #447 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
And minds depend on brains. So of brains have unique markers, they leave a 'footprint' on a mind too.
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10-30-2010, 01:37 AM | #448 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
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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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10-30-2010, 02:46 AM | #449 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
Quote:
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10-30-2010, 07:48 AM | #450 | |
Computer Scientist
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
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Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question
Quote:
It may be useful to contemplate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_somnambulism as a legal precedent for treating person-like mindsets that spring from the same human being, but have separate memory tracks and apparently separate wills and decisions after one or both having undergone changes in cognitive content from changes in the medium of mentation. The sleepwalking persona can represent a (short-lived) xox; it's interesting to contemplate if the restored wakeful persona can be considered a xox of the original as well. |
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