Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > Transhuman Space

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 10-29-2010, 03:46 PM   #441
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ze'Manel Cunha View Post
How is that belief different from how other religions say the soul interacts with the substantial world?
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.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-29-2010, 03:48 PM   #442
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
The laws of physics don't influence the planets at all. The laws of physics are propositions that make up part of the theoretical and conceptual structure of the science of physics, which exists in human minds and in informational media created by human beings such as books and computer files. Human minds do not have the power to control the orbits of the planets.

If I wrote a computer program to emulate planetary orbits, I would need to put (some form of) the laws of physics into it, in order to tell it how to do the calculations needed to update the positions and velocities of the planets. The files that describe the planets have no causal power on their own.

But that's not true of the actual planets. The planets themselves create gravitational fields, and respond to the solar gravitational field and each other's gravitational fields. The planets are not sapient, or even sentient, and cannot know or calculate their own physical interactions; they just act and interact in accord with their physical natures and states. And there are no planetary intelligences guiding them to do so, and no cosmic computer running the solar system through successive orbits. Things just happen as they happen. The orbits are calculable because things have determinate natures and can only act according to those natures; the calculations describe the resulting action but do not control it.

That is, the planets don't need some outside agency or force to make them move on specific orbits. They have specific masses, forms, positions, and velocities. Being what they are, they must do what they do. It's a necessity of their own natures, and not of some external force or will.

Bill Stoddard
I agree with you more than seems to be apparent. But as I said, it is hard for me to explain, even in my own language. Consider me irrational, or philosophically uneducated, or whatever.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-29-2010, 04:14 PM   #443
Ze'Manel Cunha
 
Ze'Manel Cunha's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Stuttgart, Germany
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
I agree with you more than seems to be apparent. But as I said, it is hard for me to explain, even in my own language. Consider me irrational, or philosophically uneducated, or whatever.
A transhumanist belief in mind is religious, a belief that a snapshot of the information in the brain created an entity you call a mind which has volition.

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.
Ze'Manel Cunha is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-29-2010, 04:22 PM   #444
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
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.
No one ever had any idea what a soul is. The soul is inaccessible to the senses and to science. (Though archaic ideas of it treat it either as the invisible medium of breath, or as the intangible medium of the shadow, the reflection, or other images.) The soul is "the medium in which thoughts and memories are stored" (or, as Descartes called it, "a thinking substance") . . . because no one could imagine how thoughts and memories could be stored in matter. So they just postulated "a something that contains thought, about which we can know nothing else."

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
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-29-2010, 04:32 PM   #445
Flyndaran
Untagged
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
...
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
Science has an uphill battle against magical thinking. Usually it just changes what is believed magic.
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.
Flyndaran is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2010, 01:02 AM   #446
Pomphis
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
Third parties maybe, but there are things that are pretty unique. Brains have more places for unique markers than fingerprints, no?
But you argue that identity depends on the mind, not the brain.
Pomphis is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2010, 01:07 AM   #447
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by Pomphis View Post
But you argue that identity depends on the mind, not the brain.
And minds depend on brains. So of brains have unique markers, they leave a 'footprint' on a mind too.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
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
whswhs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2010, 02:46 AM   #449
vicky_molokh
GURPS FAQ Keeper
 
vicky_molokh's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
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
That's a very interesting set of questions. It might indeed turn out that person-0y.o. and person-18y.o. have practically nothing in common that they don't have in common with most of humanity. Which, if it is indeed the case, we have to accept as a moderately uncomfortable truth. That's the price of having definitions - sticking to them.
__________________
Vicky 'Molokh', GURPS FAQ and uFAQ Keeper
vicky_molokh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-30-2010, 07:48 AM   #450
jeff_wilson
Computer Scientist
 
jeff_wilson's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Dallas, Texas
Default Re: Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
That's a very interesting set of questions. It might indeed turn out that person-0y.o. and person-18y.o. have practically nothing in common that they don't have in common with most of humanity. Which, if it is indeed the case, we have to accept as a moderately uncomfortable truth. That's the price of having definitions - sticking to them.
person-0y.o has an inherent interest in the welbeing, liberty, and chattels of person-18y.o that supersedes anyone else's interest, if any. It follows that in the earlier pre-crime example punishing person-18y.o is also a punishment against person-0y.o.

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.
__________________
.
Reposed playtest leader.

The Campaigns of William Stoddard
jeff_wilson is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
verhängnisthread

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:29 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.