X-Message-Number: 17011 Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 15:44:14 -0700 From: Olaf Henny <> Subject: On Revival, Consciousness and Inserting Memories. References: <> In Message #16996 Thomas Donaldson <> wrote: > And yes, we'll be revived by a >descendant of a cryonics society, NOT by society in general. While there is a special interest/ obligation by the cryonics society to revive us, there is also a reasonable expectation of the society as a whole to promote our revival to gain historical perspective from representatives of our time, at least as long as we are only as few as we are now. >The idea that suspension (of some kind) will be needed into the >indefinite future is NOT a side issue. It is essential to the entire >idea. Where do you see any further necessity for suspension, if Ralph Merkle's vision of cell by cell damage assessment and repair by nano robots is realized? Surely if we had that capability, it would provide us with the means to tackle any physical damage to the body, short of total destruction, caused by disease or otherwise? --------------------------------------------------------------- In Message #16997 Robert Ettinger <> wrote: >Olaf Henny writes in part: << So where does consciousness begin? How do you define its rudimentary function, if not as taking action for self-preservation? >> >Consciousness is not (or should not be) defined in terms of function or >"purpose" or evolutionary processes. Certainly many systems display >characteristics such as fleeing danger or seeking food, yet could not by any >reasonable criterion be considered conscious. >Consciousness (or awareness or sentience) is a condition/process not yet >objectively described, but its essential feature is that it allows or gives >rise to subjective experience or qualia--in other words, feeling. There may >or may not be a sharp division between the haves and the have-nots. Therefore in order to assess, if a creature has consciousness, we would have to be the proverbial "fly on the wall" inside its brain or be somehow "wired" into its thought processes. Failing that it is pretty well a judgement call. "*My*" fly may have consciousness (see below), while somebody else s duck doesn t. My Oxford English Dictionary defines sentient as follows: sentient: adj. having the power of perception by the senses. sentience n. sentiency n. sentiently adv. The fly certainly perceived my approaching hand visually. So at least by *that* definition it is sentient. Consciousness, however is still in dispute. Most active contributors to this forum are brainy, highly educated individuals. It stands therefore to reason, that they consider the brain the defining aspect of an individual. However, I contend, that love, fear, passion, anger, hurt and aggression (the last 3 rarely find expression here <g>) run a close second, and their intensity is mostly a function of our endocrine system, not the brain. I think it is this higher degree of importance which I attribute to emotion (fear), which lets me infer consciousness in the fly. Of course, that consciousness is rather basic and primitive in keeping with the limited brain. ------------------------------------------------------------- In Message #17002 Mike Perry <> wrote: >The recordings and photos won't just "integrate themselves." *But* have you >considered the possibility of not just creating a clone, a tabula rasa, and >have it learn something from records as it grows up, but instead creating a >*programmed* clone, that *starts off* with information derived from records >and suitably encoded in its memory structure? There is also no reason why >the new individual would start as a baby. Instead, nanotechnology should >make it possible to create a fully formed and *in*formed adult, right at >the start. Cloning a complete human being is "easy"; - well it can be done today. Cloning individual organs is probably not so far away. But cloning a whole individual without the brain seems to be more difficult by orders of magnitude. Naturally, Mike, I realise, that this is not what you were referring to; - just covering the bases. As far as nano-tech is concerned it appears to me, that Ralph Merkle s nanobots' entering cells, assessing and repairing damage will be a whole lot easier, than writing a programme, covering the construction of a whole body sans brain from DNA information, for nanobots to follow. It would be much more difficult than writing a programme for cheese cake from an existing one, which would be in essence a "copy and paste" procedure. I therefore doubt, that this will be an option, at least not for a long time after the revival of cryo-suspendees. >Now granted, the reconstructed memories might be a bit skewed or >pushed around, amplified or shrunken, from what would have been obtained >from a good cryopreservation. Still it might be good enough to qualify as >more-or-less the original person, even by hard-nosed critics (those who, at >least, are willing to be lenient on the issue of original material). The >reconstruction, if done properly, should produce an individual in no >identity-critical way distinguishable from the original either by >him/herself or others. That would follow just on informational grounds, if >you assume that information is the deciding factor, as I do. So you'd be >doing something right, and maybe it would be enough, depending on how you >look at "enough." I would conjecture, that the data derived from stored memorabilia would be completely insufficient in complexity and detail to serve as ersatz memories, akin to a 8 Kb description of a 8 Mb image. Best, Olaf Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=17011