X-Message-Number: 25310 Date: Mon, 13 Dec 2004 11:53:47 -0800 Subject: Side Notes on Materialism From: <> Dear Valera, You wrote: "From the materialistic perspective the contents of either book are paper and ink. Thus the contents of one book are NOT the same as the contents of the other, even if the ink patterns are similar." Exactly! The uploader jumps from 'seeing a story' where there is only ink and paper, to believing in the existence of the story, as a kind of Platonic ideal. From here, he can conclude that two stories are the same even though they are 'stored' on different mediums. In fact, stories do not exist. Ink and paper exists. A story is a particular way of interpreting an arrangement of ink and paper. And inasmuch as a 'way of interpreting' is not something that exists, but something that happens to our brains, it is not valid to think of stories as factually existing things. You wrote: "If a book had material consciousness, i.e. consciousness as a product or state of its paper and ink, it would be clearly distinct from the (material) consciousness of any other book." Indeed. Consider a radioactive isotope, which decays. If the isotype were destroyed, it could not decay any more. In a similar way, when my brain is destroyed, I cannot experience any more. The fact that some other isotype may be decaying is irrelevant with respect to the decay of the destroyed isotope. [snip] You wrote: "You may only survive teletransporting or destructive copying if either (1) your 'self' is immaterial or consists of matter unknown to the current science, or (2) you are the ultimate altruist and see your personal survival as the survival of your external qualities (your 'STORY') in your copy for other people, not survival of your inner world." Very well said. Francois, like all uploaders, DOES believe in an immaterial self, and it's called a 'pattern'. Unfortunately, as patterns don't exist (and even if they did they wouldn't 'transfer' mysteriously from one body to another---see my ignored message to Thomas), they won't be very helpful when it comes to surviving. Best Regards, Richard B. R. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25310