X-Message-Number: 3602
From: Peter Merel <>
Subject: CRYONICS Identity (Re: Uploading yourself)
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 23:15:37 +1100 (EST)

Bruce Zimov writes,

>As a philosopher and a physicist interested in cryonics and
>uploading, I more than anyone want this process to work, but
>to date I have only seen this naive giddy enthusiasm about
>the upload process, including works by Merkle, et.al., without
>addressing the seriousness of the identity problem. The
>time, money , and effort of the cryonics organizations in
>preservation is evidence that they want to reverse suspension
>to return the same brain to consciousness, and not to preserve
>the source just to destroy it so that some clone may live.

I have been thinking about this problem recently. I have to disclaim
that the question is a very old one, and my take on it may not satisfy
a lot of people. Still, it might help, so for what it's worth:

Humans construct a mental model of themselves and their environment. This 
model has considerable predictive power, but it is necessarily abstract and 
imperfect. Taoists refer to this model as "the world" and to what is beneath
abstraction as "the way". Presuming that sense-data, as it is accessible
within "the world", is itself abstract, we may regard "the way" as beyond
direct experience, and therefore confine our inquiry to "the world".

Given these Taoist terms of reference, we can describe the process of mind in 
this fashion: motion within "the way" gives rise to sensation within "the
world"; sensation over time is recorded as memory; the relationships between
sensations and memories are observed as abstractions (some might say, as
memes); abstractions are employed to construct and interrelate all the 
objects in "the world". Each object in the world has predictive power
which we refer to as "feeling" and "doing", and, imbued with mind, bears
some harmonious relation with "the way".

Well, I did say it wouldn't satisfy everyone.

It seems plain then that the abstractions we commonly employ must refer
to objects. When we sense or remember something, then we immediately
want to know who or what did it, and who or what felt it. When we
cannot attribute the event to anyone or anything else, then we say "I
did it" or "I felt it". We then go about linking "I" with all the rest
of the things in "the world" via the usual sorts of abstractions, quite
as if it was any other sort of object.

My rationale for believing that cryonics and uploading will preserve my
identity, then, is that if they preserve the integrity of "the world"
then they can not help but preserve the abstractions with which "I"
am constructed within "the world". If, on the contrary, "I" requires
some peculiar physical attribute that is extraneous to "the world" then
by definition it is beyond my experience, and can be of no consequence
within "the world".

YMMV.

--

Internet:           |         Accept Everything.            |

http://www.usyd.edu.au/~pete           |         Reject Nothing.               |

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