X-Message-Number: 3787 Date: Fri, 3 Feb 1995 10:59:41 -0500 From: "Bruce Zimov" <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS: Uploading What society thinks identity is or what observers think about a person's identity under any situation is not the identity that matters in survival. These various criteria are extrinsic. The only criterion that matters is the inner point of view. Currently, our brains serve as a causal conduit between our wake states. We survive normally that way in the way that matters. Our interest is in our future wake states. Our memory is of our past wake states. Though convenient and valuable to us, our memories are incidental, and if transferable are also losable in the sense that another host that is NOT a future wake state of ourselves could have that memory. All of this points to our memory as secondary and our subjective circuit as primary for what matters in survival. The subjective circuit is thought to be cortical or cortico-reticular. EEG studies on dogs after undercutting the cortex supports the cortical only view. Our wake state correlates with cortical frequencies in the 30Hz range. We feel what it is like to be a particular network state (wake state). This particular network state will probably end up being an attractor on the cortex of some sort, caually supported in a regular manner by the brainstem. If the subjective circuit is copied, would we lose the causal continuity, as we would with memory copying? Any copying since it creates a branch and leaves the original intact will from an extrinsic point of view satisfy HISTORICAL causal continuity. But, this is true in parenting a child as well, and we do not survive from the inner point of view in our children. So, the type of causal relation required for continuity of the inner point of view does NOT transfer, even if we can copy subjectivity AND memories. The reason is that OUR normal causal conduit is not being used, yet it still exists, if even as a frozen brain. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3787