X-Message-Number: 5815
From: Joseph Strout <>
Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension
Subject: Cryonics & Personal identity
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 11:38:50 -0800
Message-ID: <>

Paul Burridge () wrote:

> So your corpse 'wakes up' after x years in suspension and finds his
> long-term memory substantially unimpared. What makes you think the
> conscience of this person is still the same? His essential
> identity: his soul?

The most plausible, consistent (internally and with other notions) and 
"intuitive" theories of personal identity are all based on memory, or 
more generally on mental attributes.  Locke got the ball rolling by 
asserting, in essense, "if I remember doing an act, then I am the same 
person as he who did that act."  The act could involve thinking; thus if 
you remember thinking that cryonicists were a bunch of loonies, then you 
ARE in fact the same person as he who had that thought.

Modern refinements of memory theory tend to be fuzzy (as opposed to 
Boolean) and incorporate other aspects of personality as well, but the 
basic idea is good.  This is what makes me think that if a cryonic 
patient wakes up with long-term memory intact, then he will indeed be the 
same invididual, with the same identity/soul.

Conversely, what makes you think he would NOT be the same person?  It is 
hard to imagine what takes place during cryonic suspension that might 
change one's identity, that does not also take place during deep 
anasthesia, stroke, etc.; yet we consider that people survive these 
things.  How would cryonics (assuming it works) be different?

(Note: I have no vested interest -- I'm not even signed up for cryonics 
yet.  But I have done a bit of study in personal identity, and I hope my 
comments prove useful.)

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
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