Consciousness Thought Experiment

[Delta1212]

Ok, but if you can remove one half of your brain without killing "you" then you've just admitted that your objection (that the act of splitting your brain in half at the beginning of my thought experiment results in your death) is no longer founded.

 

Care to review?

[tar]

Delta1212,

 

My initial thinking related to this thread, was heavily influenced by my father's situation. He fell on his forehead, was on Cumidin and a lot of fluid built up in his brain. We thought we lost him that night, but we did not. There were over the next months, in and out of hospitals and rehab places, times where he was certainly not "himself". He had to have brain surgery and did not "wake up" for three hard days. When he saw my sister, in from West Virginia, and said "HI, Peg," I had to leave the room, choked up with joy. I am crying now, remembering the situation.

 

I felt "he" was in there, and he was. "He" is not what he was before the fall, even now, but continues to improve. "He" is putting himself back together.

 

There is "something" that is a person, that one can recognize as a consciousness, as an identity, even if it is diminished. This thing, in regards to my father, never left him, even the three days where he did not speak.

 

Regards, TAR

Delta1212,

 

I don't know anything about a hemispherectomy. What is taken out, and what is left. I would guess, that talking with the patient, one that knew the patient before the operation and talking with him after, would not feel that the patient was "all there".

 

My cousin's mom does not know who my cousin is, most of the time. There is something of her that has been lost. Not dead, still my Aunt, still talks and smiles and laughs and feels a kiss on her cheek, but not completely "her". My dad, on the other hand is still there. How you want to parse that, in terms of identity is complicated and difficult, but there are elements there, that we would have to agree on, before deciding on whether cutting out half of a person's brain would be "killing" that half of the guy.

 

Regards, TAR

[Delta1212]

From the Wikipedia article: "Studies have found no significant long-term effects on memory, personality, or humor,[4] and minimal changes in cognitive function overall."

[Graeme M]

TAR, I think we are sort of going in circles here. It seems we are all agreed that a perfect copy is still a copy, or maybe more exactly it's a distinct separate being. It's made of different atoms and so on.

So all that you say is correct - the copy is separate. It has its own experience. Neither can 'read' the mind of the other. Each can be aware of their particular existence (ie as 'original' or 'copy') and so on.

The idea that some are getting at is that there is no ethereal 'something' which needs to be transferred between each. There isn't a "you" in the original that remains you and is not accessible to the copy.

You simply emerges from the function of the brain. If a perfect copy is made, the copy will come with all of the various arrangements of the brain exactly the same. That means that in the first moment after the copy is generated, copy and original are identical. Each has the exact same identical "you-ness", the experience of each is identical. There is no longer a privileged you.

From that moment on, experiences diverge. But the original and the copy are now equally as different from each other as from the original before the copying. The brain constructs you in each moment from the sum of its perceptual input and internal data such as memories.

So everyone is simply saying that the you in the copy is as much you as the you in the original.

Consider a single typical you. The brain creates you afresh in every moment from the information it has available to it. You are just an arrangement of neural connections. In your case, you are aware of your you-ness - you are 61 years old, went to a school in Newark, worked with Fax machines and so on.

Now, imagine damage to your brain from a blow wipes all memories of your earlier life and you awaken in some new city. If you never recover your memories and no-one ever tells you of your previous life, are you still the same you? There is a physical continuity of being it is true, but of the mind or self arising therefrom?

Imagine if we could alter your brains chemical/physical arrangement and implant all my memories, replacing yours with mine. Not my current processing arrangement, just my memories. Are you still you? If you remember now, inside TAR's head, growing up in Maryborough Australia and working in civil administration, are you really still TAR? You are physically, but in the essence of your conscious experience?

I must admit though that while I now get the idea of what it means to simply arise anew in each moment, I can't quite bend my mind around what it means for the transporter idea. On the face of it, if I step into the transporter, am vaporised and then regenerated on Mars, I accept that it will seem I have been transported to Mars. No different to awakening from anaesthetic.

That said however, there IS still a specific experience of life that each version has - we ARE aware of ourselves as living beings. Taking Eise's proposition then:

"Situation 2

On earth, you step in the transporter, and push the green button. The next moment that you are conscious again and step out of the cabin, you are still on earth. You hear that there was a malfunctioning of the transporter. Your original 'you' (i.e. you) were not immediately destroyed in the process, but the copying worked well and your duplicate has just stepped out of the transporter cabin on Mars. If you want, you can talk with him via telephone. However, due to the scanning process, you will die in the next few days.

Are you dying or surviving in situation 2? Would you step in such a device? If you wouldn't, would you in situation 1? Why?"

In this case, while my copy is happily enjoying life and his experience is to be me, the original me is still quite well aware of things and is not that keen in dying.

I think the only resolution to this is to face the fact that I am not real in a substantial sense. In the case of the properly functioning transporter, the effect really is that I die. "I" just don't notice that because death is not to exist. My copy on awakening just runs my experience and that is good enough. Again, it's no different to when I awaken from anaesthetic.

In Eise's case, the distinction is that the process of dying is now rather more apparent to original me. But it is in fact of no more consequence than it was when the transporter worked properly.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Graeme M

[tar]

Graeme M,

 

I am still stuck on the question of how does my consciousness "get" to the other location in the thought experiment. By what magic does this take place? Suppose for instance that to a Martian, there are 10,000 people that look "identical" to TAR, same height, same voice qualities, same facial features, same memories (songs, commercials, sports teams, favorite restaurants, interstate 81, etc.,) yet not one of the 10,000 pops up in the similar body/brain/heart group of any of the other 9,999. Each "stays with" themselves. How does oneself "get" to the clone?

 

Regards, TAR

[Graeme M]

Well TAR I'm not going to pretend my idea here is actually RIGHT. It's a thought experiment to illustrate ideas about self.

 

The idea being expressed here, to which I subscribe, is that there isn't actually a disembodied self or soul (or even embodied self or soul). The sense of self arises due to the brain generating a particular representation of its internal state, and this representation is generated moment by moment. This means that the representation which you perceive as you depends on the way your brain is wired to connect the dots so to speak. But the connection of dots is a finite thing, even if there are a trillion possible combinations of connections. If we simply recreate that arrangement elsewhere, then theoretically "you" spring into being. It's not magic and it's not transporting some ethereal essence, it's just that a brain of a particular configuration gives rise to you, and it will regardless of where that brain is. Of course if there are two of them and they go on living, the arrangements change and the internal representations diverge, but then both diverge from the original pre-copied version of you too.

[tar]

Graeme M,

 

OK, I think I get what you are saying, and I am almost thinking we are in agreement...except for the location thing.

 

We have all watched Star Trek, so have no problem considering getting transported from the ship to the surface...except the process proceeds in an understandable fashion. Your arrangement gets turned into a section of wiggly energy which is still "you", in the hands of the transporter, and then, at the same time this "wiggle" is happening at the other place. There is an amount of you that is on the Enterprise, an amount that is in wiggle mode somewhere in the equipment and the space between the ship and shore and some amount that is in wiggle mode on shore. As the amount of solid you decreases on the ship, it increases on shore. The equipment sometimes has trouble tuning you in, and its possible to arrive as a mass of geletin or be lost to the ether, but basically you exist in proper part on the Enterprise, in the transporter, in the space between or on shore. The fate of you is completely in the hands of the transporter. It either works or does not. The location of "you" is never in question. There is never an imposter, an "other" you. It is always you, making the trip, surrendering yourself to wiggle mode and trusting you will be unwiggled at the other end with all your parts and pieces in the right arrangement. But in this thought experiment we don't only have the real you, the original you, we have this "copy". The fate of the copy is the copy's business. You are not involved. The thought experiment has you put to death inorder that the universe does not have two instances of you, but you have not submitted yourself to wiggle mode process, you have just been scanned and the facsimile of yourself created was created elsewhere. "YOU" were not subjected to the trip. "YOU" can't be in the other place.

Its just someone else, that looks like you, and thinks like you. You perhaps to an objective observer, but not you, to you.

 

Perhaps I have a wrong interpretation of location and direction and existence and reality...or at least a different model of the universe than others might hold, in terms of what is subjective and what is objective, what is possible and impossible, what is existing from a god's eye view and what is existing from a local here and now view. I am bound, in my logic to account for how a thing "gets" from location to location, and what the cosmic time is when they get there. I have, in my worldview, demanded that a person must exist consistent with the existence of the rest of the universe, and can not "leave" and come back to reality in a different form, in a different place. Each of us is a particular arrangement of stuff, a particular neural pattern if you will, of actual stuff, in actual arrangement, in respect to the rest of the universe. In the clone experiment there is one arrangement of stuff here and one arrangement of stuff there, and both have the ability to sense the rest of the universe in proper time, from their position. It is only us, running the experiment that can put ourselves alternately in the shoes of the one, and in the shoes of the other. In actuality each is isolated by their awareness of the rest of the universe, from their particular place in it. Their here and now is the only one available to them. We can see both, but they must only be able to experience one.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited September 19, 2015 by tar

[Graeme M]

You still seem to have the idea that "you" is somehow a separate discrete thing.

If I take a cup and use the transporter, I get a perfect copy of a cup. Or if I have some kind of duplicator, same thing. The original and the copy are identical. They have different atoms it is true, but they are identical. There is no possible test other than atomic assessment that will uncover the difference. At a macro, functional scale, they are identical. There is no 'special' cup. They do the same thing. There is nothing you could do with one cup that you could not so with the other cup.

So too with a person. That's all there is to it.

Yes, in the original experiment where the original dies, "you" died. That is, the physical being was vaporised and the "you" emergent in his brain ceased to exist. However the copy on being created generated a new instance of "you" in his brain. The point being made is that while that physical being is a copy, a new one so to speak, the you in his brain is not a new one, it's exactly the same thing. You just emerge from the function of the brain in the same way that "capacity" or "function" emerge from the structure of the cup.

Thus, while original you dies, copied you is aware of the world and quite happy to be you.

But look, I know what you are getting at. It's what's illustrated by the matter of creating say 100 copies and having them all co-exist with the original. While I get that each is me, I still think that the experience of each is quite attractive to each and the fact that there are 99 others is little comfort to the one I kill.

[tar]

Graeme M,

 

I am thinking that I am a discrete, separate thing...from the rest of the universe. Connected, surely in a million ways. Subject to the same history as the stuff around me and so on, but all that history is substantial. I am much more complex and intricate than a cup. The emerged consciousness that exists as TAR is fleeting and fragile. I can be killed in a million ways, and certainly will die in the next 50 years, barring some amazing technology.

 

Perhaps I don't believe that the spark of life is unrelated to the components that needed to come together for life to have occurred. That is, that it matters greatly that I have a mother. Even if she is now dead. She will however not be my clones mother. My clone would have been created by the team that built the scanner and clone building equipment. His mother's womb would be the plasma field or whatever was required to generate him. He never existed in my mother's womb.

 

Therefore I maybe don't think the agreed upon exactness of the copy is possible. He would be made up of atoms that had different history than mine. He would be in a different relationship to the Sun and the Earth and Saturn and Jupiter and Times Square, and my basement, than I am in.

 

Like the doppleganger that possibly already exists for anyone of us, somewhere in the vast universe. They wouldn't be exact, because they don't live on Earth, in the Milky Way. If each were to point at the other, one would be pointing toward the Milky Way and the other away from it.

 

In my world view, each atom, each quark is unique. As identical and interchangeable as two hydrogen atoms might be...there is still the one, and the other.

 

Regards, TAR

[puppypower]

The way I look at the brain, mind and consciousness is using a computer analogy. Computers work using both hardware and software. You can't explain computer function with hardware alone. I don't believe you can explain consciousness with just DNA, neurons or matter; hardware. You also need software as part of the explanation.

 

The distinction between software and hardware is not always clear cut. For example, there are sound boards and video cards which are hardware that enhance audio and video. Audio and Video can also be enhanced with software. Software can be used to run compression algorythms on raw images to create the impression the hard drive that has more space; can hold more pics. Software Algorithms; learned memory pegs, can allow the memory to store conscious information easier.

 

Some of the original thinking on the mind and consciousness; ancients, used ideas like soul and spirit. These were theorized to exist apart from the body and continue beyond the body. They tried to add something beyond the hardware. Today this is less common, with many preferring to use unproven physics to explain the mind; quantum entanglement, for extra hardware.

 

If you were around back in the early to middle1980's, before the personal company computer shakedown, software used to run directly off its floppy disk. Software was not installed into the hard drive like today. Memory was expensive and it was cheaper to run the software right off the software's floppy disk. If your computer crapped the bed and died, you could take out the software and reincarnate it into another computer.

 

The ancients appeared to have reasoned and sense the concept of what we today would call the software side of consciousness. Software is information. Today the software side may be harder to see, since computer software is absorbed into the hard drive and therefore becomes what appears to be part of the hardware. If the computer craps the bed all is lost. But now, we have the Cloud, so a backup exists apart from original hard drive hardware, where it can be accesses as an energy signal from remote storage detached from your computer hardware. I can now bring this data to all my devices, no matter their hardware.

 

The analogy is not perfect but it gives a feel for a software layer. Many believe language is the basis for thought with language not exactly hardware.

Edited September 20, 2015 by puppypower

[tar]

puppypower,

 

Language is symbols, standing for something. If I use a language you understand, you know what I am talking about. There is, in my take, something similar about what it means for you to see a dog, and what it means for me to see a dog. We can "say" something about the dog, and know what it is the other is saying about the dog. The language we use is understandable and meaningful, because of the dog. It is the same dog. The symbols might be thought of as software, but the dog, what is that? The rods and cones on the back of my eye that are being activated by the light coming from the dog, tell me its shape. You get the same pattern impressed upon your hardware. Then we both store the shape and compare the shape against other shapes and colors we have sensed. What we have called a dog before, and been rewarded for calling a dog, we call a dog again. We agree to call that shape and color, a dog. Especially if it barks and bites and fetches a frisbee.

 

In this discussion of consciousness and selfness, I think the word most central to our figuring, is "memory". We need to talk a little more about what memory is, in terms of software, and hardware, and in terms of the thing sensed and remembered, before we assign consciousness as a state, or as a collection of hardware, or as software, or as a combination of the thing sensing and remembering, and the thing sensed and remembered.

 

A couple years ago, in reference to another thread, whose topic I have forgotten, I was driving along a road that I have driven many times, as my parents and my wife's cousin both live in the area where driving that road is the most direct way of getting there. I was thinking that the turns and trees, hills and houses, business and lights along that route were part of my model of the world. They were also part of the model of the world of my family. In addition, that route is part of the model of the world of an unknown number of people that live in the area, or have vacationed or visited or done business in the area. However, you may never have driven on Rt. 23 between Rt 287 and Highpoint. It may not be part of your memory.

 

Why I mention this, is the idea of memory. What is it that is involved in memory. I am thinking that not all of memory is happening within the skull, and I am thinking that a great deal of memory is actually happening in the configuration of the world that is being sensed and remembered. That is, that there is an analog version of the world, "happening" within our skulls, that is constantly being compared against the actual world being sensed.

 

With this thought, it is not enough to say that the memories of the original and the clone, are identical, because the clone, if he is on another planet, can not go down some steps into the garage, get in the car, back out, go left, go left, go right and get to Rt. 23.

 

Regards, TAR

In fact, if the clone remembered that he left the keys in the right hand pocket of the brown jacket...he can't use that memory.

[Strange]

Graeme M,

 

Perhaps I am thinking it is quite substantial to be a you, and such a you is not transferable to "other" arrangements. Even identical arrangements.

 

So you are saying that there is some sort of "soul" or "you" that is not represented by the physical matter of the person?

[tar]

Strange,

 

Yes and no.

 

The "you", is the composite of the physical matter. The emergent thing that exists because of all the composite pieces, but is a pattern, a unique pattern, that can neither be moved independently of the physical pieces and positions, nor exist without the physical pieces.

 

For a soul to go to heaven or hell, they would need to carry their senses with them so they could feel the satin and taste the honey, or feel the boiling oil. Without a body and senses, either place would be difficult to experience.

 

In this thought experiment the self gets moved to another location, another mass of neurons, as if it IS a thing not bound to reality and substance. I am not thinking that is possible, as a large part of having an identity, in fact maybe the most important part of having an identity is having a unique location in the universe, with the rest of the universe consistently placed around. The spot you are in, is your spot. The skin you are in is your skin. The neurons that hold your memories are your neurons. Nobody else's. Yours. The clone is in another spot. Is another unique individual because of it. Not you. Him.

 

Regards, TAR

[Strange]

The "you", is the composite of the physical matter. The emergent thing that exists because of all the composite pieces, but is a pattern, a unique pattern, that can neither be moved independently of the physical pieces and positions, nor exist without the physical pieces.

 

So I don't understand why you are saying that that "you" would not be reproduced in an exact copy of the hardware.

In my world view, each atom, each quark is unique. As identical and interchangeable as two hydrogen atoms might be...there is still the one, and the other.

 

I have just seen this. This is just wrong. It is a fundamental fact of quantum theory that all electrons, quarks (of a given type), and therefore hydrogen atoms are identical and interchangeable. They are purely defined by the properties they have (spin, charge, mass, etc) which are the same for all.

[tar]

Strange,

 

Consider what you call yours. Which is your house, your family, your town, your country, your mother, your car, your planet, your solar system, your galaxy, your nose, your idea.

 

Some of that identity is particular atoms. Some rely on the positioning of other atoms and their relationship to each other. The person is both a pattern and material in the form of that pattern. You can't just take the pattern and call it you, and you can't just take the material and call it you. A person is of and in reality. A self is the composite of the sensor and what is being sensed. It involves both the capability of the sensor and the storage, and the positioning of the sensor and storage unit, as to what it is that there is to be conscious of.

 

Regards, TAR

Strange,

 

If there is a hydrogen atom in a molecule of water, that is in a drop of blood that is currently moving through my left pinky, that is NOT the hydrogen atom that was in the drop of urine you expelled an hour ago.

 

It might have been in a drop of urine you expelled yesterday, but that particular atom that is paired up with a particular other hydrogen atom to make one H 2 molecule, that is combined with a particular oxygen atom, does not have a way to magically "get" from my pinky to your bladder. It has to leave my body through sweat or pee or breath or whatever, evaporate into the atmosphere, or run into the river or into the ground water, and be taken up into a particular cloud or worm that a particular bird eats, that flies in your direction and poops on your lawn where it evaporates and gets breathed in by you, where it then has a chance of being absorbed into your blood stream and go through your pinky and wind up in your bladder at some point.

 

Just because it has the same weight and spin as the hydrogen atom currently in your toilet, does not make it the same hydrogen atom. I am talking about the one in my pinky now. It cannot be the one you just peed away. Its a different atom.

 

Regards, TAR

as identical as they may be, they have different identities, different histories, have been components of different entities and the two cannot exist in the same place at the same time, nor can they get from one location to another in any magical way

Edited September 23, 2015 by tar

[Strange]

Some of that identity is particular atoms. Some rely on the positioning of other atoms and their relationship to each other. The person is both a pattern and material in the form of that pattern. You can't just take the pattern and call it you, and you can't just take the material and call it you.

 

I thought that the whole point of the thought experiment was that it reproduced the "pattern" of the matter as well as just the matter. Otherwise you would just end up with an identical looking dead body. Or not even that: a pile of graphite, some water and a few teaspoonfuls of other elements.

[tar]

Strange,

 

But an identical pattern may not be enough to have "you" show up at the clone end. "You" are still at the location of the scan.

 

My consideration in attempting to imagine what would happen in the experiment, concerns the whole holistic situation...as in where is Strange during the process. Is Strange in the room with the original or is Strange in the room where the clone appears. If there is a window between the rooms, where Strange, standing in either room, can watch the whole operation, you would know which "identical" group of neurons and neural patterns was the original, and which was the clone. If you owed me 20 dollars, who would you pay?

 

Regards, TAR

[Strange]

But an identical pattern may not be enough to have "you" show up at the clone end. "You" are still at the location of the scan.

 

So, if the material plus the pattern is not enough to reproduce "you", then you are arguing for some sort of dualism; some sort of metaphysical, essential you that is separate from matter and energy.

[tar]

Strange,

 

No, I am arguing that the pattern that is you, is unique, and NOT transferable. You are completely involved in the material AND the pattern, and neither, alone, is liable to do as you. The thought experiment, in other words, is not going to work, in its goal of recreating you.

 

Regards, TAR

 

I am thinking that "you" are the sum total of all your experiences, all that you have sensed and remembered in your life. Every place you have been, every person you have met, every event you have witnessed, and every thought and dream you have had. In addition, your pattern works, and works because it is a copy of what has already worked, what has "fit" with the world, as the world has evolved. All that "memory" is built into a person. The evolutionary history of the human specie, the geologic history of the Earth, the cosmic history of stars and planet that brought the solar system about, and forged the elements of which we are composed. The web of carbon based life, each part dependent on the others to set the stage, fix the carbon, and provide food for energy and cellular structure. It is all "part" of you. "You" is not something you can send by wire.

Edited September 23, 2015 by tar

[Strange]

No, I am arguing that the pattern that is you, is unique, and NOT transferable. You are completely involved in the material AND the pattern, and neither, alone, is liable to do as you.

 

Then why doesn't reproducing the "the material AND the pattern" reproduce you?

[tar]

Strange,

 

Because there is no way for your consciousness to get to the arbitrarily new location. Like the hydrogen atom that was in my pinky. It has an identity of its own, that has nothing to do with the fact that another atom has the same arrangement of quarks, protons and neutrons and electrons, all spinning in the same way. The identity of a singular person belongs only to that person.

 

If it was a legal issue, and a person made a clone of himself, could he have the clone serve his jail sentence. I don't think so. The clone did not commit the crime. He might remember doing it, but he would also know it wasn't actually him at the scene. That was the original TAR and the copy would have no responsibility to serve the sentence, as you would have no obligation to pay both me and my clone the 20 dollars you owe me.

 

Regards, TAR

[Strange]

So, again, you are claiming that consciousness has a separate existence from the matter (and patterns of that matter) that make up your physical existence.

[tar]

Strange,

 

How so?

 

I am thinking you have to have the material you to have the immaterial you.

 

Like a hurricane. It is made up of just water and air, heat and pressure. It's pattern is a particular one, happening at a particular place though. If tropical storm 37 turns into hurricane Tim and an identical pattern forms behind it, tropical storm 38, and the same winds and sheer, temperatures and pressures turn 38 into a hurricane, it does not become Tim. It becomes Ursula. Tim is hitting Cuba.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited September 24, 2015 by tar

[Strange]

How so?

 

Either mind/consciousness is a product of the material that makes up your mind and body or it isn't (1). You deny the former, therefore it must be the latter.

 

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_excluded_middle

[tar]

Strange,

 

But it is the product of the material. An emergent property that belongs to the collection of material, that is not a property of any of the components.

 

I don't see where I ever suggested "the ghost in the machine". I have always tried to argue the opposite. The identity, that is TAR cannot move to the clone, exactly because it is NOT separate from the material that is currently the original TAR.

 

If you can move TAR by reconstructing the pattern in a different lump of material, that is not TAR, that would indicate that TAR was a separate entity than the material. A program, a pattern, a movable entity, that had a separate existence from any particular material. I am arguing in this thread, that that is NOT the case. You can not magically move TAR into another vessel. I am the vessel I am currently "inhabiting".

 

If my vessel dies, I die with it.

 

Regards, TAR