X-Message-Number: 11143
From: 
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 10:50:13 EST
Subject: "paradoxes" of continuity etc

John Clark (#11138) has some questions about the "self circuit" and related
matters:

>In #11101   on Thu, 14 Jan 1999 Wrote:

    >>I forgot to add that the "self circuit" does not
    >>solve the problem of criteria of survival, because
    >>it does not resolve the "paradoxes" of continuity.

[Clark]>I can dream up some strange situations involving survival and
continuity but I can't think of any paradoxes.

There are well known questions of continuity, commonly referred to as
"paradoxes" (which I put in quotation marks), some going back to Zeno or
earlier. One of them, in a modern context, concerns quantum discreteness of
time and space and asks, how can transitions occur, since there seem to be
only successions of isolated states with nothing intervening either in space
or time. (A tentative current answer is that we are asking the wrong
questions, that we are assuming pre-existing backgrounds of space and time,
which do not exist--that the events themselves are primary and there is
nothing "in between" the imaginary separated "points" of space and time.) 

I would also call it a "paradox" (in quotation marks, or if you prefer just a
puzzle without a current solution) that it is difficult either to accept or to
reject the notion that survival of a duplicate constitutes your survival. I
realize that Mr. Clark, along with Dr. Perry (in a special context, and
without dogmatic insistence), Mr. Strout, and many others, believe acceptance
of this idea requires nothing more than jettisoning of previous bias and
becoming comfortable through familiarity. But I insist that this stance,
despite a certain plausibility, is arbitrary and its validity is unproven.
It's like sweeping something under the rug--it hides the problem but doesn't
solve it. 

 [Ettinger]   >>But it [the "self circuit"]does tend to weaken any concept of
survival through duplicates, because it tends to support the intuition that a
person at another location cannot be you.

[Clark]>Why not just build another person with another identical "self
circuit"?

If a different location raises a real conceptual difficulty with survival
through duplication(as I believe it does), then that difficulty is underscored
with consideration of the self circuit. The self circuit emphasizes the
importance of the physical system, as opposed to merely the pattern of
information and the processing of information. I suggest that the physical
existence of (say) the standing wave at the center of the self circuit
constitutes the ground of being and subjectivity. This does not prove that a
duplicate self circuit somewhere else should not be considered "you," but it
does TEND to prove it, or provide evidence against it. To repeat, if feeling
is a specific type of physiological event or condition, and if "your" brain
evidences this phenomenon HERE, then the physical thing HERE that feels is
you, and another thing THERE, even if it has the identical type of structure,
is a different entity. As I said--not conclusive, but strongly suggestive.

[clark] >I've never understood why this "self circuit" idea of yours is needed
any more than we need a "Beethoven circuit" to explain how my radio can
receive the Fifth Symphony.

The existence of the self circuit is not arguable, because I define it merely
as the part(s) or aspect(s) of the brain or its functions giving rise to
feeling or subjectivity or qualia. Its possible importance, once more, arises
because it suggests that subjectivity is not just an "emergent" phenomenon
that automatically arises at some level of complexity in the brain, but a
specific feature of the brain's anatomy/physiology (whether localized or
distributed), which is not necessarily duplicable on a different substrate,
such as silicon. Among other things, it helps to support the view that
intelligence, for example, can exist without feeling.

[Clark]>You say The Turing Test doesn't work because it can't detect the
"self circuit", 

The Turing Test doesn't prove ANYTHING, because a testee can sometimes fool a
tester, either as to Pass or Fail. 

[Clark]>that means the "self circuit" doesn't effect behavior, so how and why
did random mutation and natural selection ever produce it, and even if it did
why didn't genetic drift destroy it long ago? I've asked this very important
question many, many times on Cryonet but I've never received a serious answer.

On the contrary, I have answered it repeatedly. Once more: The self circuit
could easily act as a kind of fuzzy logic filter, in effect providing quick-
and-dirty answers to important questions affecting the survival of the
organism as a whole. Encountering a new situation, a robot, or a lower life
form that might not have a self circuit, might have difficulty categorizing it
and devising an appropriate response. But the self circuit might receive a
feel-good or feel-bad impression and respond at once, without any detailed
understanding of the promise or threat. I realize this may sound pretty vague,
but space and time do not allow further elaboration here and now. I think some
readers will get the idea.

To repeat one point, Mr. Clark suggested that existence of a self circuit
would not affect behavior and would not affect performance in a Turing Test.
The latter part could be true; a non-sentient system might provide the same
answers as a sentient system, and the tester might have no way of knowing that
the non-sentient testee sometimes took much longer to arrive at its results
and used a much more laborious procedure. But "behavior" in the real world
might easily be different for the sentient system, involving as I said some
quicker responses.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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