X-Message-Number: 17375
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 20:28:51 -0500
From: david pizer <>
Subject:  Could Socrates have been an alligator?

Can we build duplicates?  Can the information in frozen brains be used to
recreate the exact same person, EVEN IF THE FROZEN BRAIN ITSELF CANNOT BE
REPAIRED?

Can a mind exist without a body?  Descartes showed us that the most a
person can *know for sure* is that he (at the minimum as a mind), exists
because you have to exist to be able to question your existence.  Descartes
shows us that we have two dissimilar conceptions of the mind and the body,
and then concludes that they must therefore be two distinct things.

Mike Perry and a few others have argued that information is all that is
needed to produce a person, so they should be able to conclude that the
information that would describe a certain mind is equivalent to being that
mind, but not yet activated.  

In the article, "Could Socrates have been an alligator?" by Alvin
Plantinga, the author reviews Descartes argument in Meditations.
Plantinga then attempts to show that a person is necessarily identical to
some body.  This then leads to the conclusion that person is not identical
to a material object.  Below I repeat some of Plantinga's reasoning.  When
it was written it was fun-philosophy, but not some of the ramifications
might have bearings on frozen people at reanimation time.  Especially if
reanimation cannot be done by repairing the original brain, but by
disassembling it and taking measurements and then making a new one with
similar atoms in the identical relations as the original brain.

Plantinga seems to be showing us (I'm not sure if I understand him, has
anyone else read this?  Can you explain it better?), that a
mind-alligator-body composite is an alligator.  Does an alligator
necessarily (in the philosophical sense) have to have a dull sort of mind?
If the alligator necessarily does not have to have a dull mind, the
Socrates could have been an alligator (at least in some possible world).
In other words, he could have had Socrates' mind and an alligator body.

Plantinga reminds us that Descartes thought he proved that he (Descartes)
is not a material body.  Descartes thought he showed us that it is possible
that a person can exist and yet there are no material bodies.   

(50) Possibly< I exist and there are no material bodies.

If this is so, then, (51) I am not a material object.

(A variation of this theme has appeared on Cryonet several times, when
someone speculates that God created a non-material mind and then put all
these ideas in it about a material world.)

I think (51) is over-stated and all it should be allowed to say is "If this
is so, then *possibly* I am not a material object."

So this only shows that if human beings are physical objects, they are only
so contingently.

This then shows that there could be worlds where I do not have a body.

If this holds, as it seems to , then having a body, then, is not essential
to being human in all possible worlds.

So Socrates might not have a body in every possible world that he exists in.

Then Plantinga says that suppose that he is a material body in some other
worlds.  What body am I, he asks.  He then answers that he is the body that
he refers to as "his body."  It seems possible to Plantinga that he can
acquire a new body, either all at once or piece by piece.  (Many people on
this forum think that we do acquire new bodies every few years, piece by
piece.  I read somewhere, that every atom in the body was replaced every
several years.)

Some cryonicists have stated that they wish to change their bodies (with
the help of good old Nano-T), when they come back in the future.  

So could Socrates have been an alligator?  

Or could Socrates become an alligator?  

Has anyone else out there read this? 

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