X-Message-Number: 22317
From: 
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 09:21:50 EDT
Subject: Greek boat etc.

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One of the ancient Greeks talked about a boat being repaired so much that 
after a while all its parts were replacements. It is clear that no profound 

principle is involved--whether it is the "same" boat, or at what point it became
a 
different boat, is just a matter of language and agreement. We can be safe by 
being objective and sticking to the facts--the quantitative approach.

With brains, it is difficult to take the same attitude. We need to feel that 
our past, present, and future selves share something important. And it even 

goes beyond that. Many feel a need to identify with similar people, or even with
all people, or even with all life, or even with all things. Some are willing 
to grant full identity to sufficiently similar duplicates even at a great 
distance in space and time. But something is not guaranteed to exist, or to be 
true, just because you need or want it. 

As a practical matter, kidding yourself is not necessarily a bad idea. Lots 
of people's lives have been improved--or at least made less painful--by 

delusion. But those who value integrity will remain skeptical until we see the 
proof.

Again, as a tentative compromise between quantitative and qualitative, my 

suggestion is that the most important (although not the only important) element
of identity or self-characterization is the "self circuit"--possibly some kind 
of standing wave in the brain--the various states of which constitute qualia. 
Without it, if you could function at all, you would be an automaton, lacking 
subjective experience, similar to a computer. This standing wave--or 

whatever--has extension in space and time, which is an essential feature and a 
feature 

which cannot exist in a computer. (A simulation or description of it can exist,
but the physical feature cannot.) Hence my near predecessors, my present 

self, and my near continuers or successors overlap to some extent, and this 
gives 
me objective justification for saying that I am (at least in part) the same 
person that I was and will be.

Robert Ettinger



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