X-Message-Number: 22326
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2003 13:16:21 -0700 (PDT)
From: Brook Norton <>
Subject: There may be no identity or spanning of time

In msg #22317, Bob Ettinger writes

>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.


I think the idea of a personal identity may be overcomplicating the situation.  
Writers agonize over what constitutes our personal identity when in fact it may 
be an illusion.  Through our evolution, our brains have had to create an 
internal model of reality that allows a person to interact successfully with the
environment in order to survive and pass on one's genes.  It is a fact that our
hands, feet, heart, memories, etc generally function as a unit and it is 
convenient to lump these related parts into the concept "I".  The collection of 
parts our brains understand as "I" are essential for survival and a good way to 
mentally represent how "I" fit in with my environment.  But I think that is all 
"I" am.  When one tries to tie "I" down to a rigid definition, all attempts fail
(because there is no "I").  Say I loose a foot... now I must launch into all 
types of philosophy to try to figure out if "I" am still "I".  Isn't it simpler 
to just say this system of related parts no longer has a foot, and leave it at 
that?


As time passes, we change.  Our brains change, our memories change, our bodies 
change.  Our "system of related parts" changes.  To ask if "I" change is similar
to asking if my "soul" changes.  For those of us who do not believe in souls, 
we say it makes no sense to discuss if the soul changes.  Likewise, I suggest it
makes no sense to discuss if "I" change.  I suggest "I" is a slippery semantic 
illusion.


If you abandon the evolutionarly convenient concept of "I", many questions arise
about how one should consider our place in the world.  And that is a whole new 
discussion, but in going there, I have not found any practical problems with 
abondoning "I" and finding more simple solutions to previously "deep" questions.


Shifting gears to Bob's position that the qualia must "span time."  I don't see 
it.  I see the point that conciousness cannot exist in an instant.  That it 
takes some finite time to integrate recent (last 1/2 sec?) events into a working
awareness.  But I don't see the qualia doing any special, not-understood 
physics, to achieve "time spanning."  A rolling wheel cannot roll in a instant 
either.  It must pass through finite time before we consider its motion 
"rolling".  But a wheel need not "span time" in any special sense.  Likewise, I 
see the qualia as tapping the brain's memories of the last fractions of a 
second, and integrating those memeories, perhaps in a standing wave, to achieve 
conciousness.  No spanning of time required.

Brook Norton
aerospace engineer
CI member
cryonics movement fan

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