X-Message-Number: 24633
From: 
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 09:04:26 EDT
Subject: mind-body

James Swayze forwarded a piece about mind/body/soul that more or less  boiled 
down to the suggestion that most people cling to a primitive  dualism. This 
may well be true, but it omitted the modern complications.
 
Some of the frontiersmen of science/philosophy (readers here will think of  
Mike Perry) also postulate what might be called "souls", albeit not in the  

traditional religious sense. They believe that "you" are basically your pattern
or software, a particular body of information. This has profound consequences, 
 including the distinction (if any) between embodied or instantiated 

information  and potential or abstract information. It is a kind of updated 
Platonism. 
 
I discuss this at length in Youniverse (which should be ready by the end of  
this year). My conclusion is that this notion is probably both wrong and  
counterproductive. 
 
Robert Ettinger


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