X-Message-Number: 25069
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 08:59:03 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25051 - #25063

More for Richard B. R.:

You suggest (?) that the physical part of our brains which experiences
qualia constitutes (?) our soul. This of course makes an important
assumption, that there is a PART of our brains which experiences
qualia. Perhaps that experience always requires the whole of our
brains; I do not mean by this that if our brains are injured but most
of our brain remains, that it no longer experiences qualia  --- though
its experience will be changed. I am suggesting that experiencing 
qualia at all requires all the brain we have. (Certainly if the 
brain areas dealing with our hearing become destroyed, we will no
longer be able to hear, but will still experience other qualia).

Again, what happens to a person who loses that part of their brain,
by accident or mistaken surgery or (for that matter) the destruction
caused by a brain tumor? Does he/she continue living as before? If 
some part of our brains experiences qualia, then we must consider
the possibility that that part might sometimes become damaged, or
that some people might be born without it (a birth deformity).

Again, you raise some very subtle questions about what is and what
is not "the same" experience of qualia. As others have suggested,
what happens if we make a copy of you (forgetting entirely the 
tremendous practical difficulties of doing so)? In what way does
this copy not have the same experience of qualia. Yes, if we 
created a total twin of you, then it would only take an instant
for that twin to experience quite different qualia.  So we make a 
copy and simultaneously destroy the original (you), with both 
you and the copy unconscious when we do this. When the copy 
wakes up, why is this copy not the same as you. (If we constantly
change the atoms and molecules making us up, then in what way 
does this differ from the operation I've just discussed above? 
Yes, one is more sudden, but how does that suddenness keep the
copy from having the same qualia-experiencer as you?).

I do not wish to minimize the practical difficulties of such an
experiment, but I'm discussing the meaning of your definition
of soul, not what is ever likely to be done.

Because of these questions I remain unclear about just what you
definition of a "soul" may be.

I will add some things here in your support, at least broadly.
You say that this center for qualia is a CPU. If we're not computers
then we need not have a CPU as such. At the same time, I would
agree that we cannot duplicate ourselves simply by having a 
computer program (it would have to be running in some future,
at least apparently highly biological computer, because of the
way our brains work) which "duplicates" us. A program is just
a set of directions for changes in a physical computer, while
we don't work that way at all.

            Best wishes and long long life to all,

                Thomas Donaldson

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