X-Message-Number: 25088
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 09:39:36 -0800
Subject: Cryonics and the Qualia Experiencer
From: <>

Dear Francois:

"It seems to me that the qualia experiencer hypothesis is the death 
knell of any cryonics effort. However well a process to preserve a 
brain works, however perfectly its structure is preserved, even if 
it is down to the atomic level, a brain sitting in liquid nitrogen 
displays no activity at all. It percieves no qualia, there is NO 
functioning qualia experiencer within it."

I have never claimed that continuous, uninterrupted experience of 
qualia is necessary for personal survival. I claimed the 
continuous, uninterrupted existence of the *qualia experiencer* was 
necessary for survival. At the most fundamental level, we are the 
qualia experiencer---we are most certainly not the experience of 
qualia. Distinguish between the two.

The experience of qualia may stop and resume, as it does every 
night, or as it does during anaesthesia or during cryonics. 
Personal survival is assured as long as the qualia experiencer 
continues to exist.

You wrote:

"The person this brain belonged to is DEAD. Any process used to
restart brain functions, however perfectly it worked, would only 
start a new qualia experiencer,"

As the qualia experiencer is not a process, but an actual physical 
thing, there is no way to 'start a new qualia experiencer'. Your 
criticisms do not apply to my view of the soul.

[snip]

You wrote:

"A copy identical to the original IS the original. A perfect 
copying process does not result in an original and a copy, it 
results in two originals."

Redefining the word 'original' cannot help you. Even a perfect copy 
is still a copy---it is not the same thing as what it was copied 
from. If it were the same thing, then it would share all of its 
properties, and it would be yet another name for that thing, as in 
2 + 2 = 4. This has been called 'numerical identity'. If you copy a 
thing, it is not numerically identical to the original thing, even 
though its atomic arrangement may be the same.

[snip]

You wrote:

"They must disappear in one plank interval and reappear in the
next. That's a mind boggling concept don't you agree, the fact the 
whole universe is completely destroyed and recreated trillions upon 
trillions upon trillions of times every second, you and I 
included?"

This is absurd. I have majored in mathematical physics and am 
widely read in the subject. No one who is not insane proposes the 
universe pops into and out of existence trillions of times a 
second. You are inventing this to help your position. This may give 
you comfort, but it cannot alter reality.

[snip]

Best Regards,

Richard B. R.

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