X-Message-Number: 25103
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 22:52:06 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: Soul: Process/Pattern vs. Brain

Dear Richard:

You wrote:

[snip]
>You've seen Merkle's chance table, which
>shows that if you sign up for cryonics, at least there's a chance
>of being reanimated, whereas if you don't sign up, there's no
>chance. I propose a similar chance table for mind uploading:
>
>|-------------------|--------------------|---------------------|
>|                   | Uploading Destroys | Uploading Preserves |
>|-------------------|--------------------|---------------------|
>| You upload        | You die            | You don't die       |
>|-------------------|--------------------|---------------------|
>| You don't upload  | You don't die      | You don't die       |
>|-------------------|--------------------|---------------------|

One problem I have with your table is that I can imagine scenarios in which 
I do die, from my point of view, if I don't upload, because a choice must 
be made between alternative procedures (rather than just nothing happening 
in the one case). And this (my death) would happen because I (my brain) 
though "original" had so many changes after the non-upload that the person 
emerging was not recognizably me.

You wrote:

[snip]
>I think you would agree, if your view of the soul and the
>multiverse is correct, cryonics is not necessary or even important,

"not necessary" but *not* "not important"--see esp. my book, ch. 13. 
Actually I find ground for favoring a generally conservative approach when 
one's life is at stake: don't get sick if you can avoid it, don't die if 
you can avoid it, *be cryopreserved if you can't.* I think there are very 
good reasons to be involved in cryonics--but (once again) defer a full 
discussion for now.

You wrote:

>You wrote:
>
>"An alternate view, for instance, might be to regard the soul as a
>process (physical, not anything mystical) that takes place in a
>material artifact."
>
>Now here we come to the root of the problem: a process, or a
>pattern (or whatever you could define the soul as to permit mind
>uploading to preserve personal identity), cannot experience
>anything. Processes do not have physical existences; a process is a
>name we use to describe a change in a physical system. But the
>actual process, the change itself, does not exist, except as a
>designation, a word we associate with the evolution of the system.
>There is no way for a denotion of the evolution of a physical
>system to experience anything. It is the physical system itself
>that must do the experiencing.

Here is where I disagree. Perceptions form the basis of our knowledge of 
the world. We abstract or classify them in various ways and conclude that 
various entities exist, not just what we call "material objects" but other 
things, which can reasonably be considered real. Nations, literary 
productions, ocean waves, rainbows--and persons--I submit, are best not 
regarded as physical objects but something else, yet can be considered to 
actually exist. I think persons are processes and see no compelling reason 
why a "process" must be something that is incapable of experiencing 
anything. (Another thought is that even what we call material objects are 
squirrely, peculiar things when examined closely. The fine particles they 
resolve into are as much wave--process!--as they are substantial objects or 
particles, if not more so. In the many-worlds formulation, for example, 
there are no actual particles as such but only waves.) This means in effect 
that a fairly wide variety of theories of the soul must be taken seriously, 
including the pattern theory I favor in which the soul could survive death. 
A given theory can be favored over others if the right choice is made about 
what one considers important. One's preferences can, in many cases, be 
justified simply because they are one's preferences (though other grounds 
may exist too) and do in fact reflect what one chooses to consider important.

You wrote:

>You can
>change my qualia experiencer, and my personal survival is assured
>as long as you don't change it in such a way that it ceases to be a
>qualia experiencer. If you were to change my brain in such a way
>that I no longer had a qualia experiencer, then my soul would have
>been destroyed, and mucking with the atoms in my head to build a
>new qualia experiencer would not help me at all.

You allow a complete change of atoms to occur in the qualia experiencer, if 
it happens under certain conditions, and the original soul, you say, is 
preserved. But this seems arbitrary, even if we take your view that only a 
physical system can experience anything. Different atoms, different system! 
Original dead! I could maintain this, and I see no particular way you could 
argue that "we know it is false."

[snip]

Best wishes,

Mike Perry

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25103