X-Message-Number: 25190 Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:53:14 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #25181 - #25189 For RBR entirely, this time: When I repeated my question with changes, I was asking you to DEFINE what you meant by continuity. You base your ideas about survival of your QE on its continuity; yet nowhere do you discuss explicitly just what you mean by "continuity". Take the first example I made, of someone who is destroyed and then recreated EXACTLY. Why is it that I cannot claim continuity between this person and his/her recreation? On all physical and measurable factors, they are the same down to the molecules which make them up. Again, I raised the possibility that we might have our QE disappear every time we slept, and awaken with a new QE (but of course all the memories etc which our brain contained when we went to sleep). For this one, you propose various tests to show that we've existed physically though this whole process. First, when we sleep ordinarily no such tests are applied, so that the question still remains. Second, if (as in the first example) we can be physically and indistinguishably the same person and still have different QEs, then just what measurements do you propose to apply which will tell you that our Q E has or has not changed? The simple fact that we haven't been destroyed and replaced while we slept fails to prove that we've kept the same QE. For that matter, perhaps even sleep isn't necessary, and our QE changes hourly. Just HOW DO WE TELL THE DIFFERENCE? Remember that our brain remains the same (modulo whatever we've experienced in that hour), so that each of our Q Es will remember its experiences through our whole life. To repeat for clarity: your arguments depend on continuity of our physical selves, so far as I understand it. Yet continuity is far from an obvious or simple concept. I am asking you to define what you mean by continuity. And if you answer only that it should be obvious and simple, I will discuss all the variations of that notion which have been made through history. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson (NOT Donald, but Thomas) Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25190