X-Message-Number: 25434
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 18:05:13 -0800
Subject: Brook and Identity
From: <>

Dear Brook:

[snip]

You wrote:

"And yes, on this level, if one chooses to define survival as the 
continued existence of a set of properties, then clearly many 
things are capable of survival at least in part."

This is a step.

You wrote:

"What I am objecting to is the higher level use of 'survive' to 
mean that an individual's 'essence' continues through time and that 
some 'essence' is intrinsic in each person's identity."

I don't know what you mean 'essence'. I know that I experience 
qualia. Since I am a physical being, with an operating brain 
composed of matter and energy, this means that my brain experiences 
qualia. If my brain experiences qualia, and something else does 
not, then there is something about my brain (about its arrangement 
or configuration) that is responsible for the experience of qualia. 
Therefore, the brain has a set of properties Q which enable it to 
experience qualia.

When I talk of survival, I speak of survival of the set of 
properties Q. There is no mystical 'essence'.

You wrote:

"It is often questioned whether one 'survives' when one is, say, 
tele-transported to another location or time. At the 'noun' level 
of survival (defined above), the person survives because a set of 
properties continues."

Clearly SOME sets of properties survive, but not ALL. For an 
obvious example, the property of location does not survive 
teleportation. Therefore, your statement that 'the person survives' 
is only true with a specific definition of 'person', one that is 
not useful from the point of view of anyone interested in survival 
of their subjective inner life.

[snip]

You wrote:

"It is not some well reasoned response, but an instinct. An 
instinct is the last thing you want to use as a guide to self 
enlightenment."

Explain to me why. In order to convince me, you would have to show 
me that 'self enlightenment' would make me happier, in a way I 
desire, and that my insict to survive would be contrary to this 
goal.

Neither one of which you can do. And even if you could do, you 
would the whole time be appealing to what makes me happy, which is 
itself the result of genetic programming evolved for enhancing my 
the reproductive capacity.

The idea that the human species is 'primitive' or 'base' and needs 
to 'progress' beyond such baseness is laughably absurd; the very 
idea is created by members of the human species, and has a 
psychology all of its own. The desire to better oneself is 
completely arbitrary from an absolute perspective, itself the 
result of natural selection, while the particular definition of 
'better' is similarly objectively arbitrary and a product of human 
evolution.

Such ideas are created by human minds, who try to pretend they are 
not human; whose very value system, which causes them to look down 
on the human form with disgust, is itself an intrinsic part of 
humanity.

It's not that you cannot rise above what you are. It's that 'above 
what you are' is determined by who you are, and does not possess an 
objectively useful definition. People who think otherwise are 
simply mistaken, having no knowledge of the nature of reality.

[snip]

You wrote:

"But now, with the looming prospect of cloning, nanotechnological 
duplication of people, and uploading, the ancient view of self is 
not holding up to the inevitable thought experiments."

Patternism is merely another restatement of the 'ancient view of 
self'. The modern view is that the self is a brain. You destroy the 
brain, you destroy the self; copying the brain produces another 
brain, which is not numerically identical to the original brain, 
inasmuch as there cannot be two objects that are the original, or 
else it would be 'one' object and not 'two'. These are consequences 
of the nature of reality, specifically because there is variance 
and therefore identity in what exists.

You wrote:

"The instinctual, intuitive feeling of survival of one's essence 
will therefore crumble, giving way to views that are consistent 
with new knowledge and satisfying the modern thought experiments"

The only view consistent with science is that you are a brain. I am 
sorry to hear you believe you are something else (an illusion or a 
pattern or whatever).

[snip]

You wrote:

"I am not in any type of mental pain. In past months and years, I 
have communicated that the above survival view is troubling with 
regards to cryonics, but I am in an optimistic mindset these days."

It is your (evolution-spawned) desire to seek haven in the 
patternist view that compels you to embrace it. You are afraid of 
dying, and so instead of merely accepting the possibility you could 
have a last experience, you say, 'My self is an illusion, and 
copies are me, so I have nothing to worry about.' I know how 
tempting this can be. But like religion, its comfort is short-
lived. The hard reality is that you are a brain, and when your 
brain comes to an end, so will you. The odds are great, there will 
be a last experience for you, and no matter what emulations or 
copies of you exist, they won't do you any good.

Deal with the pain in an intellectually honest manner before it 
interferes with your life. Or don't. The choice is of course yours.

Best Regards,

Richard B. R.

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