X-Message-Number: 25444
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 05:33:16 -0800
Subject: Survival through Cryonics, and the Utility of Qualia
From: <>

Dear Scott:

You wrote:

"As I understand it, your premise is that our brain must 
continuously
have the ability to experience qualia or the qualia experiencer 
dies.
In other words, any significant alteration to the brain that would 
prevent it from being able to experience qualia would result in the 

irrevocable destruction of the original self."

This is correct.

You wrote:

"So given that the brain is clearly incapable of experiencing 
qualia 
in the cryonically preserved state, does that mean we are all 
lost?"

In a perfect vitrification, there is no ice damage, no fracturing, 
and no use of toxic cryoprotectants. In this state, only the motion 
of the molecules has slowed. Therefore, a brain capable of 
experiencing qualia prior to perfect vitrification would be capable 
of experiencing qualia during perfect vitrification. In fact, such 
a brain could validly be regarded as experiencing qualia, albeit at 
a rate immeasurably slow.

When you are in deep sleep or are anesthetized, you do not 
experience qualia. However, you survive because the neural circuits 
in your brain responsible for the experience of qualia remain 
preserved, even if during this time they do not happen to be 
changing in ways that elicit the experience of qualia.

Similarly, an experience of qualia requires a non-zero interval of 
time to occur---the minimum amount of time necessary for a 
conscious event. If you were to examine your brain on an interval 
of time shorter than this minimum, you would not see any change 
that correlated with experience. Perfect vitrification merely 
greatly increases this minimum amount of time.

You wrote:

"These brains are significantly damaged and will need repair before 
they are capable of generating a QE again. In addition to being 
damaged, one would have to admit that, given the cracking that 
takes place (less now than before), the brain has been at least 
partly disassembled. Have the identities of these damaged and 
partly disassembled brains been destroyed for all those currently 
in stasis?"

I do not know for sure. But I would highly doubt that frozen 
patients survive, and I am not even confident in survival with 
present day vitrification protocols.

Robert has indicated some frozen neural samples have shown 
electrical activity after thawing; whether such activity would 
correlate with any experience (indicating preservation of the 
brain's ability to experience qualia), I cannot say, but I prefer 
to remain skeptical and urge cryonicists to opt for vitrification 
and demand better vitrification protocols.

You wrote:

"Your arguments seem to suggest that you think the brain is a 
machine.
OK, fine. But taking a machine apart and putting it back together 
just
as it was results in that machine doing exactly what it did before 
it
was disassembled."

Yes, but it is a different machine. That is the whole point.

You wrote:

"Your (somewhat disturbing) analogy of changing the properties of a 
dog with a flamethrower is a poor one since that involves 
'damaging' the dog machine. Disassembly does not imply damage."

The universe does not know about 'damage' or 'disassembly'. The 
bonds break, and the system loses properties. That is the only 
thing that matters, from the point of view of survival of those 
properties.

You wrote:

"I maintain that it doesn't matter how many pieces a frozen brain 
is broken into if those pieces can be properly reassembled through 
some future technology."

You cannot maintain this view without going beyond strict 
materialism. You can theoretically disassemble the brain into atom-
sized pieces, in which case, there is no need to use the original 
atoms, since they are indistinguishable from other atoms, and if 
you don't need to use the original atoms, you can 'reassemble' 
multiple brains.

Clearly the subjective inner life of the patient cannot continue in 
multiple brains, but can continue in at most one brain. So under 
this view, you need to invent a mechanism to decide which brain (if 
any) gets the subjective inner life of the original. Not only is 
this mechanism supernatural and ad hoc, but it requires the 
subjective inner life to be not a property of the system (which it 
plainly is) but instead, to be a property of an abstraction, which 
makes no sense in reality, inasmuch as abstractions do not exist.

My view has no paradoxes, is alone compatible with both strict 
materialism and the fact of qualia, and is, I believe, a 
consequence of both reality, and the relationship of language to 
reality (since, after all, I am expressing this view in language). 
Why would you hold to a supernatural view that requires the 
creation of many non-physical mechanisms, leads to paradoxes and 
absurdities, and seems completely arbitrary (or rather, constructed 
for the express purpose of giving some hope to cryonicists)?

In my view, cryonicists need to face up to the problem of identity, 
abandon the 'information-theoretic' criteria of death, and 
acknowledge it is possible that even if a person's brain can be 
restored to operation through statistical inference or creation of 
memories from external sources, this does not mean the person's 
subjective inner life will continue, from before his suspension to 
afterwards.

This doesn't mean we should abandon cryonics, or our current 
patients, who are all preserved using inferior technology. Even if 
the odds are lower the earlier the patient, I still think it is 
worth pursuing. A non-zero chance is better than a zero chance, and 
the chance may be somewhat higher than I estimate (just don't count 
on it).

[snip]

You wrote:

"In the same way that your mind is a word that describes something 
that happens, not something that exists? Neurons exist, 
neurochemicals
exist, but minds don't?"

Both minds and rainbows happen to brains. We talk as if rainbows 
exist, because they appear to us like other existing things, but 
while photons exists, there is no such object as a rainbow. There 
is such an object as a tree. 

You wrote:

"Perhaps you'll say now that rainbows are purely epiphenominal 
while 
the mind is causal in nature since evolution would never have 
allowed 
such a complex thing to develop if it had no value. But that is 
clearly
a debatable topic (see Crick, Blackmore, and others)."

Look at this sentence that I will type out:

   I EXPERIENCE QUALIA.

Now, answer the question: how did I write the sentence, if the 
experience of qualia were unable to affect my behavior? The answer 
is that I could not have written the sentence under that 
assumption. Therefore, the assumption is false, and the experience 
of qualia can affect behavior. In this example, it caused me to 
engage in a discussion with you that ultimately led to me writing 
the preceding sentence.

The experience of qualia is numerically identical to certain ways 
the brain changes. Without this experience of qualia, the brain 
would not change in those ways (tautology), and behavior, if it 
would be possible at all, would be fundamentally different. For 
one, assuming we could talk, we would never talk about qualia or 
experience. Crick and Blackmore never would have written their 
books. And you and I would not be having this conversation.

Qualia are primarily used by evolution to direct our behavior 
toward reproductive success. Evolution gives us pain to discourage 
some behavior, and rewards us with pleasure to encourage other 
behavior. If you block the experience of qualia through drugs, it 
causes marked alteration of our behavior.

So without question, the experience of qualia *DOES* affect 
behavior. That is not to say the experience of qualia is 
responsible for all that we are. As I type this now, words are 
forming in my head, and I experience them. But how did they get 
there, how did they form? Their formation is influenced by my 
experience of qualia (see above), but they have other influences 
and origins as well, which are not conscious in the least.

[snip]

Best Regards,

Richard B. R.

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