X-Message-Number: 25448 Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 12:14:48 -0800 Subject: Response to Mike Perry From: <> Dear Mike: You wrote: "It seems reasonably self-evident that *a* qualia experiencer survives, one that is at least a (reasonably accurate) replica of the original." Here is where the confusion lies. You are thinking the qualia experiencer is like an atom. It isn't. A qualia experiencer is a physical system that possesses a set of properties Q. If a system is a qualia experiencer at all times from T0 to T1, then the qualia experiencer survives throughout this duration, *by definition*. [snip] You wrote: "Here you do end up with a replica, a *different* QE, so clearly the original has perished, even though *a* QE was present at all times." This is like saying my dog Fido is a replica of himself 5 minutes ago. This is nonsensical, since 'dog' is merely a word used to describe a bundle of properties (determined in advance by my definition of 'dog') that the hunk of matter I label 'Fido' possesses. If 'Fido' possesses the Dog Properties for an interval of time from T0 to T1, then the dog survives. Otherwise, it does not. A flamethrower applied to Fido destroys the dog. So does disassembly. Reassembly constructs a new dog---i.e. a new system possessing Dog Properties. This is the essence of survival and destruction. [snip] You wrote: "You have said that certain repair scenarios involving a cryopreserved brain would be unacceptable to you even if the end result was a perfectly restored brain similar to the original, using original material in its original locations -if the brain were finely divided into pieces in the interim, for example. This is because during this time the brain would lose the ability to experience qualia. But I maintain that the cryopreserved brain has already lost this ability -how can a cryopreserved brain experience qualia?" See my message to Scott Badger for my thoughts on this. [snip] You wrote: "In either case we are talking, essentially, about a reversible series of steps from a functioning QE, to something that is not a functioning QE, back again to a functioning QE (which additionally is materially similar to the original, with the same atoms in the same places)." There is a difference between 'functioning' and 'capable of functioning'. I stop experiencing every night when I enter deep sleep. However, my brain still has the ability to experience, since I can wake up at a moments notice and resume consciousness. Therefore, I survive the sleep process, even though all qualia cease happening for the duration of the interval. You wrote: "So where do you draw the line? What types of procedures of this sort would not be acceptable from your point of view and why?" Any procedure that results in a brain incapable of experiencing qualia (i.e. a brain in which no change can correlate with experience) is unacceptable to me, since in such a brain, the only way you can get a qualia experiencer is to construct a new one, by changing the system in such a way that it acquires the ability to experience qualia. You wrote: "I will ask also if a gradual change in atoms is acceptable to you if the subject is unconscious the whole time." Sure, as long as the qualia experiencer survives the change. Something similar happens when I sleep and short-term memory is encoded in long-term memory. You wrote: "I once again bring up the gradual change of atoms, one way of constructing a new physical system which arguably won t do you any good." It may be a 'new physical system', depending on how you mean those words, but it is not a new qualia experiencer, if at all times during the progression, the system possesses the Qualia Experiencer properties. You wrote: "I think of other things besides collections of atoms as being real and thus existing, such as a book, regarded as a body of information rather than a physical object." The information does not exist in an objective form. What exists are the pages of the book, or the transistors comprising the system RAM, or the magnetic film on a disk drive. In the case of pages of a book, you see the page, and the particular way light reflects off the page causes certain neural firings, which leads to your comprehension. That something almost exactly like you (i.e. a life form or being, which is an extremely narrow class of thing considering all possible things) could understand a book you wrote does not mean the information encoded on the pages of the book is objective, only that you are sufficiently alike that you can communicate. Fido and I communicate and he is another species entirely. But you would hardly argue the frown he sees on my face is an objective representation of anger. Communication does not require objectivity of the medium or the content of communication. It requires beings who are similar enough to do a kind of 'mind emulation'. You will have to do a lot more to prove that information has an objective existence---that, say, the bits of a computer program can be definitively a 'brain program' and not a sports simulator. Such is required if you insist that an executing brain program could have a subjective inner life. Best Regards, Richard B. R. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25448