X-Message-Number: 25605
Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2005 12:38:48 -0600
From: Jeff Dee <>
Subject: Re: The Fight Against Mythology
References: <>

Richard B. R. wrote:

Dear Jeff:

> A thousand years ago, nearly 
> everyone believed in the existence of the supernatural, be it in 
> the form of a soul, or an abstract. Now, many fewer people do. I 
> can hope that with genetic engineering, and the increases in IQ 
> sure to come in the next few decades, more people will become 
> swayed by the facts of reality, and come to believe exactly as I, 
> that we are nothing more than hunks of grey matter enclosed by 
> bone, and when you destroy those hunks of matter, we are no longer.
> There is no essence or pattern or process that can magically 
> transfer to another 'host'.


Materialism does not imply that patterns and processes are unimportant or 
non-transferable. Nor does it imply that the transfer or duplication of patterns
and processes between physical processors requires non-materialistic "magic".


I have Adobe Photoshop 7.0 on my PC. Must I therefor say that my PC *is* Adobe 
Photoshop 7.0, and that if my PC is destroyed, Abobe Photoshop 7.0 is also 
destroyed? No, nor does it offend Materialism if I don't.


I realize there's a difference between PC software and the processes going on 
inside ourselves that make us walk and talk and call ourselves "us". But it's 
fundamentally a matter of degree, and I don't see how it helps your argument.


Let's try another analogy. Suppose some brilliant software engineer manages to 
come up with a self-aware program that runs on, and stores its memories on, a 
PC. I'll call it "HAL". Would you accuse someone who spoke of copying HAL to 
another PC of invoking "magic"? No. We *do* have the ability to copy programs 
and data between PCs, all within the bounds of strict materialism.


While it would be an accurate bit of trivia to say that HAL's original PC was 
HAL's original PC, once there are copies of HAL elsewhere, destroying that PC 
would no more destroy HAL than destroying my PC destroys Adobe Photoshop 7.0.


As a fellow materialist, you can't claim that brains require a magical 
"something else" that can't be duplicated mechanically. It is therefor only a 
matter of time before we can duplicate them, and the "programs" they run, and 
perfect procedures for transferring those programs between processors. And at 
that point, our survival will be as independent of particular brains as 
Photoshop's survival is independent of particular computers.

-Jeff Dee

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