X-Message-Number: 2693 Date: Tue, 19 Apr 1994 21:39:15 -0500 (CDT) From: Heather Johnson Fac-Royle <> Subject: CRYONICS I'm new to this list- consequently, I have been diligently searching some of the postings of the past in order to get a feel for the issues surrounding cryonics. What I have not found so far, is a discussion of the philosophical (as distinct from religious) aspects of this technology. I am curious about the thoughts of those of you who are obviously more seasoned in thinking about this technology than am I. More specifically, what are your attitudes toward issues of personal identity, existence of the person during the period of suspension, metaphysical status of the "consciousness." Some thoughts- _Personal Identity_ Identity is a tough issue even in the most quantified circumstances, to say nothing of human life. In mathematics identity is ambiguous- one can say 2=2 or 1/2=4/8, the former implying something closer to identity, the latter something more like equality. I make the distinction because identity, it seems to me, involves sameness to the extent of even a shared spatial property, (which implies that the things you are orginally trying to establish as identical are, in reality, the same entity) while equality suggests that there exist _two_distinct_entities_ (i.e., they do not share the spatial property) which are intimately related. Thus, it would seem that for an individual to die and be revived as an _identical_ person, she would not merely have to meet the criteria of possessing the same remembered experiences as her former self, but must possess every property which is essential to her personhood. Here's the rub- what exactly are those "essential" properties? I get the impression that some of you are identifying memory as the only essential property. But insofar as memory is the determining factor, it is also indisposable, thus, if this were true we would have to look at those aspects of our childhood which are known to us only through another's telling as experiences belonging to another person. That is, they are not contained in our memory- that essential component of our personhood. _Metaphysical_Status_of_the_Conciousness_ If perhaps the next most likely candidate, conciousness, is a factor then how do we ensure its preservation? Is consciouness a materially governed phenomenon or is it something we would have trouble capturing? If any of you have read Penrose's book, _The_Emperor's_New_Mind_, he makes a tentative argument for the problem of quantifying consciousness in an attack against strong AI. Basically, his objection is routed in what constitutes a measurement in quantum mechanics. If all of the universe is explainable in terms of subatomic particles and fields, then we too must be explained in these terms. What is it about our act of measurement that imposes probability and why does nature not permit precise measurement of both position and momentum? The distinguishing factor, Penrose seems to imply, is conciousness. _Existence_of_the_Person_During_the_Period_of_Suspension_ What is the status of the person during the interim? Does the person exit being only to be brought into being at a later time or is the act of being constant throughout? First to get a handle on what "being" could mean: Parmenides said that thought and being are fully _identical_ in the sense described above. That is, there is, "No thought to whose being does not belong,- no being that is not thought: thought and being are the same." This is somewhat like Descartes more familiar phrase, "I think, therefore am" except that Parmenides statement is an argument for identity whereas Dec. is an implication suggesting the existence of both thought and being as distinct concepts. What does all of this mean? Basically it leaves us with a disjunction: either thought is present during the interim, in which case the person (as distinct from the body) IS, _or_ there is no thought and the person does not exist. Obviously which conclusion you prefer has influence on other legal and ethical questions. Of course, all of this is based on the words of a couple of philosophers... What are your thoughts? Anyone? -Heather Johnson [ Heather, thanks for your questions. It's been quite a while since those issues have arisen on this mailing list. FYI: The 76 KByte message #0022 covers a lot of these issues in great detail. That message is Chapter 4 of an early 1993 version of Max More's Ph.D. dissertation: "The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation". To find shorter treatments on these issues, I did a quick scan of some of my favorite messages (those written by K.Q.Brown!) and found the following that you may find interesting: 30 there must be a catch 72 fate of individual survival (followups in messages 75 - 81) You may even want to try message #16 on "downloaders". Other people currently on this list have written excellent articles on identity-related issues in cryonics. (Those articles usually have been in paper publications, though.) This is an opportunity for them to recycle, and perhaps refresh, their old writings, too. - KQB ] [ Messages 603 605 606 607 608 609 610 concern identity issues, too. - KQB ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2693