X-Message-Number: 2702
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: CRYONICS About Identity
Date: Sat, 23 Apr 1994 11:27:04 -0700 (PDT)

About Identity:

First, I don't think cryonicists agree on what constitutes identity. I am a
cryonicist, and I've formed my own opinions, but they are unlikely to coincide
in detail with those of other cryonicists.

The very first thing I notice about cryonicists, in fact, is that this question

of identity has loomed much larger for us than for those who are not 
cryonicistsperhaps because they have no reason to care about it. We, of course, 
have an

intense concentration on the idea. I've said that this concentration may replace
the concentration of others about death (whether conscious or not), and I still
believe this. It's not that technology removes all your problems, but that it
changes them completely....


For what it's worth, my own concentration on memory comes not from a belief that
it is the whole of identity but from the fact that it is the one personal 
attribute for which survival through cryonic suspension remains uncertain. We
would not have become cryonicists --- at least for ME-- unless we believe that 
such memory survival, and ENOUGH memory survival, was LIKELY, but "likely" does

not mean certain. And you are more than memory: you are drives, personal habits,
wishes, a whole personality. Most of those, however, will almost certainly
survive.... cryonic suspension. Since we all aim for immortality, the identity
question remains even without cryonic suspension: will I still be me, 40,000
years in the future?

I think Penrose doesn't know what he's talking about, and his book is a useless
attempt to bring in irrelevancies to the discussion. You may be much more
interested in Barbara Churchland's NEUROPHILOSOPHY, or Daniel Dennett's 
CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED, just to cite a few books in this genre.

Will I "exist" when I'm suspended? Well, that may depend on the damage done by
the method of suspension. But aside from that, you should understand something
quite critical even today. LEGAL existence, which is what is affected by a 

Declaration of Death, even now has only weak coincidence with personal 
existence(as given by whether the person in question is still revivable). Almost
all
doctors declare a patient legally dead when they can see nothing constructive
they can do for him any more, and the patient is unconscious. Cryonicists 

believe that we should not give up nearly so easily: that here is a human 
being,and the mere fact that in 1994 we happen not to know what to do to really 
cure
his illness should NOT be a reason for giving up on this human being. And so
we put them in storage, with the hope that sometime in the future their 
problem will turn out to be trivial. Not all cryonics patients are even in the

same condition; suspension can occur under very good conditions or quite 
adverseconditions. The question is whether or not we've decided to give up on 
them.

As for contemporary medicine, any doctor who does NOT suspend a patient is 
making a quite astounding speculation about the future: that at no time in at
least the next 1000 years will anybody anywhere know what to do with this 
person.

So: is an arbitrarily chosen suspension patient there or not? Beats me... The
patient has been suspended because we DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION.

However, I will say a bit more. If the patient turns out to be revivable, say
200 years from now, are you going to claim that he or she WASN'T there? I
think that the best way to answer such a question is to say that personal 
existence is a matter of physical fact independent of anyone's beliefs about
it. Of course, the beliefs of others may cause them to end that existence,
but in so doing they become guilty of manslaughter. And in some cases, for
those who refuse absolutely to listen, I might even say outright murder.

			Long long life,

				Thomas Donaldson

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