X-Message-Number: 2709
Date: 28 Apr 94 19:43:53 EDT
From: Mike Darwin <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Dreaded Subject

Sometime back Ben Best expressed surprise at how few people had taken up
the challenge of discussing "the nature of identity."  I can only speak
for myself, but I have shown restraint so far for several reasons:

1) I have been very busy.
2) I wanted to wait and see what others said and only then add my two
cents worth -- if I had anything I thought worth adding.
3) I knew Ben had only to wait a little while: Mention of the word
"identity" around a group of cryonicists is like mentioning the word
"irregularity" in a nursing home (a mistake I have made): be prepared for
an avalanche of discussion, rumination, opinions, deep convictions, and
firm pronouncements about both causes of, and solutions to, the problem!

So what do I have to say about what has been said so far?  Well, first I
would like to compliment Bob Ettinger on his cryomsg 2707.  I believe
much of what he had to say there was *wise* which is very different from
being merely "correct" or even "clever."

Being a cryonicist of sorts I too have given a great deal of thought to
this problem.  I note that others who were not cryonicists have thought
on this problem too, and at the risk of perhaps boring or distracting you
I would like to quote one such:

"Who are *you*?" said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. 

Alice replied, rather shyly, "I-I hardly know, sir, just at present--at
least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must
have been changed several times since then."  

"What do you mean by that?" said the Caterpillar sternly. "Explain
yourself!"

"I can't explain *myself*, I'm afraid, sir, said Alice, "because I'm not
myself you see."

"I don't see," said the Caterpillar.

"I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly," Alice replied very politely,
"for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many
different sizes in a day is very confusing."

"It isn't." said the Caterpillar.

"Well, perhaps you haven't found it so yet," said Alice; "but when you
have to turn into a chrysalis--you will some day, you know--and then
after that into a butterfly, I should think you'll feel it a little
queer, won't you?"

"Not a bit," said the Caterpillar.

"Well, perhaps your feelings may be different," said Alice; "all I know
is, it would feel very queer to *me*.

"You!" said the Caterpillar contemptuously.  "Who are *you*?...

The above is from *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland* by Lewis Carrol.

Having considered the problem of identity for most of my thinking life
(having been involved in cryonics for same) I have more than a little
sympathy for Alice (but some for the Caterpillar too!).

The problem with the idea of a "self circuit" (SC) as a determiner of
identity is not that such a *selfawareness* circuit does or does not
exist (since we are self aware and self awareness is apparently a
property of the arrangement of the atoms in our bodies then some such
arrangement, pattern, or circuit; discrete or distributed, probably
exists).  The problem is, "is conservation of such an SC either both
necessary and sufficient to insure conservation of "identity?"  

I raise this issue because of an apparently casual remark made by the
gerontologist Bernard Strehler many years ago.  He mentioned in passing
(while musing about identity and the quest for immortality) that humans
and presumably other phylogenetically close species probably posess a
basic sense of "I think and feel; therefore I am," and that memory and
individual variation of experience was just so much icing on the cake of
the universal experience of being. 

Years ago I took a course on Transcendental Meditation (TM) from
disciples of the Marahishi Mahesh Yogi, the objective of which was to
reach a state of "pure consciousness,"  in other words a sense of being
uncluttered by any *particulars* of time, place or memory: To experience
pure *being* or to use Bob's words, to experience the "self-circuit" in
isolation from any other experience.  This was to be achieved by closing
one's eyes, sitting or lying in a quiet place and repeating a "mantra"
(special sound) over and over again.

Given the Maharishi's recent claims of flying, creating world peace, and
who knows whatever else kinds of goofy stuff via TM it will probably come
as a surprise that I would have anything positive to say about it.  In
fact, I do.  In one important respect it did what it was advertized to
do: after prolonged experience with the technique I (and I believe many
others) were able to reach a subjective state best described (by me at
least) in the more prosaic terms of *being* without particular thought,
distraction, motivation or awareness of anything other than merely being.

One reason TM (by some fairly good, well repeated objective studies)
drops stress levels, reduces cortisol secretion, etc., is that a lot of
everything else associated with being alive other than the "pure" feeling
of being is most unpleasant.  I remain unconvinced however, that
experiencing "pure consciouness" or a one-on-one with the SC is the
answer to world peace, flying without airplanes...or the solution to the
problem of identity!

It is interesting to note that the Maharishi's claims about the SC are
much the same as Strehler's musings: the experience of pure consciousness
is a UNIVERSAL human phenomenon and is generic.

Strehler's conclusion was that perhaps we should take some comfort from
this realization because even if WE die, the essence of personhood, the
SC, will go on in others as long as the species survives.  And if
immortality IS achieved, we will have a piece of it, will have it in
fact, because WE are the SC and the SC will have immortality.

Is this right?  Hmmmmm.  I think that looking to the SC as the source of
the soul or the *essence* of identity is a lot like looking for
"automobileness".  There are many different kinds of automobile and
clearly a Ford Pinto is NOT a Lamborghini Countache (sp?) (although I
might add that both are equally uncomfortable to ride in as passengers!).
Is it the presence of pistons that makes a car a car?  What about Wankel
engines?  But more to the point what makes a *particular* car a
particular car?  We can of course iterate all the salient features and
even with proper tools more or less duplicate them. (This raises the ever
present bugaboo of duplication: how can *two* of you be you?)

Clearly the arguments about the limtations to memory as the essence of
identity seem to have real merit too.  A can of CDs with all my memories
is not me.  And maybe even a computer simulation running those memories
on a "nonbiological" copy of my brain hardware isn't me either.  These are
tough questions.

While I, like Bob, have come to no firm or ultimate answers, I do have
some opinions at this point:

* Looking for some ONE THING like the self circuit to call the soul or
identity is probably like looking for the holy grail or the philosopher's
stone.  People aren't just an SC or their memories, or this or that in
isolation...  They are ALL of those things.

* Identity as we *feel* about it or intuit it may be illusory.  If we
aren't any one memory plus everything else, which ones are we...?

* The above notwithstanding, the longer I live and the "weirder" physics
appears to be getting the more credence I give to the idea that
continuity, perhaps related to space-time as Bob speculates, may have
something to do with it.  Heinlein described a person as sort of being
like a worm or a wave function through space time in a story he wrote
about a scientist who built a machine that could tell exactly when
someone was going to die.

* The last point above notwithstanding, identity may be best expressed
(from the information-theoretic standpoint) as a fidelity curve.  Clearly
at some point on that curve a person as we understand personhood goes
away and at some point BEFORE that point a particular person (given a
somewhat arbitrary and coarse-grained set of parameters to describe the
particular person by) goes away.  Again, a machine analogy is an apt one:
if you take the hood ornament off the car it probably is no big deal to
the car's "identity" in a functional sense.  But if you take the engine
out, whoa!  People may be much the same.  If I wake up from suspension
and I can't remember a damn thing about music it certainly won't be the
end of the world for me.  Most music merely irritates me and I spend
relatively little time listening to it for pleasure (I do not even own a
"stereo" or CD player).  On the other hand, if I were Igor Stravinsky and
I woke up knowing nothing about music  that might be a very serious
problem.  (As for me art is another matter altogether.  My home is jammed
with art books, prints, posters, sculpture, pottery and so on.  My visual
sense is very important to me and probably a critical element in my
identity.)

Nor is this kind of thing unique to cryonics or recovery of patients from
cryopreservation. The neurologist Oliver Sacks deals with this problem
quite nicely in his book *The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat*.  

People suffer all kinds of injuries today which depersonalize them and in
some cases probably erase who they were by all but SC criteria.  I
remember watching an Oprah Winfrey show while shopping at Price Club; I
ended up riveted to the screen in the store for the whole of the show. 
The subjects were men and women who had suffered TOTAL amnesia after head
injury but gone on to make more or less a full functional neurological
recovery otherwise.  The amnesia in these cases was global and
"permanent", the shortest time anyone had been an amnesiac was, as I
recall, 5 years -- several were out 15 years or more.  A few had recalled
a vague memory or two, but most were totally amnesiac.  

One woman described feeling horrified at the advances (sexual) of this
strange man who claimed to be her husband...(they had been married for
many years).  The stories were all more or less the same: these people
knew NOTHING of who they were.  In some cases marriages of long-standing
dissolved.  Some of the amnesiacs experienced major changes in
personality, often becoming gregarious and disinhibited and far more
socially functional (this is a common side effect of head injury (and
Prozac): it is no accident that Roseanne Barr went from a shy withdrawn
mouse of a girl before a head injury as a teenager to the wildly
extroverted, foul-mouthed (and I might add highly creative and
entertaining) person she is today.

The cap of the show for me was when Oprah asked a very insightful and
profound question to both the "victims" and their families: "Do you feel
you (or your relative) are the same person as before the accident?"  The
answers were divided but it was my impression (this show was years ago)
that most said "No, I (s/he) is not the same person."  One husband and
wife had to "fall in love all over again" and in fact the husband noted
that this woman with whom he was now living was not at all like his
former wife (whom he admitted to still "mourning").  (Imagine being
married to a quiet, thin, prudish and very shy small town librarian and
after her head injury in the stacks you find you've taken home Roseanne
from the hospital!)

The point here is simple: SC conservation or no, such a change in a
person (complete loss of memories, change in appearance (i.e., weight
gain due to lusty disinhibition and newfound gluttony for food),
hypersexuality, a complete change in temperament) would strain the
credulity of even the most conservative that this was indeed the same
person.  And listen folks, this happens right here today, WITHOUT
cryonics.  The problem certainly exists for those people who were on
Oprah and for their families.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the Oprah show was that it
demonstrated that head injury under some circumstances appears to be able
to permanently either erase declarative memories OR access to them.  I
suspect it is the former rather than the latter.  But that is another
subject alotgether.

So where does all this leave us?

"So you think you're changed, do you?"

"I'm afraid I am, sir," said Alice; "I can't remember things as I
used--and I don't keep the same size for ten minutes together!"

"Can't remember *what* things?" said the Caterpillar.

"Well I've tried to say 'How doth the little busy bee,' but it all came
different!" Alice replied in a very melancholy voice...."

Alas, poor Alice, I know exactly how she feels.

Mike Darwin

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