X-Message-Number: 3610
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 21:54:48 -0500
From: "Bruce Zimov" <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS: Uploading yourself

 
 
Response to Peter Merel's comments:
 
The world and the way sound like what Kant called the phenomena
and the noumena. That aside, preserving the pattern ensures 
you can upload by copying, preserving qualitative identity, but
not numerical identity. There is no extra-corporeal self. Rejecting
dualism does not solve the identity problem. See Parfit, 
Reasons and Persons Part III.  Parfit's view is that identity
is not what matters in uploading. I disagree with that.
 
Response to John K. Clark's comments:
 
>"Bruce Zimov" <>  Quotes Parfit :
>     
>     >Can this be the difference between life and death? Can my
>     >fate depend on this difference in the ordering of removals
>     >and insertions?  Can it be so important, for my
>     >survival, whether the new parts are, for a time, joined to the old
parts?"
>I don't think the order or speed of brain replacement makes any
>difference philosophically. 
 
I think it does. In Case 2, when the surgeon has excavated your
entire brain, and all that is left is an empty skull, where are
you? In the surgeon's mind??
 
>The Turing test is not perfect but it's the best way we have to
>find consciousness and were not likely to find a better one. 
 
Wrong. The Turing test is a behavioural test, and is widely thought
to be inadequate as evidence of subjective experience. See Dennet,
Consciousness Explained.  EEG traces are much better evidence, and
are used widely to distinguish wake states from sleep states, and
pathological states such as epilepsy.  The wake state is what we
are after, and a numerically identical one at that. It doesn't do
you any good if you look across the room and see your clone awake.
See The Mind's I, Dennet and Hofstadter.
 
Your evolutionary argument is a non sequiter, and one doesn't have
to solve the problem of other minds, or be a dualist in order to take 
the numerical identity position in the identity problem. I 
encourage you to review Parfit Reasons and Persons Part III.
 
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck, but
is it the SAME duck.
 
Response to Keith F. Lynch:
 
>I do not understand Parfit's point.  Why wouldn't both methods leave
>one alive and well?
 
In Case 2, are we in the surgeon's mind?? Where are we??
Parfit thinks as most uploader's do, that qualitative identity
is all that matters, but you won't think that if you are copied
and look and talk to your copy! You'll know that your numerical
identity has not changed, you have not "gone" anywhere, you have
merely been copied. If Parfit is right, and numerical identity is 
not what matters in uploading, then uploading is just a little
better than parenting, in my opinion, and doesn't improve or
extend your life.  
 
By clone, I mean as you say:
 
>           with identical memories, thoughts, aspirations, 
>           or experiences. 
 
not the genetic kind. This extension of the clone concept is
common parlance in identity discussions.
 
In sum, Parfit is on your side. This is one of his many arguments
for uploading extending your life.  He is arguing against Nagel,
THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE, who says that we are our brain, and that
if you destroy the brain, and recorded the information, that the
recording does not preserve the numerical identity of the 
individual. I lean toward Nagel's position.
 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=3610