X-Message-Number: 7919
Date:  Fri, 21 Mar 97 23:21:21 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Identity & Survival

Bob Ettinger, in reaction to some of my ideas on personal 
identity, and others that have been posted, appears to raise 
the issue of whether these ideas are "correct" (true) or 
"incorrect" (false). But I think we are dealing with a level 
on which this simple dichotomy does not apply, and yet 
still there are reasons to favor one opinion over another 
one. That is, we are dealing with different possible hy-
potheses that all can be said to fit the "facts," and we would 
like to choose the "best." As an example we can consider 
the day-person concept again, that claims we die each time 
we lose consciousness, and a new person replaces us. (This 
is much like what Bob refers to in his last posting, hypo-
thetical extraterrestrials who think any person survives for 
only a brief period in any meaningful sense, even though 
the body and mind may continue to exist and function 
much longer.) I don't think the "true or false" dichotomy 
really applies. The hypothesis can be made to fit reality and 
justified. On the other hand, barring possibly a few mental 
cases, I don't think anybody takes it seriously. This we 
might attribute to a selection process.

As the human brain developed under evolution, people 
became aware of a "self" and formed certain ideas about it. 
Selection pressure would have favored certain ideas over 
others. A day-person advocate, I would imagine, would 
have felt much less stake in the game of species propaga-
tion, since this involves a lengthy process (raising off-
spring, etc.). Such persons, if they ever existed, should 
have instead been extreme advocates of "live for the mo-
ment"--which would surely be selected against, even if part 
of this "living" involved reproductive acts or impulses. So 
instead today you find that most people are not overly 
concerned about "dying" every time they fall asleep. They 
have accepted that uninterrupted continuity of conscious-
ness is not the important thing for survival and might 
accuse the day-person person of having an "inappropriate 
attachment" to this idea.

People still have had to face mortality however--the kind 
we usually mean, not just temporary loss of consciousness-
-and it hasn't been so easy. One of the approaches devel-
oped in ancient times is Buddhism, which teaches a doc-
trine of "non-self": "[F]inal liberation," we are told, "... can 
only happen if the ignorance of regarding oneself as a 
substantial permanent ego is dispelled" (quoted from 
"Buddhist philosophy," *The Oxford Companion to Phi-
losophy*, 1995). In effect, one is required to give up 
ambitions of any ordinary notion of "survival" which 
would, in particular, involve memories of a past life. If 
these are considered unimportant, then perhaps what is left-
-the meditation states of an "enlightened" Buddhist?--could 
be said to "survive" one's death--assuming they reappear 
later in other Buddhists! However, this sort of impersonal 
"survival" is not satisfying to me, and I would not accept 
the level of "detachment" that is called for. My 
"inappropriate attachment" (for a Buddhist) would instead 
call for personal memories of a past life, a feeling that "I 
was there."

The Buddhist might say, "when you die, these disappear, 
forever." Then I would say, "but I'm a cryonicist!" Then the 
Buddhist might say (after much additional discussion & 
meditation) "Okay, I accept that cryonics *may* work--but 
only maybe--and after that, maybe we'll have aging cured 
and all that. But we have no guarantee: it might do any-
thing but work. Then there's always the problem of those 
who weren't frozen, if you care about anyone but yourself 
and others who are still living and who, for all we know, 
may not ever die. Plus the fact that at some point in the 
future an accident could kill you or anyone else. So I don't 
think this is a satisfying approach to me, and I prefer my 
current state of detachment, in which the issues that moti-
vate you are really unimportant and not a cause for worry." 
To which I would reply, "Well, I think cryonics is the right 
and best approach to take, but in fact I have a backup in 
case it doesn't or hasn't worked. In fact, your memories and 
personal details are never lost in an absolute sense, but 
could in principle always be restored, no matter what 
happened to you." If the Buddhist then said, "How so?" I 
would launch into a discussion of my theory of personal 
identity based on the concept of Interchangeability, and the 
possibility of resurrection that it holds forth (see my earlier 
posting).

With this approach too there are certain things one has to 
give up--the idea of being made out of a specific collection 
of particles for instance; the idea that your memories 
*necessarily* form part of the "surviving historical record" 
of the world you happen to find yourself in, etc. But con-
sidered as information, your memories, dispositions, etc. 
*would still be there* and you could still retrieve them and 
know them for what they were and are. To me that would 
be the important thing about personal identity--you might 
not want to sacrifice those historical connections if you 
didn't have to (this thought is the basis for my advocating 
cryonics) but if you had to "you" could still survive. So I 
would advocate a sort of middle ground between the more 
exacting ideas about what "survival" should mean, and the 
too-weak, in my view, idea that seems to be at the heart of 
Buddhism. I would say that the *pattern* that describes or 
characterizes the person must recur--but extra 
"connections" (e.g. historical connections--informational 
continuity with preserved records--or even the original 
material of the body) though possibly desirable, are not 
essential. Let's call my idea of survival "pattern-survival."

It seems to me that pattern-survival is the best possible 
notion of survival, give or take lesser details. Why? Be-
cause I think any weaker notion (e.g. as in Buddhism) is 
too weak--you *have* to have past information, to rea-
sonably define and distinguish a specific person--and any 
stronger notion is unlikely to be feasible in the general 
sense it would need to be, to be satisfying to me. I would 
like to think that *anybody*--even those who perished in 
the distant past, has a prospect of eventual resurrection--
otherwise I have to allow that the world contains major, 
unrightable wrongs--*or*, that eternal death is acceptable--
neither of which I am prepared to do. Instead I will give up 
what I have to, to make the notion of survival as robust as it 
needs to be, knowing that, in thinking as I do of a person as 
having a finite description, I won't have to give up so much 
as to make the result untenable. A person could be 
"reinstated" once again, if you are lucky enough to guess 
the description, even if it has been lost. (For reasons based 
mainly on many-worlds physics I think "guessing" of this 
sort by advanced future beings will not only occur but be 
successful--every person should eventually be recreated or 
otherwise be present in some form.)

A stronger notion of survival which is often advocated is 
that the historical connections must persist. This in fact is 
what we hope for in cryonics: from the frozen brain tissue 
we hope to completely recover what constituted the person 
at the time of death, all memories, dispositions, etc. plus 
biological information such as the DNA (which will in turn 
specify other organs of the body, glands, hormones etc--or 
perhaps these too are preserved directly). But in general I 
see little prospect for the recovery of the "hidden past" that 
would be needed to resurrect someone who died and was 
not frozen. (And we don't know if those who died and 
*were* frozen will be well-enough preserved to resurrect 
from their remains either!) The historical connections are 
worth it--if you can get 'em--that's why I think we should 
stick with cryonics. (And even if a full recovery from 
cryonic suspension is not possible but some information 
had to be restored through guesswork, more historical 
connection is better than less--so it's still better to be frozen 
than rot or burn.) But whatever the state of preservation--
yours or someone else's--there is always a fallback position.

Bob also says,

>At another point Mike says that two instantiations become 
>different persons when their experiences begin to diverge, 
>one person becoming two. This seems to imply that an 
>"instantiation" must be EXACTLY like you, which in turn 
>seems to imply that your successors (yourself at even 
>slightly later times) are different persons. From there one 
>might be led again to the "quantitative" survival 
>viewpoint, which has its own recalcitrant problems.

In reply I'll say that yes, your instantiations must be exactly 
like you. (There is one slight complication, though. A 
person will have "sub-persons." A sub-person could be 
described as "the entity you are over a limited period of 
time." As an example suppose, over some interval of time, 
that you are barely aware or semi-consicous. Your sub-
person then will be simplified and (we would expect) have 
correspondingly more instantiations--it should be easier, 
relatively speaking, to find others with the same experience 
since there is "less data to fit." More generally, some other 
person who, as a whole, is different from you, could still 
agree on many sub-persons.) *I* am not the same, right 
now, as a future version of myself. However, that self is not 
simply another person either, but what I call a "continuer"--
a more advanced version of me. (This terminology comes 
from *Philosophical Explanations* by Robert Nozick.) A 
continuer is not an instantiation but is vitally important for 
another reason: it is the only way "I" can survive to a 
(subjectively) later time. In general I--and everyone--must 
have an infinite sequence of increasingly advanced con-
tinuers to achieve a reasonable version of immortality. 
These we might hope would occur at later and later times--
in one universe--without more than a finite number of 
"resurrections by guesswork" and other strange occur-
rences. This may be possible somehow in our own uni-
verse--only the future can tell.

I've described a continuer as a "more advanced" version of 
myself, which means, ideally, that this more advanced 
being must retain all my memories and experiences, etc. 
and have some additional ones too. From the continuer it 
would then be possible to construct an instantiation of me, 
even though the continuer itself is not such an instantiation. 
On the other hand, though, should I forget something or 
otherwise lose some information, I become only an 
"approximate continuer" of my former self. This may be 
not good, but is not always bad either.

For example, if I look at the carpet on my office floor I am 
briefly aware of numerous details. I really don't want to 
memorize every tiny thread and dust particle that I see 
(despite the fact that I value historical information in 
general) and it doesn't bother me that what I retain in 
memory will be only a hazy approximation. So some loss 
of information is both reasonable and desirable as I prog-
ress and develop into successive continuers. But on the 
other hand there must be limits on this loss, for any reason-
able claim that "survival" occurs.

So as I see it, for a reasonable version of immortality, there 
would have to be a sort of "convergence" of one's continu-
ers over infinite time to an infinite entity, a "limiting con-
tinuer"--which is never actually extant but is more and 
more closely approached (in some sense) as time goes to 
infinity. The limiting continuer would contain an infinite 
body of memories and/or other experiental data covering an 
infinite stretch of time. Some data might have been lost on 
the way, but the rest would have to "stay in place" literally 
forever. The limiting continuer, properly speaking, would 
be a true (exact) continuer of all the past selves that could 
be reconstructed out of its memories. And these in turn 
should, generally, be reasonable, if judiciously edited, 
approximations of the past selves that went into their 
making.

All of this, I realize, raises more issues--and more issues. 
I'm trying to deal with these in the book--more about this 
another time.

Mike Perry

http://www.alcor.org

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