X-Message-Number: 9218
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9208 - #9213
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 12:19:42 -0800 (PST)

Hi again!

While I most certainly agree with Bob Ettinger that we should know more, I
would also add that we now know a good deal more about how brains work than
we did 10 years ago. Neuroscientists are even narrowing in on such things
as awareness and how IT works.

However I don't believe that continuity (in the sense that I am the "same
person" as I was 3 years ago) can be proven or disproven solely using 
memory. We each have some set of ideas of the person we are; many of these
involve values as which memories are important and which not. Such values
are themselves memories, but they also affect our other memories.

Mike gave an example about the form of dust patterns on the floor. There
have been times when I have found purely accidental arrangements to be
quite interesting, aesthetically --- which means that even dust patterns
on my floor could conceivably become worth remembering (to me). And even
forgetting values (which are not actually so easily separable) my knowledge
of other things affects just what I want to remember. Memories are not
neatly ranked on a shelf and independent of one another, but their
organization affects which are important and which not --- to each of us.
That organization is again a set of memories.

Basically, we consider that we have continued if those memories important
to us survive. The class of memories important to us may very well change
over time, but that does not affect our sense of continuity.

This may also provide a partial answer to Dr. Haftka. No, if I forget 
something unimportant to me I am not destroying myself. No matter how
much I myself choose to change myself, so long as I keep those memories
important to me (which may change in the process, as I just implied above)
I continue. Someone else, though, by destroying those memories, may very
well kill me, even if my body and brain remain alive and my DNA untouched.
If someone else steps in, makes sure that those memories important to me
remain, and (let us say) turns me into a rhinoceros-like creature (but
presumably with intelligence enough to remember my former life) then
he has committed an assault on me, but not a murder. As for Ettinger's
example of someone aeons ago who happened to be an exact copy but lived
longer, they become different individuals at the point their experiences
differ: Bob of going into suspension, the other person of continuing to
live. And I doubt very much that memories of arranging for suspension,
going into hospital, etc would not be important to the present Bob ---
not so important that he would feel deprived it they could not be 
recovered afterwards, but important enough to distinguish him from his
precursor.

So that's MY reading on identity.

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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