X-Message-Number: 9238
Date:  Tue, 03 Mar 98 16:58:30 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9234

Bob Ettinger writes,
> 

> A reminder of a rather strange omission by Perry, Strout, Donaldson and others
> who emphasize the importance of memory: WHETHER OR NOT memory is important,
> surely survival of the physical basis of feeling is essential! It is not
> possible to have memories in the full human sense without feeling, but
> certainly an automaton (lacking feeling) could have at least our "historical"
> memories. Which would be closer to "you"--an automaton with most of your
> memories, or a person with few of them? 
>
To me the emotional content of memories is an essential part, at 
least with some memories. An 
automaton or construct that lacked this emotional ingredient
but had other features would not 
necessarily be "me" any more than one that lacked
the other features but had the emotions (however that would be 
managed). But include all information 
relevant to my states of consciousness, in a suitable ongoing 

process, (a finite amount of information, at most) and it ought to be me. In any
case I think that "I" could, in principle, be emulated

on or in a digital device. This conclusion seems fairly solid, based on quantum
mechanics and the idea that, in effect, the whole of reality seems 
equivalent to a very large (hopefully infinite or unboundedly large)
digital device. Future discoveries could 
change the picture, but that can be said about almost anything.The 
"digital" hypothesis is an important underpinning for some of the 
conclusions reached in my book, and a long chapter is 
devoted to it. An interesting, relevant discussion will be found in a 
recent book, *The Fabric of Reality*, by David Deutsch, where he 
notes that a quantum-mechanical analogue of the Church-Turing thesis 
seems to hold.

Mike Perry

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