Dogsi

10 May 2012, 07:49 AM

However, that lead me to ponder a copy of my mind. If I were to able to copy my mind over some one else's mind, would that person then be me? Would there then be 2 of me?

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However, if something were to alter my mind in a significant manner, I would no longer consider myself to be the same person I am today. As such, I see my mind as who I am.

Dogsi

 

If I were to able to copy my mind over some one else's mind, would that person then be me? Would there then be 2 of me?

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Jacob is a 12 year old boy. Jacob goes through puberty. Jacob should theoretically no longer consider himself to be Jacob?

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I am just the experience of my consciousness

fdrake

 

Do you think that there's any difference between the experience of consciousness and consciousness itself?

Taelôk

11 May 2012, 05:39 AM

fdrake

 

Do you think that there's any difference between the experience of consciousness and consciousness itself?

No, but the creation of an identical copy of my consciousness, is not the transference of my ablity to experience. I am the first person narrative.

fdrake

 

When I say "Taelok", does "Taelok" refer to those abilities manifesting? Does it pick out the "I" in the sense you just stated?

Triplock

11 May 2012, 12:54 PM

How 'bout your DNA? That's pretty definitive. Despite pseudo-metaphysical meandering there is such as thing as "objective you".

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Would I (this current consciousness) be able to perceive the narrative of my copied consciousness? If not, then how can it be "my" narrative? Which as far as I can tell, is the "I"

Ardat

17 May 2012, 07:18 AM

Made a blog post on the subject. It's relevant here, so I'll just copy-paste it.


If we think in a materialistic frame work, the only valid one in my opinion, consciousness is a tricky beast. You have to explain it with biological, chemical and physical processes while addressing the decision making mechanism, or why you have the illusion of it.

The assumption that we’re the sum of an unfathomable amount of physical processes isn’t really a stretch. Evolutionary biology traces our existence back to a bunch of unicellular organisms consisting in a sum of simple molecules. If we are the result of millions of years or genetic mutations, then consciousness can really only be an emergent biological property, ‘cause that’s the extent of the genetic mutations’ reach. Being conscious then amounts to having sensors centered around a data interpretation apparatus. How does it actually interpret information, I have no idea. It’s obviously not trivial, otherwise computers wouldn’t have such an hard time to imitate us.

So we’re the convergence of physical mechanisms working along, or fighting against each others, depending on whether or not the stimuli we’re responding to happen to be conflicting for us. That convergence is somewhat rigged by a biological structure that has evolved over millions of years, and it’s completed by a social conditioning that depends on our education, our memories, etc. So where the hell do the notions of ego and free will come from? Why the fuck do we imagine being unitary entities capable of making decisions? In my opinion, it all relates to our ability for self-contemplation.

I like to think of consciousness as a Taylor series involving some sort of acknowledgement operator. Suppose the convergence of physical effects I’ve mentioned before results in a thought, or a succession of thoughts, that entails a specific action. They are then the last two steps of a reaction that one could have, but they happen to be the only ones that you can acknowledge by simply being you, with no other tools to observe yourself. So in essence, you think you’re the one responsible for the decision of perpetrating an act ‘cause you’ve witnessed the thought resulting in it spurring into you own mind as if it had been created by you. The illusion of free will is you reacting to an incomplete observation of your reaction, it’s a second-order acknowledgement.

The impression of unitarity comes about in a similar fashion. One’s acknowledgement of those last two steps effectively ensures he’ll always believe his thoughts and actions are emerging in the same manner, and from the same place. If we instinctively define ourselves by them, which we do, then there’s no way to lose, and you will have a sense of continuity of yourself. A sense of unitarity.

Now, since I’ve mentioned the use of a Taylor series, I should point out that it’s always possible to go further than a second-order aknowledgement, ‘cause you can use self-contemplation as another stimulus, and keep on going. And just as with a Taylor series, the contribution given by higher orders of acknowledgement gets weaker and weaker, since you can’t spend an infinite amount of time reflecting on yourself. The process is also stopped when you manage to isolate what you believe to be the definitive cause of your own reaction. At this point, you could technically continue, but self-acknowledgement becomes a tautology in your own set of beliefs, which you’re trapped in.

From that point of view, the only way free will could exist would be if the thought you’re having is capable of influencing the reaction process that produced it in the first place, which is impossible. It can obviously change the outcome of another reaction chain, but in that case, it just becomes another one of those converging processes. It’s not free will anymore.

To conclude, I’ll say that I realize the analogy with a Taylor expansion is a little misplaced, but I still like it, so fuck you.

Dogsi

29 May 2012, 07:16 AM

It didn't address the topic at all

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Mind elaborating?

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A question for you: since free will does not exist and a person is only carrying out the actions that physics demands they carry out, do you believe it is inappropriate to condemn their actions?

Ardat

29 May 2012, 07:41 AM

Dogsi

29 May 2012, 07:16 AM

It didn't address the topic at all

Well, it kinda did, since I talked about how the notion of ego comes about, and justified it with my notion of what is a human being.

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Mind elaborating?

Since you're always capable of taking your own reaction as a stimulus that entails another reaction chain, that reaction of the "second order" gives a contribution to what you are too. Taking your second-order reaction as a stimulus will constitute a third order reaction, and so on and so forth. You end up with a potentially infinite sum of acknowledgement taken to a different power, with decreasing contribution to the total (since it's easier to react to an external factor than to reflect on your reaction, which in turn is easier than to reflect on your reflection of your reaction, etc). Of course, in practical terms, you don't spend an infinite amount of time to reflect upon yourself, so it's never an infinite sum. It becomes an algorithmic process that can be stopped depending on your intelligence, beliefs and the time you have before you're forced to react to another external factor. The intelligence parameter ensures a continuity with other living creatures: there's no real discontinuity with them (which is a good thing, 'cause the evolutionary process is more of less continuous), they just have a lesser capacity for n-degree acknowledgement than we do.

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A question for you: since free will does not exist and a person is only carrying out the actions that physics demands they carry out, do you believe it is inappropriate to condemn their actions?

Not at all. I see society as a self-correcting system, provided it's given energy, for which justice and morality are mechanisms ensuring stability. It's just a system "absorbing" a small perturbation so it can retain its structural integrity, nothing more.