Comment on Am I? Who knows

• DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Feel free to prove the discontinuation of consciousness scientifically while satisfying all philosophic schools of thought on the matter.

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  • School_Lunch@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    If you make a perfectly exact replica of yourself do you suddenly perceive the universe from two perspectives?

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    • kaitco@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Is this the point where we start talking about Theseus and his ship?

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    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Presumably not without some means of information transfer, but that doesn’t mean that a replica isn’t you, because it could also mean that there are now two of you, both of which have an equally valid claim to the original identity, but which immediately diverge into identities distinct from eachother by virtue of having slightly different experiences after the split.

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      • KevonLooney@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        That doesn’t answer the question. It’s obvious that the clone of you isn’t you, it’s literally just a copy.

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  • nymwit@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I mean, is there a scientific consensus on what constitutes consciousness? I thought that was a stumbling point on trying to pin down the various parts of the study of it. I wouldn’t say brain activity ceases while sleeping like that other comment but I’m in the camp that thinks the break in consciousness/awareness-of-being in a ST transporter is not really different than the break when sleeping.

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  • Sordid@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Easy, build the clone without destroying the original, then test if they share perceptions and memories. Show one a playing card and ask the other what card it was or something. Showing that two people don’t have the same consciousness is pretty trivial, and I don’t know of any philosophical schools that would dispute that.

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    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It seems a silly question to ask, but interesting to think about because I can’t think of a way to prove the intuitively obvious answer: how does one know that the duplicate doesn’t somehow inherit the original consciousness, and some new one with the memories and personality of it doesn’t get immediately generated in the original body?

      My point is meant to be, that proving that two duplicates are not the same people as eachother, is not quite the same thing as proving that a duplicate is not the original person.

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      • Sordid@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        how does one know that the duplicate doesn’t somehow inherit the original consciousness, and some new one with the memories and personality of it doesn’t get immediately generated in the original body?

        Consciousness is brain activity. New brain = new activity = new consciousness.

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    • Doug@midwest.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I think you’re just talking about Thomas Riker

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      • Sordid@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yup, pretty much. It’s a shame Star Trek recognizes and points out this problem but then chickens out of it actually having any consequences.

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• nexguy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Same as sleeping. You could have been replaced by a clone every night while sleeping and never know it.

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  • School_Lunch@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    That sounds like a form of last Thursdayism. The entire universe could’ve been created last Thursday with everything made to seem older, including everyone’s memories. These philosophies are usually shot down by occam’s razor.

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    • nymwit@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Agree for Occam’s if someone is actually suggesting they are replaced nightly or your last Thursdayism, but as for conceiving of parallels to a made up teleportation technology and its philosophical implications, is the break in consciousness/self awareness for sleep not a reasonable comparison?

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      • School_Lunch@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Occam’s razor is choosing the simplest answer. There is no simple answer when it comes to teleportation. I’m not sure there is a full break in consciousness when we sleep. Consciousness may not even be the right word…

        In this case I’m not defining consciousness as simply being awake, but instead defining it as the perspective from which each individual perceives the universe.

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    • Doug@midwest.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Occam’s razor is just one tool though, not an end all be all answer. Complicated things happen.

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    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I’m not sure it’s really the same thing, because it’s already pretty clear that something happens to consciousness when one is asleep, since that period is experienced differently than when awake, positing something like that about the nature of what happens to it doesn’t add a bunch of unnecessary complexity the way that assuming the universe just randomly assembled to look far older than it is does.

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    • nexguy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Cloning isn’t necessary. Every night your stream of consciousness could actually and permanently end and a new one is created upon dreaming/waking but you would never know it. This could be how it really works though we can’t know that. You could continuously lose and create new consciousnesses every firing of a neuron.

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  • 4am@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    True. This could be the first and only day of your life so far!

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• FfaerieOxide@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Your current consciousness, the one you are thinking with right now, would end.

  Same thing happens every time you go to sleep. If your consciousness exists you exist, right down to you worrying about continuity of consciousness.

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  • kherge@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Brain activity does not cease when you sleep.

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    • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Are you sure?

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      • kherge@beehaw.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yes.

        hopkinsmedicine.org/…/the-science-of-sleep-unders…

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      • Default_Defect@midwest.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Pretty sure we would know by now if people became braindead on a nightly basis.

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  • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I'd buy this argument if brain death happened every time you went to sleep. Being in maintenance mode doesn't count.

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• CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The thing is, we don’t actually know that continuity is required for it to be the same consciousness. It might work that way, or it might be that sufficiently recreating the right brain patterns restarts the same consciousness in a new location, or something else entirely

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  • 4am@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Occam’s razor would dictate that I would not chance it.

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