The more interesting question to me is if a good enough copy can be made that is functionally same and what that means.
Reminds me of the Ship of Theseus but with the human body/brain.
The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
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Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#42This whole discussion sheds a bit of light on the inevitable difficulties one encounters when attempting to remain unflinchingly dedicated to a purely materialistic philosophical worldview. (IMHO)
If you've got a philosophy that doesn't involve biting any counterintuitive bullets, please share.
Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#43Since there isn't a computer that seems conscious at this time, the idea of machine consciousness is supported by thought experiments. Here's one old chestnut: "What if you replaced your neurons one by one with neuron-sized and shaped substitutes made of silicon chips that perfectly mimicked the chemical and electric functions of the originals? If you just replaced one single neuron, surely you'd feel the same. As you proceed, as more and more neurons are replaced, you'd stay conscious. Why wouldn't you still be conscious at the end of the process, when you'd reside in a brain-shaped glob of silicon? And why couldn't the resulting replacement brain have been manufactured by some other means?"
Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#44One thing that should be clear in these argument is that many people intuitive sense of the nature of consciousness.
It seems absolutely obvious that there's something unique in a human brain-body that can't be encompassed by just information. It's often denoted by "living, breathing, feeling".
There's no more concrete argument here. A person whose awakened from general anesthesia still "feels like they are the same". A person who, hypothetically, had all cells in their body replace themselves through cell division (say some youth-regaining process more complete than the ordinary aging process, which replaces quite a few still) wouldn't face the "am I really me" question is the same way as that exact duplicate on Mars.
I think these "identity issues" have to do with our internal processes of psychological adaptation. Each human is constantly changing and has a multitude of impulses - yet we each have to pursue our interests as a single being who deals with other single beings. So our brains have a reflexive tendency to form a sense of unified consciousness.
One might say that these are "just psychological issues" but I think it's reasonable to say that this reflex towards unified self-conception is very important for the thing humans do, at in the world as a unified whole rather than a collection of, say, feedback loops.
Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is all basic stuff. Think deeper. You go to sleep every night. When you wake up the next day, how do you know you're the same person as yesterday? What does that mean? Now consider if you didn't have memories of the past. What would make you "you"? The body would be the same but your amnesia would change things, eh? Now what if you knew next week you would lose your memories for sure, but this week you can go on…
The classic question, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, do the air molecules still vibrate?
wait - didnt you just break the question? It's not about molecules vibrating, it's about whether the concept of "sound" has meaning without a hear-er
Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#46We're chasing our tails here. The definition of the copy function requires both an original and a copy. There is //always// an original and a copy. Thus, exact clones and copies made in teleport machines are always copies, separate from the original. There can be no copy function without an original and a copy. You can think of as many elaborate cloning thought experiments as you like; if they can be reduced to a copy function then the answer is simple.
I know I'm not the first person in this thread to declare the answer simple, but the author appears to be reaching the obvious if somewhat occluded correct conclusion.
Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#47Imagine that I visit a cloning facility that can flawlessly duplicate a human, memories and all. The techs there put me in a medical gown and sedate me, and a while later I wake up in an empty room. Without any additional information, I have no way to determine if I am the clone or not. I know only that there is another me in the building somewhere, having the exact same thoughts as I am having right now. In fact, I…
Look at it like this: You are placed in a box. Moments later, you are told, "We have successfully made a copy of you. We are sending it home now. You must be disposed of." Will you allow them to dispose of you? This is the question being posed, not whether a copy will have no idea if it is the original. The point is that it isn't relevant if one is a copy. No one was moved, it's only that a second person now exists a…
Maybe I'm the odd one out, but if that was the original plan that I had intended, I wouldn't object to that (given that it was painless) - after all, minus that conversation the clone would be me "in spirit" if you will.
If I didn't consent to the cloning, that would complicate things. Likewise, my trust in the cloning process would proably affect my decision.
Or put it another way, let's say we live in a software simulation. Do you care whether our sysadmins live migrate our simulation over to a new Alien Web Services instance?
Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#48Imagine that I visit a cloning facility that can flawlessly duplicate a human, memories and all. The techs there put me in a medical gown and sedate me, and a while later I wake up in an empty room. Without any additional information, I have no way to determine if I am the clone or not. I know only that there is another me in the building somewhere, having the exact same thoughts as I am having right now. In fact, I…
Sure, as much as it makes sense to worry about the fate of any other independent human being - and perhaps even more so, if you feel more affinity with your copies than you do with random strangers. I wouldn't use a facility that killed a stranger at random every time I used it, and I sure as hell wouldn't use a facility if it killed a living person who was identical to me. Frankly, I don't see what your 'essence' ha…
> Killing people is morally wrong.
What about it, though? For the sake of argument, I'm not taking a position on whether it is or isn't wrong, I'm just looking for the "why". Ending a consciousness without either a defense motive or the permission of that consciousness (as in, violating the consciousness's right to life)? Depriving the world of a unique being? Causing damage to the human race by needlessly ending a human life? Release and/or destruction of a soul (or some other supernatural-ish argument)?
"Killing people is morally wrong" works for all of those reasons right now (and others, depending on your favored philosophy), but some of them are invalidated if we assume that we can make an exact copy of a person at a given point in time.
Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#49"Reverting to a previous copy is not the same as continuing to live. This seems really simple and obvious to me. So what am I missing"
What the author is missing is that something can be "simple and obvious" and also wrong.
Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy
#50One's position in space-time is an inextricable component of "the self". Even in theory, a perfectly replicated individual has already fundamentally diverged from the original just by virtue of its existence as a duplicate (since duplication implies a distinct position in space-time). Ultimately, what I'm saying is that the idea of a "perfect duplicate" is something of a contradiction, and any theory of mind that att…
Do you say the same thing about copies of a program (and their corresponding hardware)?