Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body? • Hacker News Board

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#71

Post by keiferski » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 10:36 AM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #69

keiferski wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the reason we consider the entire body to be a “swappable part” is because we have constructed a metaphysics in which it is. That doesn’t make it actually the case, and furthermore, doing so has a lot of negative consequences for our actual embodied selves.

Metaphysics? What if I put you in a coma and wake you up a few days later and tell you a team of surgeons had replaced one of your internal organs with a lab-grown genetically equivalent version. Or maybe they just cut you open and closed you up again. Sure, there's a small scar left as evidence and some residual pain. But how would you be able to tell the difference? How does it connect to your perceptible self?

This is a really complex topic, but just to throw out a few questions:

- Why is our perceptible self the only thing that should determine our sense of identity? Aren’t there many aspects of our body and mind that aren’t we aren’t aware of on a conscious level?

- Is there a point at which replacing your organs replaces You? This is called the Ship of Theseus and is a pretty deep problem.

- Is the ability to be conscious or communicate via language the sole determiner of a thing’s existence? If I put my head on your body, what is this new thing? Just me? My head on your body? Even if your cells and body continue to exist, with anything like tattoos or personal elements. Etc.

In any case, I’m talking mostly about the metaphysical model of treating the mind (ergo the brain) as the real Self and the societal consequences that leads to.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#72

Post by Nextgrid » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 10:40 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #68

MattGaiser wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just science? We routinely replace every other part except the brain, whether by mechanical, artificial biological, or donor/transplant means. Prosthetic arms and legs are normal, millions need things like insulin replaced in their bodies that is manufactured by yeast, and every day thousands donate blood to be put into other people and replacing kidneys, hearts, lungs, and various other organs from those…

My point is that the reason we consider the entire body to be a “swappable part” is because we have constructed a metaphysics in which it is. That doesn’t make it actually the case, and furthermore, doing so has a lot of negative consequences for our actual embodied selves.

> That doesn’t make it actually the case

To the best of our knowledge and experience with it comes to transplanting organs, it seems to be?

> doing so has a lot of negative consequences for our actual embodied selves

Can you elaborate? Organ transplants (and most likely other medical procedures) definitely throw wrenches into various spiritual & religious beliefs, but in the physical world (which we can observe & study), beyond the immediate risks of the procedure and things like transplant rejection and the need for immunosuppression (which are by now understood well enough to do procedures with a reasonable likelihood of success), what other negative consequences are there?

Organ transplants are done because the alternative is death or severely reduced quality of life and the patients, the medical community and society at large appears to agree otherwise they wouldn't be done.

I'm not saying there aren't some hidden consequences we aren't aware of, but so far we haven't encountered any. As we push the envelope of what's currently possible we might stumble upon new ones and figure out way to mitigate them.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#73

Post by exporectomy » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 10:41 AM UTC

the8472 wrote: post #69

keiferski wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the reason we consider the entire body to be a “swappable part” is because we have constructed a metaphysics in which it is. That doesn’t make it actually the case, and furthermore, doing so has a lot of negative consequences for our actual embodied selves.

Metaphysics? What if I put you in a coma and wake you up a few days later and tell you a team of surgeons had replaced one of your internal organs with a lab-grown genetically equivalent version. Or maybe they just cut you open and closed you up again. Sure, there's a small scar left as evidence and some residual pain. But how would you be able to tell the difference? How does it connect to your perceptible self?

I think the "doing so" he said refers to the considering of our body parts as swappable, not the act of swapping them. By not feeling like they're important integral parts of our identity, we may be careless with their health.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#74

Post by Kinrany » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 10:41 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #71

the8472 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metaphysics? What if I put you in a coma and wake you up a few days later and tell you a team of surgeons had replaced one of your internal organs with a lab-grown genetically equivalent version. Or maybe they just cut you open and closed you up again. Sure, there's a small scar left as evidence and some residual pain. But how would you be able to tell the difference? How does it connect to your perceptible self?

This is a really complex topic, but just to throw out a few questions: - Why is our perceptible self the only thing that should determine our sense of identity? Aren’t there many aspects of our body and mind that aren’t we aren’t aware of on a conscious level? - Is there a point at which replacing your organs replaces You? This is called the Ship of Theseus and is a pretty deep problem. - Is the ability to be conscio…

Why do you care about identity in the first place?

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#75

Post by tibbydudeza » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 10:45 AM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #7

userbinator wrote: post #2

Ethical and moral considerations aside, this also has some interesting philsophical implications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

A colleague went on once about Star Trek transporters: what if they worked by "scanning" a person, sent that data over the airwaves, then, made a perfect copy of somewhere else (sourcing new molecules from wherever) — would this copy believe they were the original? He went on: suppose you kill the original — did you "transport" the person? Star Trek creeps me out a little now.

There was an episode of some scifi anthology show where interstellar FTL travel is achieved by a similar matter copying.

Occasionally something goes wrong and the source is not "deconstructed" properly by the equipment so the procedure is for the transporter crew to terminate the original person.

PS It was "Think Like A Dinosaur"

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#76

Post by keiferski » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 10:47 AM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #72

keiferski wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that the reason we consider the entire body to be a “swappable part” is because we have constructed a metaphysics in which it is. That doesn’t make it actually the case, and furthermore, doing so has a lot of negative consequences for our actual embodied selves.

> That doesn’t make it actually the case To the best of our knowledge and experience with it comes to transplanting organs, it seems to be? > doing so has a lot of negative consequences for our actual embodied selves Can you elaborate? Organ transplants (and most likely other medical procedures) definitely throw wrenches into various spiritual & religious beliefs, but in the physical world (which we can observe & stu…

I think it’s definitely a complex topic and not one that can be hashed out in a HN comment.

My thought is something like this: because we treat our “real selves” as just our heads/minds, we unintentionally or intentionally disregard the rest of our body.

To me, this seems to be related to some specific negative things like obesity, for example. Many people don’t treat their body with the same level of respect as they do their perceptions or their minds. Some old Daoist stuff delves into this a bit.

In short, because we treat our minds separately from our bodies and we privilege consciousness and speech/thought, it has effects on what we do.

It is also probably just conceptually wrong to think that our bodies are just a side accessory, especially when it comes to understanding how much of our actual intelligence comes from being embodied.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#77

Post by rdevsrex » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 10:56 AM UTC

This equal part fascinating and terrifying. It reminds me of the concept of “stacks” in Altered Carbon, but keeping the original hardware instead of transferring the essence of you to storage device in another body. Given that there are enough dictators and ultra rich people who don’t want to die, I imagine that some of this research is being done in secret.

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#78

Post by mozey » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 10:59 AM UTC

Engineering-MD wrote: post #44

developer92 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm off the opinion that transporting is pointless from a selfish point of view: your duplicate will get to Jupiter or wherever, and think they're you, but your consciousness will stop so you will never get to experience it. I don't know what experiment you could do to prove this either way.

You can also apply the same argument Pre and post deep sleep or anaesthetic

Oh wow, never thought of that before. Now I'm feeling a little creeped out. Kind of makes me think of the difference between disk and RAM when rebooting a computer

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#79

Post by thendrill » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:00 AM UTC

vagrantJin wrote: post #49

esperent wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> brain is part where memories etc live? As far as we know. But we really know so little and there's a lot of interesting work being done regarding the networks of nerves in other parts of the body. It's extremely likely that the brain is where most of the memories are stored, things like your name and age and so on. It could turn out that a lot of other types of memory, like muscle memory or emotional memory, are mo…

What do you mean by distributed? As in memories are not stored in the brain or are stored in the brain but in different pathways?

Look at it from a computer perspective.

Just because software runs from the cpu, doesn't mean you can move a cpu to another computer and expect the software to run. Pretty much the same with a hard disk. You can't take a copy of an exe file and run it on Unix just because you have the same hardware.

I have a feeling that humans are not far off.

Just because your brain has all the info when it is working, doesn't mean that the brain stores, loads and manipulates all of it there.

For all we know the brain is just like Ram. And consciousness gets loaded ( initialized) from somewhere else... Maybe ur liver does some fancy pancy DNA unraveling and loading. Maybe it's your gut bacteria that loads your software.... We just don't know. Maybe more of it is distributed along the nerv system around ur body. Where does the brain end and nervous system begin?

Re: Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

#80

Post by keiferski » Sun, Mar 07, 2021, 11:02 AM UTC

Kinrany wrote: post #74

keiferski wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really complex topic, but just to throw out a few questions: - Why is our perceptible self the only thing that should determine our sense of identity? Aren’t there many aspects of our body and mind that aren’t we aren’t aware of on a conscious level? - Is there a point at which replacing your organs replaces You? This is called the Ship of Theseus and is a pretty deep problem. - Is the ability to be conscio…

Why do you care about identity in the first place?

Personally I’m not sure I care all that much. It’s just an interesting topic.

That said, pretty much our entire legal system is built on specific concepts of identity. And most contemporary political issues seem based around it too.