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Transplant an organ? Why not an entire body?

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

#191

Post by totalZero »

keiferski wrote: post #104
ImprobableTruth wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read your article? Embodied cognition comes in different forms. The 'basic' idea is simply that the body plays some role in cognition. The view that's closest to traditional cognition - and generally regarded as uncontroversial - is that the body has a strong influence on the mind. A lot of (most?) computationalists would accept this idea with no issue. It's the idea that our mind is actually distributed, th…

I’m not really committed to a particular model, I just think the body clearly plays an important, if not critical role - and that this is not what most people in the comments here agree with.

I agree with you. Our decisions are based on stimuli, hormones, and other physical factors that extend beyond what is traditionally considered the "mind." If I get a blood transfusion, does the slightly different chemical makeup of the introduced blood affect my behavior? If so, at what point does it affect my "self"?

I appreciate the coherent and open way that you have responded to so many different comments in this thread.

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

#192

Post by NateEag »

kelnos wrote: post #89
josefx wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Star Wars: cloning takes ages, clones have to be raised and trained. Lets make a clone army to fight the mass produced robot army. Star Trek: cloning takes seconds. You can have as many copies of a veteran warrior as you want. Dangerous mission? just send in the red shirts and a few highly trained veterans in the hope that nobody important dies (again).

I found it interesting how Star Trek (at least TNG) avoids the ethical dilemmas via vague technological handwaving. Because, right, if you beam down a bunch of redshirts and they die, can't you just have the transporter remember their patterns and resurrect them? Of course they'd have no memories of the away mission that killed them, but that seems like a small price to pay to avoid death. But instead we have "patter…

Schlock Mercenary does a great job handling the nature of consciousness boundaries and death in a post-Singularity world (technologically speaking - digital minds retain their own personalities in this story), as well as some of the ethical concerns.

It really takes off in the book "A Little Immortality":

https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2016-12-05

but the core ideas leading to that book go back much further in the comic's archives.

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

#194

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #38
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm saying that “identities” are a fuzzy human “You know it when you see it, and different men see it differently.” I.e., you claim that identities don't (really) exist. Do triangles exist? Is the definition of triangle "bereft of any definition that can be objectively measured"? Is the Ship of Theseus fundamentally different than a triangle, or is it merely a difference of degree? Ask any random human to define so…

> Do triangles exist? Is the definition of triangle "bereft of any definition that can be objectively measured"? Certainly not, the definition of a triangle is quite a rigorously defined mathematical construct. > Is the Ship of Theseus fundamentally different than a triangle, or is it merely a difference of degree? It is not a difference of quantity but quality. A triangle is an objectively defined, mathematical conc…

> It is not a difference of quantity but quality.

There is no evidence for this, you're claiming this purely out of personal bias.

Just because nobody bothered yet to define a rigorous mental model of 'Ship of Theseus' doesn't mean such a model doesn't exist in principle.

(In fact, the job of programmers is exactly that - to define rigorous models for things that nobody bothered to define before.)

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

#195

Post by mcv »

kyriakos wrote: post #182
Razengan wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To really cook your goose imagine if we could not only freely modify and "jump" between bodies, but also edit our memories. Kinda like Total Recall turned up to 110, where you can implant fake experiences, remove bad memories, take on an entirely new persona, or clone yourself and have a relationship with your clone. What really makes you "you" then? There's a great little anime called Kaiba which explores exactly th…

So a murderer is he still a murderer if his memory is wiped? Or should we let him go? Probably this came up in cases of amnesia already

You're right, this is an interesting question even without brain transplants. Are you guilty of a crime committed under hypnosis? What if you have multiple personality disorder? What if that disorder is the somehow cured or mitigated, so there's no risk of the murderous personality coming up again? It's a gateway to a marsh of awkward questions.

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

#196

Post by JoeAltmaier »

abeppu wrote: post #162
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #155

Its the old Greek "Ship of Theseus" argument, but in biology. If you replace every part of a person with a transplant over several years, who is it that remains? And if you do it one afternoon, does that change anything?

Well, except we forget that the _normal_ scenario for living systems is to constantly be replacing everything. Over the course of your life, my understanding is some cells are replaced every few days, and some live many years, but if you live a long life, very few will be intact from your early adulthood to your twilight years. I think the distinguishing factor that people want to latch onto is that if "identity" app…

Ok sort of. But normally your parts are replaced by ... your parts. Like having children vs adoption, its a different thing.

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

#197

Post by mewpmewp2 »

keiferski wrote: post #80
Kinrany wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay this brings us to an interesting point. Let's say someone committed a crime. And we take another innocent person, we swap their bodies from the neck. Which one would you punish?

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

#198

Post by mewpmewp2 »

eternalny1 wrote: post #118
mcv wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't just raise questions about the self, but also lots of legal questions. Imagine you would transplant a brain in a different body. Who is that person now legally? Technically, only a single organ got transplanted, and everything else is still the body donor. But of course the person has the memories and presumably the sense of self of the brain donor. But the finger prints, iris scan and DNA of the body dono…

> Of course we don't even know whether this sense of self is really purely attached to the brain. That brain is still connected to the rest of your body, and who knows what the body chemistry of the body donor will do to the new brain? Imagine just one aspect of this. A thyroid disorder. If the donor body was hyperthyroid, the head transplant would result in someone with the symptoms of hyperthyroidism. Angry, irrita…

I don't think emotions or feelings define identity. You could cut your leg off and be in immense pain, doesn't mean your identity changed.

The brain is still the same old brain just responding to changed input with appropriate output.

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

#199

Post by Blikkentrekker »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #194
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do triangles exist? Is the definition of triangle "bereft of any definition that can be objectively measured"? Certainly not, the definition of a triangle is quite a rigorously defined mathematical construct. > Is the Ship of Theseus fundamentally different than a triangle, or is it merely a difference of degree? It is not a difference of quantity but quality. A triangle is an objectively defined, mathematical conc…

> It is not a difference of quantity but quality. There is no evidence for this, you're claiming this purely out of personal bias. Just because nobody bothered yet to define a rigorous mental model of 'Ship of Theseus' doesn't mean such a model doesn't exist in principle. (In fact, the job of programmers is exactly that - to define rigorous models for things that nobody bothered to define before.)

> Just because nobody bothered yet to define a rigorous mental model of 'Ship of Theseus' doesn't mean such a model doesn't exist in principle.

Bothered to?

MY good man, giants have attempted, and failed. — you speak as though no one attempted, rather than that many have, and none could.

> (In fact, the job of programmers is exactly that - to define rigorous models for things that nobody bothered to define before.)

The difference being that they generally succeed and when after millennia of attempts none have, tend to acknowledge that it probably cannot be done.

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

#200

Post by EMM_386 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #198
eternalny1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course we don't even know whether this sense of self is really purely attached to the brain. That brain is still connected to the rest of your body, and who knows what the body chemistry of the body donor will do to the new brain? Imagine just one aspect of this. A thyroid disorder. If the donor body was hyperthyroid, the head transplant would result in someone with the symptoms of hyperthyroidism. Angry, irrita…

I don't think emotions or feelings define identity. You could cut your leg off and be in immense pain, doesn't mean your identity changed. The brain is still the same old brain just responding to changed input with appropriate output.

PTSD?
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