Quote:
Originally posted by skinbag
I'm stunned that a thinker like yourself (CSflim) would notice the instantaneous nature of being and follow it up with by considering immortality. Pardon me if the beer has taken over my logic, but it seems you missed the point that we do not in fact exist. For beings like ourselves immortality is a relative concept. We are immortal in the broad sense of action/reaction, and yet we do not inherently exist. Which transient moment would you say defines "you" ? No two are the same, mind you..
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Would you mind giving me directions to your house, so I can come over and kill you?
If not, then why not?
And I also said that immortality was not something that I accepted, but appeared to be possible within the above assumptions. I don't believe immortality is possible, (at least not in the sense described above).
Anyway, I have yet to formalise my argument against immortality as in the situation described above, but I believe what would actually happen is you would end up with a conscious artificial brain, who claims to actually
be the subject. It wouldn't be lieing, it would have the same memories, etc, so in that sense it
would be the consciousness of the subject. Or more precisely, it would be the "cloned" consciousness, of the subject.
As far as the subject himself is concerned, nothing has happened. He hasn't percieved a "leap" of consciousness. He is still trapped firmly inside his body, and will eventually die as usual*.
So the duplication of memory in this sense offers no help to producing immortality. It will create a conscious "twin", but we won't percieve ourselves as being that twin.
The problem, is that this seems at odds with our conclusions about the continuity of consciousness.
It requires a clearer definition of "self", which currently I don't have.
But denying the existence of a self is not the way to go about it. A self is percieved, therfore it exists. No argument can be made against that. We need a way to help understand this self, without resorting to denying its existence.
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*One interesting thing, is that the subject would undoubtedly die in the process of duplicating his memory. I put forward the reason for this in the thread,
Clones, brain states, ect..., but it doesn't appear to have any
direct implications on the consciousness argument here.