Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - The continuity of consciousness: An illusion?

Kyo · 09-17-2003, 09:18 PM

I plan to get more than 6 hours of sleep for once tonight, so forgive the bullet-form. Watch it turn into a mini-essay anyway *mutter*.

- In terms of there not being an original because of your argument that 'self' is transient, if I grant that the 'self' is transient then yes, I agree that the original is meaningless, since a 'person' (or perhaps I should say 'personality'?) is really a state of being at a particular instant - one that is wiped away as quickly as it is created. However, I don't agree that the self is quite so transient - I believe that continuity is present in our existences. I am still in the process of organizing my reasoning; I will get that up here as soon as possible.

For now, however, assume that we freeze time, perform the transfer or replication, and then attempt to discover which is the 'original' and which is the 'copy.'

- While you are correct that both would claim to be the original, there is an original (again, ignoring for now the transient self argument). If you were the one being copied - where would your conciousness go? Obviously you couldn't control two bodies - by copying yourself or transfering yourself you have created a conciousness separate from your own. You and every perfect copy of you would claim to be you, but the original should know which one it is, intuitively. But how? If it is a perfect copy, it is literally indistinguishible from the original - how can it be determined which body your conciousness inhabits?

All right. I need shut eye.

09-17-2003, 09:18 PM	#20 (permalink)
Kyo Crazy	I plan to get more than 6 hours of sleep for once tonight, so forgive the bullet-form. Watch it turn into a mini-essay anyway mutter. - In terms of there not being an original because of your argument that 'self' is transient, if I grant that the 'self' is transient then yes, I agree that the original is meaningless, since a 'person' (or perhaps I should say 'personality'?) is really a state of being at a particular instant - one that is wiped away as quickly as it is created. However, I don't agree that the self is quite so transient - I believe that continuity is present in our existences. I am still in the process of organizing my reasoning; I will get that up here as soon as possible. For now, however, assume that we freeze time, perform the transfer or replication, and then attempt to discover which is the 'original' and which is the 'copy.' - While you are correct that both would claim to be the original, there is an original (again, ignoring for now the transient self argument). If you were the one being copied - where would your conciousness go? Obviously you couldn't control two bodies - by copying yourself or transfering yourself you have created a conciousness separate from your own. You and every perfect copy of you would claim to be you, but the original should know which one it is, intuitively. But how? If it is a perfect copy, it is literally indistinguishible from the original - how can it be determined which body your conciousness inhabits? All right. I need shut eye. __________________ Sure I have a heart; it's floating in a jar in my closet, along with my tonsils, my appendix, and all of the other useless organs I ripped out.