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A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it, but it wouldn't stay in business very long. No matter how important the animals are to the long-term via

A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it, but it wouldn't stay in business very long. No matter how important the animals are to the long-term viability of the zoo, they are not the zoo. My gut bacteria may be vital to my survival, but they are not me. I don't find placing that line to be difficult at all.

knome 9y ago
The only part of the flesh which is "you" is the nervous system. Everything else can be hacked off or replaced without a loss of identity.
- chongli 9y ago
  So if somebody has a limb amputation, losing a lot of nerves, are they a different person? Is somebody a different person when they're drunk? I've heard both of these thrown around colloquially. It's not obvious or straightforward to answer. You could imagine a Ship of Theseus style replacement of all the neurons in your head with artificial ones. At what point would you stop being you?
  - yladiz 9y ago
    My thoughts are that 'you' as a person change constantly, year to year, and who you are now is not the same as 5, 10, more years ago. I don't think it's so much that you are a different person because you lost a limb or are drunk, it's the change in personality and mind that accompany those that makes that person different. You could absolutely lose a limb and be 'the same' person, but you could also change significantly.
    - unkown-unknowns 9y ago
      Sure but my past selves are also part of who I am. Without them I would not be me, and so I think they are more me than not me.
  - knome 9y ago
    Never. "I" am a pattern of self awareness. The constituent parts are irrelevant. So long as the parts support the self awareness, "I" am.
    - chongli 9y ago
      So you would have no qualms about stepping into a Star Trek-style transporter, having your pattern scanned, your matter destroyed and recreated at the destination? If so, I would ask: what if the destroy step malfunctioned? There would be two of you. Which one would you be?
      - knome 9y ago
        Both would consider themselves to be me, as both would be a legitimate continuation of the pattern of consciousness that is me. The divergence would create something of an ethical dilemma in the case of marriage, property ownership, rank, etc. Would both be granted the rank of the original, seeing as they are both a direct continuation of that being? Seeing as at least one episode of Star Trek dealt with such a thing, I wonder if any ever dealt with the possibility of a single individual with access to a transporter creating a continuous set of copies from the original scan, perhaps saving at intervals and allowing the instantiation of variously youthful or experienced copies to be made. The divergences over time in such a branching consciousness would make for an interesting sci-fi thought experiment, I think.
- wruza 9y ago
  Without instant loss of identity, I would add. It is widely known how semipathological states are cause of character, mood, life style, etc. There is no strict line between 'you' and your body (and internal-external environment); cutting or hacking non-utility parts of it will change you in short period of time, compared to original, as it happens with less radical change of climate, country, job, gender, food.
fattire 9y ago
> A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it Is it? Identity is an interesting thing. To use a commonly-cited example-- if I swap out the muffler of my car and toss the original in the backyard, I think most would say I am still driving the same car. If I do the same with the front left tire, it's still essentially my car. Even if replace all four tires, same. But what if I swap one part a day with a replacement, after a while I'll have all my original car parts in the backyard-- and am in effect driving a car made of totally new parts, but is this still the same car? If not, when would you no longer say it's the same car? And, if I assemble the collection of gradually discarded parts sitting in the back yard into another car-- now what? Which is my car? The thing I'm driving or the car made of the old parts? Or are they both the same car? Am I really the same person I was when I was 10 ...or 10 months? What is the "me"-ness, or are we talking about a different person? Where's the line... Or... when Captain Kirk uses the transporter-- his molecules are disintegrated, and then a copy of him gets assembled on some planet (using local materials I believe)... So is "he" transported, or is he being killed and replaced with an exact copy? (I think this question made its way to a Breaking Bad episode) Anyhoo. Is a zoo without animals in it still a zoo? I dunno.
- JorgeGT 9y ago
  It's an age old question indeed, the example you cited has been recorded from at least the first century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
- aato 9y ago
  This kind of stuff is fun to think about. In my opinion identity is based on behaviour, not composition. So long as an entity matches a given behaviour profile, then for all intents and purposes that entity IS the thing that the behaviour is normally attributed to. Kind of like Duck Typing: "If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck." So my response to your car example is that both vehicles are "the same car" since both get you around and both are owned by you. In that sense, as your behaviour changes so does your identity. If you were able to 100% accurately encode all the actions you could ever take into a Markov Chain, then I would argue that Markov Chain is what makes you "you" at that point in time.
Consultant32452 9y ago
Are the dead cells you're carrying around like your hair "you?" What about food? At what point exactly in the digestion process does it cease to be something else and become part of "you?" Is your urine and fecal matter that's still within your body "you?" How about the oxygen in your blood? Is that you? Saliva? How about tears? When to tears stop being you and become something else?
bitJericho 9y ago
Interestingly, the makeup of your gut biome con dramatically affect personality. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacteria-on-the-brain/395918/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacte... Parasites can also alter your personality. Perhaps they can even turn you into a cat lady/man. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/cat-lady-parasite-linked-to-permanent-brain-damage/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/cat-lady-paras...
laythea 9y ago
> "A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals..." Sounds like a Zoo-Wannabe to me.
Razengan 9y ago
If you fall into a coma or vegetative state, are you still you? What about during anesthesia, or deep sleep? (disregarding the certainty that you will wake up)

knome 9y ago

The only part of the flesh which is "you" is the nervous system. Everything else can be hacked off or replaced without a loss of identity.

chongli 9y ago
So if somebody has a limb amputation, losing a lot of nerves, are they a different person? Is somebody a different person when they're drunk? I've heard both of these thrown around colloquially. It's not obvious or straightforward to answer. You could imagine a Ship of Theseus style replacement of all the neurons in your head with artificial ones. At what point would you stop being you?
- yladiz 9y ago
  My thoughts are that 'you' as a person change constantly, year to year, and who you are now is not the same as 5, 10, more years ago. I don't think it's so much that you are a different person because you lost a limb or are drunk, it's the change in personality and mind that accompany those that makes that person different. You could absolutely lose a limb and be 'the same' person, but you could also change significantly.
  - unkown-unknowns 9y ago
    Sure but my past selves are also part of who I am. Without them I would not be me, and so I think they are more me than not me.
- knome 9y ago
  Never. "I" am a pattern of self awareness. The constituent parts are irrelevant. So long as the parts support the self awareness, "I" am.
  - chongli 9y ago
    So you would have no qualms about stepping into a Star Trek-style transporter, having your pattern scanned, your matter destroyed and recreated at the destination? If so, I would ask: what if the destroy step malfunctioned? There would be two of you. Which one would you be?
    - knome 9y ago
      Both would consider themselves to be me, as both would be a legitimate continuation of the pattern of consciousness that is me. The divergence would create something of an ethical dilemma in the case of marriage, property ownership, rank, etc. Would both be granted the rank of the original, seeing as they are both a direct continuation of that being? Seeing as at least one episode of Star Trek dealt with such a thing, I wonder if any ever dealt with the possibility of a single individual with access to a transporter creating a continuous set of copies from the original scan, perhaps saving at intervals and allowing the instantiation of variously youthful or experienced copies to be made. The divergences over time in such a branching consciousness would make for an interesting sci-fi thought experiment, I think.
wruza 9y ago
Without instant loss of identity, I would add. It is widely known how semipathological states are cause of character, mood, life style, etc. There is no strict line between 'you' and your body (and internal-external environment); cutting or hacking non-utility parts of it will change you in short period of time, compared to original, as it happens with less radical change of climate, country, job, gender, food.

fattire 9y ago

> A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it Is it? Identity is an interesting thing. To use a commonly-cited example-- if I swap out the muffler of my car and toss the original in the backyard, I think most would say I am still driving the same car. If I do the same with the front left tire, it's still essentially my car. Even if replace all four tires, same. But what if I swap one part a day with a replacement, after a while I'll have all my original car parts in the backyard-- and am in effect driving a car made of totally new parts, but is this still the same car? If not, when would you no longer say it's the same car? And, if I assemble the collection of gradually discarded parts sitting in the back yard into another car-- now what? Which is my car? The thing I'm driving or the car made of the old parts? Or are they both the same car? Am I really the same person I was when I was 10 ...or 10 months? What is the "me"-ness, or are we talking about a different person? Where's the line... Or... when Captain Kirk uses the transporter-- his molecules are disintegrated, and then a copy of him gets assembled on some planet (using local materials I believe)... So is "he" transported, or is he being killed and replaced with an exact copy? (I think this question made its way to a Breaking Bad episode) Anyhoo. Is a zoo without animals in it still a zoo? I dunno.

JorgeGT 9y ago
It's an age old question indeed, the example you cited has been recorded from at least the first century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
aato 9y ago
This kind of stuff is fun to think about. In my opinion identity is based on behaviour, not composition. So long as an entity matches a given behaviour profile, then for all intents and purposes that entity IS the thing that the behaviour is normally attributed to. Kind of like Duck Typing: "If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck." So my response to your car example is that both vehicles are "the same car" since both get you around and both are owned by you. In that sense, as your behaviour changes so does your identity. If you were able to 100% accurately encode all the actions you could ever take into a Markov Chain, then I would argue that Markov Chain is what makes you "you" at that point in time.

Consultant32452 9y ago

Are the dead cells you're carrying around like your hair "you?" What about food? At what point exactly in the digestion process does it cease to be something else and become part of "you?" Is your urine and fecal matter that's still within your body "you?" How about the oxygen in your blood? Is that you? Saliva? How about tears? When to tears stop being you and become something else?

bitJericho 9y ago

Interestingly, the makeup of your gut biome con dramatically affect personality. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacteria-on-the-brain/395918/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacte... Parasites can also alter your personality. Perhaps they can even turn you into a cat lady/man. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/cat-lady-parasite-linked-to-permanent-brain-damage/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/cat-lady-paras...

laythea 9y ago

> "A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals..." Sounds like a Zoo-Wannabe to me.

Razengan 9y ago

If you fall into a coma or vegetative state, are you still you? What about during anesthesia, or deep sleep? (disregarding the certainty that you will wake up)