3 ms·

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

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.

the8472 6y ago
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?
- keiferski 6y ago
  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.
  - Kinrany 6y ago
    Why do you care about identity in the first place?
    - keiferski 6y ago
      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.
      - mewpmewp2 6y ago
        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?
  - the8472 6y ago
    > - Is there a point at which replacing your organs replaces You? This is called the Ship of Theseus and is a pretty deep problem. Not really. Your molecules turn over in a matter of days to years anyway (depending on the tissue and compounds in question). All that remains is information encoded in larger structures that are retained across that turnover. And the largest part of that is in the brain. > - 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? By perceptible I meant observable in one way or another, even parameters that are only subconsciously noticeable such as hormonal balance, gut flora signalling, DNA methylation, immune memory or whatever is important to the stateful system of the body. These considerations add complexity if you want a high-fidelity replacement but they're still far fewer variables than the state maintained in your brain. > - 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. I would say it's mostly you, a little me. Consider it as an exercise in tallying the number of non-redundant bits persistently stored in something. Its kolmogorov complexity. The body carries a smaller fraction of that.
    - ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
      https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1879 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1879 Today we solved the Ship of Theseus, and yesterday I solved that one with the tree in the forest that makes a sound so I feel like we can finish solving philosophy by the end of the week.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      I think the parent poster makes a point not that the mind should be considered to be distributed throughout the body, but that "your identity" should extend beyond just your mind. So that even if your mind is not in your hand, your hand should still be part of your identity. I don't think I agree, but it doesn't seem preposterous either.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  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.
  - the8472 6y ago
    That concern is reasonable because it is difficult to swap parts, so we should keep them in working order rather than relying on the remote possibility of replacing them. But conversely that means if it were cheap and easy to replace them there wouldn't be as much need to take care of them. Integral part vs. disposable is not a binary distinction.
- taisto29 6y ago
  You consider genetical sameness, what about the epigenetic traits, aquired traits like sickness etc? It will be erased in a new organ, and it will make the brain function and percieve differently, which you may or may not be able to attribute to this particular transplantation, of course. But scientifically, we don't treat brain as some solid finite substance that exists (born? created?) in a fixed state forever, and thus can be moved here and there and stay same in it's uniqueness. Brain/mind main property is that it's dynamic, and this dynamism is brought through by the rest of the body, and the environment it lives in and senses and adapts to.
  - the8472 6y ago
    > what about the epigenetic traits, aquired traits like sickness etc? No different than getting some drug that improves your organ's health without replacing them. Perhaps via gene therapy, stem cell manipulation or whatever. > Brain/mind main property is that it's dynamic, and this dynamism is brought through by the rest of the body, and the environment it lives in and senses and adapts. It does that whether you transplant organs or not. Your tomorrow's self will not be quite identical to today's self either way. Replacing body parts only changes the trajectory in a similar way a change of environment would. Perhaps a drastic change, but still a decision that people could consciously make.
    - taisto29 6y ago
      You are right about the first, but then if these things could be captured and reconstructed at scale (not like now), there is no such thing as "conscious decision" anymore, at least for some. Because if someone is able to capture this molecular turn-over, which is a static snapshot of our interaction with the reality basically - then it's possible to manufacture and control it? Not like we are not controlled now, but this is like a kernel level of control, out of which we can't exist. Sounds problematic?
Nextgrid 6y ago
> 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.
- keiferski 6y ago
  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/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/
  - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
    >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. There's not a single study to show this, so calling it 'probably wrong' is just disingenuous. All the current results simply say 'sensory data impacts our cognition', which people who think that the brain encompasses the whole of the mind also believe. The real test would be whether 'faking' body parts by sending mock sensory data would lead to the same result as having the real body part.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nkrisc 6y ago
I think most people consider many body parts to be swappable because we've observed that they in fact are. The degree to which they are certainly varies, but every successful transplant is testament to the fact we can exchange body parts with one another.

the8472 6y ago

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?

keiferski 6y ago
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.
- Kinrany 6y ago
  Why do you care about identity in the first place?
  - keiferski 6y ago
    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.
    - mewpmewp2 6y ago
      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?
- the8472 6y ago
  > - Is there a point at which replacing your organs replaces You? This is called the Ship of Theseus and is a pretty deep problem. Not really. Your molecules turn over in a matter of days to years anyway (depending on the tissue and compounds in question). All that remains is information encoded in larger structures that are retained across that turnover. And the largest part of that is in the brain. > - 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? By perceptible I meant observable in one way or another, even parameters that are only subconsciously noticeable such as hormonal balance, gut flora signalling, DNA methylation, immune memory or whatever is important to the stateful system of the body. These considerations add complexity if you want a high-fidelity replacement but they're still far fewer variables than the state maintained in your brain. > - 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. I would say it's mostly you, a little me. Consider it as an exercise in tallying the number of non-redundant bits persistently stored in something. Its kolmogorov complexity. The body carries a smaller fraction of that.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 6y ago
    https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1879 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1879 Today we solved the Ship of Theseus, and yesterday I solved that one with the tree in the forest that makes a sound so I feel like we can finish solving philosophy by the end of the week.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    I think the parent poster makes a point not that the mind should be considered to be distributed throughout the body, but that "your identity" should extend beyond just your mind. So that even if your mind is not in your hand, your hand should still be part of your identity. I don't think I agree, but it doesn't seem preposterous either.
exporectomy 6y ago
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.
- the8472 6y ago
  That concern is reasonable because it is difficult to swap parts, so we should keep them in working order rather than relying on the remote possibility of replacing them. But conversely that means if it were cheap and easy to replace them there wouldn't be as much need to take care of them. Integral part vs. disposable is not a binary distinction.
taisto29 6y ago
You consider genetical sameness, what about the epigenetic traits, aquired traits like sickness etc? It will be erased in a new organ, and it will make the brain function and percieve differently, which you may or may not be able to attribute to this particular transplantation, of course. But scientifically, we don't treat brain as some solid finite substance that exists (born? created?) in a fixed state forever, and thus can be moved here and there and stay same in it's uniqueness. Brain/mind main property is that it's dynamic, and this dynamism is brought through by the rest of the body, and the environment it lives in and senses and adapts to.
- the8472 6y ago
  > what about the epigenetic traits, aquired traits like sickness etc? No different than getting some drug that improves your organ's health without replacing them. Perhaps via gene therapy, stem cell manipulation or whatever. > Brain/mind main property is that it's dynamic, and this dynamism is brought through by the rest of the body, and the environment it lives in and senses and adapts. It does that whether you transplant organs or not. Your tomorrow's self will not be quite identical to today's self either way. Replacing body parts only changes the trajectory in a similar way a change of environment would. Perhaps a drastic change, but still a decision that people could consciously make.
  - taisto29 6y ago
    You are right about the first, but then if these things could be captured and reconstructed at scale (not like now), there is no such thing as "conscious decision" anymore, at least for some. Because if someone is able to capture this molecular turn-over, which is a static snapshot of our interaction with the reality basically - then it's possible to manufacture and control it? Not like we are not controlled now, but this is like a kernel level of control, out of which we can't exist. Sounds problematic?

Nextgrid 6y ago

> 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.

keiferski 6y ago
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/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/embodied-cognition/
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  >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. There's not a single study to show this, so calling it 'probably wrong' is just disingenuous. All the current results simply say 'sensory data impacts our cognition', which people who think that the brain encompasses the whole of the mind also believe. The real test would be whether 'faking' body parts by sending mock sensory data would lead to the same result as having the real body part.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nkrisc 6y ago

I think most people consider many body parts to be swappable because we've observed that they in fact are. The degree to which they are certainly varies, but every successful transplant is testament to the fact we can exchange body parts with one another.