4 ms·

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational function

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism. There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejection of philosophy as silly and misguided, followed by a rediscovery of the same concepts that philosophers have developed, but under a new ad-hoc and less precise language. Congratulations, you're a philosopher.

mikk14 5mo ago
I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life. These people believe this while at the same time considering dualism so ridiculous as to laugh dualists out of the room. The evident problem being that "mind uploading" is the most dualistic possible position to take. A real monist would easily see that by doing mind uploading you have just created a clone that is a whole separate entity from yourself and it is not yourself.
- energy123 5mo ago
  But you are taking an opinionated view of the resolution to the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you are a computational functionalist, then it really is "you" afterwards (or rather there's now two identical "you" until the original "you" is destroyed). A monist could also point to your hypocrisy of believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now.
  - mikk14 5mo ago
    A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied. This is a fact and it is elementary to see it as true, as well as supporting the view that the copy is not the same being at all. If your description of computation functionalists is accurate, then they simply are dualists and would do good in admitting this to themselves. Invoking the Ship of Theseus is a distraction. The Ship of Theseus paradox does not involve a full copy at the atomic level while the original still stands. If it did, the paradox would not even exists. The paradox exists because there is the key element that you do not have in mind copying/uploading: _continuity_.
    - amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
      Isn't continuity just an implementation detail? Suppose your brain was replaced a bit at a time with mechanical hardware, the end result is an uploaded mind while maintaining continuity.
      - mikk14 5mo ago
        I admit that this is a troubling problem with the position that I stated, but I don't think it's a complete takedown. The easiest rebuttal would be to simply say that continuity is not a mere implementation detail. If you give up continuity, you can make a copy without altering the original, you just have to read it. But if you need to ensure continuity you have to alter the original. This seems to me a very fundamental part of the process, making it qualitatively different.
    - energy123 5mo ago
      Imagine you are destroyed in your sleep by aliens and replaced by an atomically identical duplicate. Would you call this "you"? If not, what if the aliens recycled the atoms from your original body to make the new body, putting each original atom into the same original spot with the same position and momentum (ignoring quantum and uncertainty principle). What if they recycled 99% of the atoms from your original body, but swapped 1% of them for different atoms? What if they only destroyed 5% of your brain and reassembled that destroyed portion, leaving the rest of you untouched? What about 50%? What if they waited 1 planck moment before reassembling you versus 5 seconds? Where is your dividing line in this scenario space between "that's really me" versus "that's just a copy and is not really me" ? The functionalist answer, as I understand it, is fungibility across time and copies when arriving at definitions of words like "you". The functionalist answer is not that > 1 copy can communicate telepathically or supernaturally share experiences is a dualist sense. They are still causally independent physical entities.
  - chongli 5mo ago
    believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now. Oft-repeated but not true. Neurons, for the most part, are never replaced. If a neuron dies, it's gone forever. Repeated head traumas (leading to CTE) are known to cause personality changes as the brain has been permanently altered due to neuron losses.
- card_zero 5mo ago
  I think reasonably faithful clones would be mes. We could live my life, from multiple perspectives, some of them quite separate. It might be necessary to distinguish them with numbers, or claim that one of them has become too different to really count as a me, but those are details and semantic matters.
- taneq 5mo ago
  The ‘you’ that wakes up tomorrow is a whole separate entity from you right now, unless you want to concede that identity is a path variable and that whether the exact same physical/mental/emotional entity is you or not depends on how those particles got there.
  - mikk14 5mo ago
    Just because the brain doesn't form memories while you sleep, doesn't mean you have ceased to exist. You have probably forgot many things that have happened to you today: does that mean you didn't exist in those moments you forgot? Am I misunderstanding your point?
    - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
      If the universe was created 5 minutes ago, then you didn't exist before that, but it doesn't matter, because past and present don't interact.
- psychoslave 5mo ago
  > copying any possible information to the most minute synapse That's reducing an individual to, I assume, the sum of its neural network. So like considering everything else happening in the fleshy body matters to what a human is, nor how they relate to the rest of cosmos as such a body.
- donkeybeer 5mo ago
  [dead]
- delecti 5mo ago
  Are there people who say that digitizing one's conscious moves their mind? If I upload a file from my computer to to a server, the file still exists on my computer (until deleted). I've never thought that a mind upload would work any differently. I think that many who talk about consciousness digitization handwave away what happens to their body/brain afterwards, but I don't necessarily think that means they think they'll move into the computer.
  - kodt 5mo ago
    depends if you do a copy paste or cut and paste
    - delecti 5mo ago
      My point is that the word "upload", without context indicating otherwise, does not imply that the original is changed in any way.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
narag 5mo ago
I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Every guy saying that free will doesn't exist is arguing exactly this. Physical causality considered an obstacle to freedom implies that the conscious entity is somehow outside the physical world.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
  You are implying that consciousness has to include free will? Why?
  - narag 5mo ago
    That's backwards. People saying that there's no free will because determinism is implying that human consciousness is outside the physical world. Actually that's what TFA is about and makes a great job explaining it. My comment was responding to energy123 questioning there are philosophers that are both materialistic and consider human consciousness is "special". The moment you separate consciousness from all the physical processes that support it (and that's what negating "free" will arguing that it's caused by material forces) you're placing it in a different "plane". That's hardly an unheard-of position, there are many thinkers that fall for this.
    - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
      That's strange, hard determinists are eliminativists, and eliminativists don't believe in consciousness, but I never saw them speaking about both at the same time.
      - narag 5mo ago
        They don't believe in consciousness... at all? I guess they don't recognize consciousness for some definition of it that includes agency.
        GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
redwood 5mo ago
I think a lot of people interpret philosophers' arguments differently and it isn't always clear what a philosopher themselves truly believes. For example Searle's Chinese room thought experiment... On the one hand you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically rather than approximating it and that it's misleading to imply that you can get there with an approximation ... Still I can see how this confuses dualists or could appear in line with their point of view even though it is arguably a nuanced take on the materiallist view
- Eisenstein 5mo ago
  > you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically I'm not sure I understand. If we must replicate a human brain physically in order to create something that has consciousness, then how is that not something 'special that cannot be reproduced by a machine'?
  - redwood 5mo ago
    Your comment does serve the point I was making. Still there is a perspective that if you could artificially reproduce the human mind top to bottom, a truly perfect reproduction in other words, then you ought to be able to trigger an identical consciousness. In other words yes special type of machine is needed for the machine nevertheless not some special soul. Of course the counterpoint and maybe the one you're making is that special machine ought to be simply called a soul machine and we could all agree it would be very difficult to reproduce it and it is intrinsically special... but maybe that's for the very specific form of Consciousness we have... but maybe there are other forms
    - 5mo ago

mikk14 5mo ago

I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life. These people believe this while at the same time considering dualism so ridiculous as to laugh dualists out of the room. The evident problem being that "mind uploading" is the most dualistic possible position to take. A real monist would easily see that by doing mind uploading you have just created a clone that is a whole separate entity from yourself and it is not yourself.

energy123 5mo ago
But you are taking an opinionated view of the resolution to the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you are a computational functionalist, then it really is "you" afterwards (or rather there's now two identical "you" until the original "you" is destroyed). A monist could also point to your hypocrisy of believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now.
- mikk14 5mo ago
  A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied. This is a fact and it is elementary to see it as true, as well as supporting the view that the copy is not the same being at all. If your description of computation functionalists is accurate, then they simply are dualists and would do good in admitting this to themselves. Invoking the Ship of Theseus is a distraction. The Ship of Theseus paradox does not involve a full copy at the atomic level while the original still stands. If it did, the paradox would not even exists. The paradox exists because there is the key element that you do not have in mind copying/uploading: _continuity_.
  - amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
    Isn't continuity just an implementation detail? Suppose your brain was replaced a bit at a time with mechanical hardware, the end result is an uploaded mind while maintaining continuity.
    - mikk14 5mo ago
      I admit that this is a troubling problem with the position that I stated, but I don't think it's a complete takedown. The easiest rebuttal would be to simply say that continuity is not a mere implementation detail. If you give up continuity, you can make a copy without altering the original, you just have to read it. But if you need to ensure continuity you have to alter the original. This seems to me a very fundamental part of the process, making it qualitatively different.
  - energy123 5mo ago
    Imagine you are destroyed in your sleep by aliens and replaced by an atomically identical duplicate. Would you call this "you"? If not, what if the aliens recycled the atoms from your original body to make the new body, putting each original atom into the same original spot with the same position and momentum (ignoring quantum and uncertainty principle). What if they recycled 99% of the atoms from your original body, but swapped 1% of them for different atoms? What if they only destroyed 5% of your brain and reassembled that destroyed portion, leaving the rest of you untouched? What about 50%? What if they waited 1 planck moment before reassembling you versus 5 seconds? Where is your dividing line in this scenario space between "that's really me" versus "that's just a copy and is not really me" ? The functionalist answer, as I understand it, is fungibility across time and copies when arriving at definitions of words like "you". The functionalist answer is not that > 1 copy can communicate telepathically or supernaturally share experiences is a dualist sense. They are still causally independent physical entities.
- chongli 5mo ago
  believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now. Oft-repeated but not true. Neurons, for the most part, are never replaced. If a neuron dies, it's gone forever. Repeated head traumas (leading to CTE) are known to cause personality changes as the brain has been permanently altered due to neuron losses.
card_zero 5mo ago
I think reasonably faithful clones would be mes. We could live my life, from multiple perspectives, some of them quite separate. It might be necessary to distinguish them with numbers, or claim that one of them has become too different to really count as a me, but those are details and semantic matters.
taneq 5mo ago
The ‘you’ that wakes up tomorrow is a whole separate entity from you right now, unless you want to concede that identity is a path variable and that whether the exact same physical/mental/emotional entity is you or not depends on how those particles got there.
- mikk14 5mo ago
  Just because the brain doesn't form memories while you sleep, doesn't mean you have ceased to exist. You have probably forgot many things that have happened to you today: does that mean you didn't exist in those moments you forgot? Am I misunderstanding your point?
  - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
    If the universe was created 5 minutes ago, then you didn't exist before that, but it doesn't matter, because past and present don't interact.
psychoslave 5mo ago
> copying any possible information to the most minute synapse That's reducing an individual to, I assume, the sum of its neural network. So like considering everything else happening in the fleshy body matters to what a human is, nor how they relate to the rest of cosmos as such a body.
donkeybeer 5mo ago
[dead]
delecti 5mo ago
Are there people who say that digitizing one's conscious moves their mind? If I upload a file from my computer to to a server, the file still exists on my computer (until deleted). I've never thought that a mind upload would work any differently. I think that many who talk about consciousness digitization handwave away what happens to their body/brain afterwards, but I don't necessarily think that means they think they'll move into the computer.
- kodt 5mo ago
  depends if you do a copy paste or cut and paste
  - delecti 5mo ago
    My point is that the word "upload", without context indicating otherwise, does not imply that the original is changed in any way.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

narag 5mo ago

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Every guy saying that free will doesn't exist is arguing exactly this. Physical causality considered an obstacle to freedom implies that the conscious entity is somehow outside the physical world.

amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
You are implying that consciousness has to include free will? Why?
- narag 5mo ago
  That's backwards. People saying that there's no free will because determinism is implying that human consciousness is outside the physical world. Actually that's what TFA is about and makes a great job explaining it. My comment was responding to energy123 questioning there are philosophers that are both materialistic and consider human consciousness is "special". The moment you separate consciousness from all the physical processes that support it (and that's what negating "free" will arguing that it's caused by material forces) you're placing it in a different "plane". That's hardly an unheard-of position, there are many thinkers that fall for this.
  - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
    That's strange, hard determinists are eliminativists, and eliminativists don't believe in consciousness, but I never saw them speaking about both at the same time.
    - narag 5mo ago
      They don't believe in consciousness... at all? I guess they don't recognize consciousness for some definition of it that includes agency.
      - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago

redwood 5mo ago

I think a lot of people interpret philosophers' arguments differently and it isn't always clear what a philosopher themselves truly believes. For example Searle's Chinese room thought experiment... On the one hand you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically rather than approximating it and that it's misleading to imply that you can get there with an approximation ... Still I can see how this confuses dualists or could appear in line with their point of view even though it is arguably a nuanced take on the materiallist view

Eisenstein 5mo ago
> you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically I'm not sure I understand. If we must replicate a human brain physically in order to create something that has consciousness, then how is that not something 'special that cannot be reproduced by a machine'?
- redwood 5mo ago
  Your comment does serve the point I was making. Still there is a perspective that if you could artificially reproduce the human mind top to bottom, a truly perfect reproduction in other words, then you ought to be able to trigger an identical consciousness. In other words yes special type of machine is needed for the machine nevertheless not some special soul. Of course the counterpoint and maybe the one you're making is that special machine ought to be simply called a soul machine and we could all agree it would be very difficult to reproduce it and it is intrinsically special... but maybe that's for the very specific form of Consciousness we have... but maybe there are other forms
  - 5mo ago