4 ms·

> Subjective experience, or "consciousness", is a property > for which this reduction doesn't hold, since an exact > physical clone of oneself would hold a

by joeyo 18y ago

> Subjective experience, or "consciousness", is a property > for which this reduction doesn't hold, since an exact > physical clone of oneself would hold a different > consciousness, even at the zero moment when they were > physically identical. This is a nice assertion to make but it is by no means proven. Perhaps an exact physical copy of myself shares a consciousness with me, or has no consciousness at all. And even if it told me that it had it's own consciousness, why should I believe it anyway? ;-)

ericb 18y ago
As you sit at your desk, I clone you using advanced alien technology. Your clone appears in the middle of the room. I whisper a secret to the clone. At this point, do you know what I said to the clone? If your consciousness is the same, shouldn't you? Maybe not "experimentally proven" but seems clear to me nonetheless.
- joeyo 18y ago
  Many things that seem intuitively clear turn out not to be true. I don't know if my "alien clone" would share a consciousness with me and you don't know either. It's not even clear if split brain patients (people with brain hemispheres that do not communicate or very inefficiently communicate with each-other) can be said to have a single consciousness or two consciousnesses or something else entirely.
  - ericb 18y ago
    >> Many things that seem intuitively clear turn out not to be true. That isn't much of a counter-argument. Can you give me something better?
- banned_man 18y ago
  My anticipation of the counterargument (which is not a bad one): As soon as you whisper something to the clone, the physical state of the clone is different from his. The counter-counter-argument is that if consciousness is a product of one physical state, rather than a range of states, then a person harbors an entirely different consciousness from one moment to the next, which is utterly contrary to our notion of consciousness. The upshot of hardcore materialism is that if it's true, the notion of consciousness is an illusion. Then there's no reason to be upset over death, since the thing that will be annihilated doesn't exist. It really is some other person in the distant future who will die.
  - joeyo 18y ago
    Excellent points. Even sleep is problematic-- if I go to sleep and wake up after a nice nap, does the post-nap me share the same consciousness as the pre-nap me? Now while you were asleep I create a clone of you. Which one do you wake up as? Why? It's to bad the story went dead, this is just starting to get fun.
    - banned_man 18y ago
      You are still conscious during sleep, but you usually aren't forming memories. The word "unconscious" (meaning nonresponsive) and "consciousness" (as a metaphor for "mind" in the Buddhist sense, subjective experience, or "soul") shouldn't be connected because they refer to entirely different phenomena. With practice in mindfulness meditation, you can remain aware in the early stages of sleep, and form memories nonetheless. It can actually be jarring, because you experience with full awareness the paralysis, the strange pains/zaps (that are actually harmless). If you get good at it, you can pop into a lucid dream (sometimes) or follow the mind into fairly deep levels of sleep... though it's debated whether or not awareness in Stage IV sleep is possible.
      - joeyo 18y ago
        Perhaps we should now define our terms very carefully, I am using the word consciousness to refer to the state of having a subjective experience. So states without a subjective experience-- sleep or anesthesia or death-- are unconscious. Do you disagree? It's not at all clear to me that you can have subjective experiences while you are asleep. Usually dreams are considered a subjective experience and this is interpreted to mean that you experience a dream, and upon waking you remember that experience. But consider this alternative hypothesis: There is random brain activity during sleep, but no subjective experience of it. Upon awakening, the brain has to make sense of this nonsense activity and shoves it all into memory. This is, in a way, a "false memory". Thus you wake up and "remember" a dream that you did not experience.
banned_man 18y ago
It would be extremely difficult to prove, since an exact physical copy of anything is impossible to make. I think it's very likely, though. I don't exhibit a constant physical state; it's always changing. This establishes a range (albeit, a very narrow one) of possible physical states that can harbor my consciousness; there can't be just one. A clone of me would also have a fluctuating state. Although it's extremely unlikely that we would ever share the same state at the same time, it's plausible that his state would fluctuate into my range; there's no way of establishing how likely this is, because these concepts are imprecisely defined, but it's clearly not implausible. Philosophically, I find it unlikely that his fluctuations into my state-range would cause a merging of my consciousness with his. Any assertion of the opposite would suggest telepathy (of an involuntary sort).

by joeyo 18y ago

ericb 18y ago

As you sit at your desk, I clone you using advanced alien technology. Your clone appears in the middle of the room. I whisper a secret to the clone. At this point, do you know what I said to the clone? If your consciousness is the same, shouldn't you? Maybe not "experimentally proven" but seems clear to me nonetheless.

joeyo 18y ago
Many things that seem intuitively clear turn out not to be true. I don't know if my "alien clone" would share a consciousness with me and you don't know either. It's not even clear if split brain patients (people with brain hemispheres that do not communicate or very inefficiently communicate with each-other) can be said to have a single consciousness or two consciousnesses or something else entirely.
- ericb 18y ago
  >> Many things that seem intuitively clear turn out not to be true. That isn't much of a counter-argument. Can you give me something better?
banned_man 18y ago
My anticipation of the counterargument (which is not a bad one): As soon as you whisper something to the clone, the physical state of the clone is different from his. The counter-counter-argument is that if consciousness is a product of one physical state, rather than a range of states, then a person harbors an entirely different consciousness from one moment to the next, which is utterly contrary to our notion of consciousness. The upshot of hardcore materialism is that if it's true, the notion of consciousness is an illusion. Then there's no reason to be upset over death, since the thing that will be annihilated doesn't exist. It really is some other person in the distant future who will die.
- joeyo 18y ago
  Excellent points. Even sleep is problematic-- if I go to sleep and wake up after a nice nap, does the post-nap me share the same consciousness as the pre-nap me? Now while you were asleep I create a clone of you. Which one do you wake up as? Why? It's to bad the story went dead, this is just starting to get fun.
  - banned_man 18y ago
    You are still conscious during sleep, but you usually aren't forming memories. The word "unconscious" (meaning nonresponsive) and "consciousness" (as a metaphor for "mind" in the Buddhist sense, subjective experience, or "soul") shouldn't be connected because they refer to entirely different phenomena. With practice in mindfulness meditation, you can remain aware in the early stages of sleep, and form memories nonetheless. It can actually be jarring, because you experience with full awareness the paralysis, the strange pains/zaps (that are actually harmless). If you get good at it, you can pop into a lucid dream (sometimes) or follow the mind into fairly deep levels of sleep... though it's debated whether or not awareness in Stage IV sleep is possible.
    - joeyo 18y ago
      Perhaps we should now define our terms very carefully, I am using the word consciousness to refer to the state of having a subjective experience. So states without a subjective experience-- sleep or anesthesia or death-- are unconscious. Do you disagree? It's not at all clear to me that you can have subjective experiences while you are asleep. Usually dreams are considered a subjective experience and this is interpreted to mean that you experience a dream, and upon waking you remember that experience. But consider this alternative hypothesis: There is random brain activity during sleep, but no subjective experience of it. Upon awakening, the brain has to make sense of this nonsense activity and shoves it all into memory. This is, in a way, a "false memory". Thus you wake up and "remember" a dream that you did not experience.

banned_man 18y ago

It would be extremely difficult to prove, since an exact physical copy of anything is impossible to make. I think it's very likely, though. I don't exhibit a constant physical state; it's always changing. This establishes a range (albeit, a very narrow one) of possible physical states that can harbor my consciousness; there can't be just one. A clone of me would also have a fluctuating state. Although it's extremely unlikely that we would ever share the same state at the same time, it's plausible that his state would fluctuate into my range; there's no way of establishing how likely this is, because these concepts are imprecisely defined, but it's clearly not implausible. Philosophically, I find it unlikely that his fluctuations into my state-range would cause a merging of my consciousness with his. Any assertion of the opposite would suggest telepathy (of an involuntary sort).