Designing a test to determine continuity of consciousness

[PeZook]

This is more of a philosphical conundrum than any real scientific or moral problem, so if it feels like it doesn't belong here, feel free to move it.

This actually comes from a discussion we had here some time ago about transhumanism, transferring the mind to a machine body and all that.

Now, in that thread, a problem arose where people discussed whether an "uploaded" human (that is, one who had his brain and memories transferred into a machine) is the same human as the original (eg. "you" go to sleep and then wake up encased in metal) or not (eg. "you" are destroyed).

I thought that the best way would be to perform and experiment and see. But if "you" gets copied perfectly, then even if "you" are destroyed, the copy won't know that. It will be absolutely convinved it is the original, and so would most people around it.

So...is it possible to design a test which will resolve that issue and be capable of answering the following question:

"Has Joe died, or simply woke up in a new body?"

[The Grim Squeaker]

Well, one could perhaps check emotional and political views, and maybe with full-sensory simulations check for emotional responses best. (Does Joe save himself or the child from a speeding car before/after, etc').
This should be possible with the technological level discussed.

[Stark]

If it's an exact copy, your political views are unlikely to be different. This doesn't seem like the sort of thing that can be tested by experiment: either you believe copying = continuity or you don't. As you say, the copy will effectively by identical and not have any problems itself, so any measurable differences should be problems with the procedure rather than 'evidence' of continuity or not.

I feel there are plenty of ways to establish *not* continuous consciousness, but none I can think of to positively establish continuity (barring axiomatic 'identical = continuous' arguments). For instance, if the procedure allows data to be stored and applied to another body after some time, it's unlikely to be continuous from the perspective of the subject. However, even if you have two identical minds running at the same time, turning the original subject 'off' clearly demonstrates a lack of continuity.

[TithonusSyndrome]

This might just be pure gut and no science on my part, but I would think that going the Ship of Theseus route would neatly navigate around that problem altogether. Major Kusanagi from GitS didn't appear to suffer any discontinuity of self from her transferral over to a pure machine.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

This is more of a philosphical conundrum than any real scientific or moral problem, so if it feels like it doesn't belong here, feel free to move it.

This actually comes from a discussion we had here some time ago about transhumanism, transferring the mind to a machine body and all that.

Now, in that thread, a problem arose where people discussed whether an "uploaded" human (that is, one who had his brain and memories transferred into a machine) is the same human as the original (eg. "you" go to sleep and then wake up encased in metal) or not (eg. "you" are destroyed).

I thought that the best way would be to perform and experiment and see. But if "you" gets copied perfectly, then even if "you" are destroyed, the copy won't know that. It will be absolutely convinved it is the original, and so would most people around it.

So...is it possible to design a test which will resolve that issue and be capable of answering the following question:

"Has Joe died, or simply woke up in a new body?"

The answer is simple. Joe died and his perfect replica, who believes himself to be Joe begins existence as a transhuman AI. Legally, he's still Joe, is entitled to Joe's job, and his wife and kids. But the original Joe was embodied by firing patterns and potentials in his inefficient analog wetware . . . wetware that has been ground up into organic paste and is on its way to China for reprocessing into cat food.

The only way to preserve some continuity between wetware Joe and transhuman AI Joe is if you do some sort of gradual replacement, where more and more of his wetware brain's functions are taken on by electronic replacements. That way, the function of Joe as an individual can be expressed as a series of steps where he becomes increasingly posthuman. Instead of "Joe died when his brain was ground into paste as part of the upload process."

What gets fun is what happens if you have a transhumanization process that doesn't involve a destructive read. Then you have two people who believe that they are Joe. Only they're just two people who happen to have an identical set of starting memories. Joe-O, goes on to live his life as an organic human, grows old, and dies. Joe-T, goes on to live for 10,000 years as a transhuman and marries 26 times.

For the above not to be true, you would have to postulate that consciousness has some sort of intangible component, i.e. a "soul." Which, as we well know, is absolute hogwash.

[Omeganian]

In a metallic body, will "Joe" think the same way as the organic did? Or would his personality warp completely? Or maybe something along the "Call me Joe" lines (A crippled man remotely controlling an artificially created alien transfers his mind into it with only minor changes due to a different body).

But honestly, it reminds me of Asimov's "End of Eternity", where the replicator was called a technology just as bad as a nuclear war. The problems presented by it were considered to have no acceptable solution at all.

[General Zod]

How would transferring someone's consciousness be any different from people who "clinically die" in real life and are resuscitated sometimes several minutes after the fact?

[Omeganian]

How would transferring someone's consciousness be any different from people who "clinically die" in real life and are resuscitated sometimes several minutes after the fact?

I don't think that clinical death stops brain activity completely.

[General Zod]

How would transferring someone's consciousness be any different from people who "clinically die" in real life and are resuscitated sometimes several minutes after the fact?

I don't think that clinical death stops brain activity completely.

I meant as far as 'continuity' is concerned.

[Omeganian]

How would transferring someone's consciousness be any different from people who "clinically die" in real life and are resuscitated sometimes several minutes after the fact?

I don't think that clinical death stops brain activity completely.

I meant as far as 'continuity' is concerned.

Go to a man who really values art, and tell him that Rembrandt's Danaë should have been painted again from scratch by someone else instead of being restored in the aftermath of the 1985 attack. Whatever remains of you can continue the discussion.

[General Zod]

Go to a man who really values art, and tell him that Rembrandt's Danaë should have been painted again from scratch by someone else instead of being restored in the aftermath of the 1985 attack. Whatever remains of you can continue the discussion.

I don't see how that's an applicable comparison at all. Biological creatures regenerate cells and rebuild themselves all the time, so 20 years down the line there's very little original material left since it's all new cells being used. When artwork can do the same, you might have a valid point.

[Omeganian]

Go to a man who really values art, and tell him that Rembrandt's Danaë should have been painted again from scratch by someone else instead of being restored in the aftermath of the 1985 attack. Whatever remains of you can continue the discussion.

I don't see how that's an applicable comparison at all. Biological creatures regenerate cells and rebuild themselves all the time, so 20 years down the line there's very little original material left since it's all new cells being used. When artwork can do the same, you might have a valid point.

Artwork is restored continually as well. What remains of the original Stradivari violins? The lacquer.

[General Zod]

Artwork is restored continually as well. What remains of the original Stradivari violins? The lacquer.

So this disproves my point. . .how?

[Starglider]

This doesn't seem like the sort of thing that can be tested by experiment: either you believe copying = continuity or you don't.

In other words, it's a religious belief, no different from 'oh noes the camera will capture my soul'!

I feel there are plenty of ways to establish *not* continuous consciousness, but none I can think of to positively establish continuity (barring axiomatic 'identical = continuous' arguments).

If the 'continuity of consciousness needs warm neurons occupying a continuous physical space' hypothesis isn't disprovable by experiment then it is bullshit.

However, even if you have two identical minds running at the same time, turning the original subject 'off' clearly demonstrates a lack of continuity.

Yes, but frankly that's your fault for trying to turn a continuous spectrum into a binary distinction. The difference between person A and person B is a highly multidimensional vector. The continuity of consciousness people are effectively establishing a very, very small threshold for 'same person' and then heaping on some vaguely defined and usually arbitrary causal/temporal/spatial conditions as well. Of course if you press for details, they can't give them, because they are trying to rationalise a broken intuition rather than derive anything from experiment or first principles.

This might just be pure gut and no science on my part, but I would think that going the Ship of Theseus route would neatly navigate around that problem altogether.

Yes. We (and by we I mean the worldwide conspiracy of transhumanist evil geniuses working tirelessly on this tech ) are planning to make that option available for superstitious types.

But the original Joe was embodied

You are not your embodiment any more than 'Windows Vista' is magnetized spots on one particular hard disk.

The only way to preserve some continuity between wetware Joe and transhuman AI Joe is if you do some sort of gradual replacement, where more and more of his wetware brain's functions are taken on by electronic replacements. That way, the function of Joe as an individual can be expressed as a series of steps where he becomes increasingly posthuman. Instead of "Joe died when his brain was ground into paste as part of the upload process."

This is justified by nothing but your intution. In other words, it's purely a matter of taste. There is no net causal difference between doing the replacement in one step or a billion steps, as long as the information transferred is the same. Consciousness is not some magic property that seeps into a compatible substrate by close proximity. Can you seriously not see how ridiculous and superstitious you're being? No, of course you can't, I've had this debate enough times to know that. Suffice to say you're making a very similar mistake to biologists who thought living tissue was animated by a semi-magical 'elan vitale', and will be laughed at by future generations for exactly the same reasons. Yet,

For the above not to be true, you would have to postulate that consciousness has some sort of intangible component, i.e. a "soul." Which, as we well know, is absolute hogwash.

Can you not see the massive disconnect with what you just wrote?

In a metallic body, will "Joe" think the same way as the organic did? Or would his personality warp completely?

Differences arising from experience rather than starting state are irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

Go to a man who really values art, and tell him that Rembrandt's Danaë should have been painted again from scratch by someone else instead of being restored in the aftermath of the 1985 attack. Whatever remains of you can continue the discussion.

Not a perfect copy. The correct analogy is 'assuming we had a molecular level recording of the original and a 3D printer that could reproduce it exactly, is the original special'? The answer is 'not in any objective way'. A bunch of atoms have (simplifying slightly) no innate information content or specialness beyond their immediate physical structure. Anything else is just sentiment.

[Surlethe]

This is justified by nothing but your intution. In other words, it's purely a matter of taste. There is no net causal difference between doing the replacement in one step or a billion steps, as long as the information transferred is the same. Consciousness is not some magic property that seeps into a compatible substrate by close proximity. Can you seriously not see how ridiculous and superstitious you're being? No, of course you can't, I've had this debate enough times to know that. Suffice to say you're making a very similar mistake to biologists who thought living tissue was animated by a semi-magical 'elan vitale', and will be laughed at by future generations for exactly the same reasons.

Consciousness is a property of the configuration of matter. Therefore, to preserve the continuity of consciousness, one must also preserve the continuity of the matter which makes up that consciousness. It seems that by focusing on the net difference, you are ignoring that continuity is a local property; a gradual replacement preserves the continuity of the matter, while an upload does not preserve the continuity of that matter, even if the net effect is the same.

[Kanastrous]

How would transferring someone's consciousness be any different from people who "clinically die" in real life and are resuscitated sometimes several minutes after the fact?

Much (most) of your long- and mid-term memory exists as structure rather than process in your brain.

So a short suspension of the processes normally transpiring in a living brain, does not significantly affect the memories - which you could take to include personality - stored in its structure.

This is how a cryonicist explained their view of it to me, anyway. It's consonant with what little I can remember from readings in neurology.

[General Zod]

Much (most) of your long- and mid-term memory exists as structure rather than process in your brain.

So a short suspension of the processes normally transpiring in a living brain, does not significantly affect the memories - which you could take to include personality - stored in its structure.

This is how a cryonicist explained their view of it to me, anyway. It's consonant with what little I can remember from readings in neurology.

That's about what I figured. As long as the brain structure in the new body was similar, if not identical, there shouldn't be any measurable continuity gaps.

[Singular Intellect]

Any proposed upload process I'd consider a extremely obvious clone of the mind. There may be no distinction in thought process, memories or ideas, but it would be a seperate entity.

The only way I could think of a process actually being the same entity would be a gradual replacement of brain cells with equivalent artificial ones.

[Akhlut]

The only way I could think of a process actually being the same entity would be a gradual replacement of brain cells with equivalent artificial ones.

I thought of that as well. There might also be attaching a brain to a computer, and continually updating the computer until it has much larger storage than the brain, then transferring the brain's knowledge to the computer, then the brain can be lost without repurcussions if everything is on the massive computer(s).

[Xess]

I find it best to look at the continuity issue as being no different than going under full general anaesthesia. Using my wisdom tooth removal operation as a reference, I was sitting in the dentist chair, the drugs made me woozy and then next thing I know I'm in the recovery area stoned out of my gourd and making jokes.

From my perspective nothing has changed. But for all I know the doctors could have vapourized me and rebuilt me in the exact same way and I wouldn't know the difference. The only problem comes up if the transfer process is non-destructive and there winds up being two of you. You could get around this by transferring the data immediately after clinical death then it's no different from cryonics.

[Darth Servo]

Suppose science develops to the point where we can bring someone back from the dead, even though they've been gone say for a week. Are "you" still "you"?

[Kuroneko]

Consciousness is a property of the configuration of matter. Therefore, to preserve the continuity of consciousness, one must also preserve the continuity of the matter which makes up that consciousness.

Please be clear as to what you mean. I take the phrase "continuity of consciousness" to mean along the lines of "continuity of conscious thought" (and having asked you this once before, I recall you interpreting it that way as well). However, this meaning is clearly irrelevant in the context you're using it here--our brains do not continuously operate in that mode (and we can even include interruption of lower-level functions in scenarios such as cryogenic suspension). Under that reading, what you say is perfectly true but its relevance is very questionable--why should anyone put substantial value in continuously having conscious thoughts if even our everyday experience is discontinuous in that sense?

If here you're using the phrase in some other sense, please clarify. The straightforward interpretation seems to be true but of very dubious relevance, and I'm at a loss as to how to otherwise interpret it.

[Twoyboy]

Go to a man who really values art, and tell him that Rembrandt's Danaë should have been painted again from scratch by someone else instead of being restored in the aftermath of the 1985 attack. Whatever remains of you can continue the discussion.

But if I reproduced the painting accurate to such a small scale that the differences were unobservable, then it would effectively be the same painting. I'm sure if no one alive could tell the difference with the best available technology, there would be no reason to believe the copy is worth less than the original. I could interchange them and no one would have a rational reason to care. After all, we make millions of music CDs and no one believes the nth copy is of less value than the original.

As long as the brain structure in the new body was similar, if not identical, there shouldn't be any measurable continuity gaps.

That's what I believe. If the differences in all measurable indicators of consciousness are unobservable then they are not important, and if Joe didn't notice the procedure, his consciousness is continuous.

[Starglider]

Consciousness is a property of the configuration of matter.

Only in the technical sense; not in any way that makes a difference. I could implement a conscious entity using a sufficiently large system of marble runs (helta-skeltas). Sure it would think slowly, but it would be conscious. What happens if I freeze all the marbles in place and then unfreeze them later? What happens if I smash the helta skelta to pieces, then rebuild it exactly? Nothing. Can an AI be distributed on 1000 separate computers all around the world, communicating over the Internet? Yes. Say I want to move it to a different set of 1000 computers. Does it make any subjective or objective different if I do this one by one or all at once? No.

Danniel Dennet does a good and much more thorough deconstruction of this in 'The Mind's Eye'. Basically any 'oh but we must keep physical structures intact' argument is an intuition that collapses when applied to 'nontraditional substrates'. In fact all that matters is causal structure; the physical mechanisms you use to implement that causality, and their distribution in space and time, are irrelevant.

you are ignoring that continuity is a local property;

I am not ignoring it; I am rejecting it. Again, a sentient AI (running an upload if you wish) can be spread out across a planet with no trouble (maybe just a continent if you want a lockstep brain simulation). How 'local' is that? Of course in reality there is very little absolute difference between something the size of a human brain and something the size of a continent; both are ridiculously huge and spread out compared to an atom and microscopic compared to a galaxy. It's just your intuition telling you 'oh well a brain is obviously an indivisible repository of the soul, I mean special consciousness magic, whereas a computer network spread out across a planet is obviously too big to have a soul, ahem, I mean unitary subjective experience stream. What, you say that they're indistinguishable in practice? Well, erm... look the goodyear blimp!'

[Starglider]

The only way I could think of a process actually being the same entity would be a gradual replacement of brain cells with equivalent artificial ones.

The same/separate entity distinction is one that exists purely in your mind. Reality doesn't have 'entities'. It has piles of subatomic particles and that's it. What's happening here is that people are manipulating extremely abstract primitives, which are supplied by evolution and socialisation as efficient ways to function in human society. The broken part is that they're marked as 'indivisible'; for no good reason, solely because questions like 'what happens when you flash-upload someone' never came up in our evolutionary history and 'people are indivisible and embodied' was a safe assumption to make. Thus most people don't have the mental tools or motivation to break down the notion of 'person' into a more detailed model that can generate sensible answers to questions like this.

An AI incidentally does, unless it's designed in a pathetically neuromorphic fashion. If you ask a rational AI if the upload is the same person, it will say "Using the most consistent and meaningful interpretation of your extremely fuzzy concept 'person', yes it is." Incidentally rational AGIs will also treat being 'killed' and restored from a backup as amnesia - because there's no goal-relevant difference unless you put in a special and explicit goal 'assign negative utility to being reinstantiated in a new physical substrate over and above the negative utility of having the equivalent portions of your state reverted in the same physical substrate'. Looks pretty silly when you codify it like that doesn't it?