Akkleptos wrote:You've just hit the nail on the head. The problem here seems to be that we've been using "person" in different meanings. For you, it's the distinct sapience, memories, reactions, ideas... the mind, for short. For me, a person is all that plus the body. No, I'm not trying to attach any metaphysical or magical importance to the body itself. In fact, let's call it instead a "host", be it biological or otherwise (computer, bio-droid, software...).
I can sympathise with you general scheme as you lay it out here, and I can certainly understand some of your concerns, but given the limitations of the gedankenexperiment, I'm not sure you can avoid attaching some kind of special importance to bodies without some kind of metaphysical principle of identity, as a host or otherwise.
But first, let me make sure I'm clear on what you mean. Marina has propose that the
only ultimate (that is, common and peculiar) trait of a person (that is, something we'd call sapient, let's ignore what that might really entail for now) is the collection of their experiences, thoughts, perceptions, and other mental characteristics. And thus, if you could shift all those characteristics from our brains to a computer, or from our brain to another brain, without any non-trivial loss, then that person could be considered, at the moment of transferral, to be the same person. They would not remain the same person, since the experiences would start diverging, which is why you euthanise the first host during transfer to avoid ethical issues. She then claims since one person went in, and the same person came out with a different extension, no one has been killed in the process.
You agree with her to the point where you also claim that our collection of experiences, perceptions, and other mental phenomena are vital to who we are, but want to deny that we could perform such a transfer
in principle and come out with the same people, since the particular physical extension is part of who that person is. That is, even if we had the arbitrary technology required to perform such an operation, it would still be killing a
person - not just a body or a host, but a person - because that person would disappear with their body, and a new, if in many ways very similar person would come out of the process.
Is that fair? (I'll pretend that it is until corrected for purposes of responding to the rest of your post.)
Note, it occurred to me as I wrote this post, that the true difference between the two view points is not simply of mental vs physical properties, but a notion of identity as a process vs identity as an object. The former being Marina's (and mine, if probably not in the exact same way) position of an identity as being a collection of information, and the latter being yours. Not necessarily a physical object, but some
thing that you can attach to a certain person and in virtue of which you can say a person is self-same (themself). Is this still fair? I'll explain a little more about what I mean later on in the post.
Having thus defined the terms, what I'm saying is that while the mind (the person, by your definition) clearly continues to exist, the "host" is killed. This would result in the person (by my definition) getting killed, even though there is a mind that is exactly the same that carries on living, interacting, thinking, etc., since the original (let's call this one "subject A") ceases to experience anything. There is a termination of the continuity of experience. Sure, there is another instance of this same mind (as said previously by someone on this same thread, this language is not fit to talk about these things as accurately as we would like) and for what anyone else cares, it's subject A. Only subject A (body and all the set of phenomena we call mind characteristic to it) ceased to exist -the physical body and that instance of the mind.
So I interpret that the person continues to exist as an individual (subject B). Yes, he can still think, perceive, communicate, pay taxes and work (well, depending on the vehicle, I guess). In that sense, well, yeah, of course. But as far as subject A is concerned, well, he just ceased to perceive, feel, communicate and everything (I'm talking about the 1st instance of the same mind).
Some of this should be quoted above, since I incorporated it while trying to understand part of your fundamental position, but bear with me as it also applies here. I'm not precisely sure what you mean to say, but that's mostly the fault of some of our language being slippery while trying to talk about this. The initial host of subject A would indeed be killed, as their body would be euthanised during the hypothetical process. And thus you claim that the person dies, since their continuity of experience ceases to be, even though an identical mind shows up in subject B. This is somewhat confusing to me, as it appears to be, and correct me if I'm wrong, treating a mind as a discrete entity. It is true that with the death of the host body A, the physical instantiation of those chemical properties that give arise to A's consciousness cease, and that a new set of processes (chemical, or electronic, or otherwise) show up elsewhere. But how are you claiming that these are identical? They're clearly not "identical" in the sense of them being the
self-same processes, since they're discontinuous. They're functionally identical as per the experiment's stipulations, but if they're functionally identical, then isn't the person functionally the same person?
To elaborate, if the new collection of consciousness giving processes are functionally identical in subject B as in subject A, what basis is there for treating that new person differently? They function the same way, and consequently give the appearance of being the same person, even to the subject herself. I am not the same person I was when I was born, as my body is continuously regenerating itself, so in a sense I am not the same host as I was back then. Then what is the important difference between the two subjects? Subject A has indeed ceased to perceive, but I can conceptually slice up myself into time-dependant slices, each thinking they're connected to all the past time slices, which progressively cease to perceive as well. What's the difference between the two cases?
I don't see how you take the consciousness, self-awareness and -most importantly in my definition- the continuity of experience from a person (in human host, or even in computer form, for that matter) going to sleep and then waking up in a new host. That's magic for me, since those would actually be the memories from instance 1 of the mind being recalled by instance 2 of the same mind. And it's okay, since as per your definition, we could say that the individual (memories, personality, mental habilities and processes) is still around. That's not what I'm arguing. What I'm saying is that poor instance 1 of the mind never wakes up. In it's continuity of experience, there's nothing after going to sleep. That means that a sentient being, instance 1, was effectively eliminated.
This does make your earlier reluctance somewhat more clear, but I think you're conflating two issues. You speak both of continuity of
consciousness and continuity of the
host. You claim that it's like magic, because the memories are somehow false ones, due to a change in instantiation, despite preserving the functional identity of the mind. If I'm reading you right, it's the continuity that's important here, so let's split that up. If continuity is
necessary to preserve identity through time, it must be because either (i) the mind must be continuous, (ii) the body must be continuous, or (iii) both must be continuous. Let's break this down into each case.
If the mind must be continuous, we have to make some awkward concessions, as we already have cases of discontinuous minds. Let's take the case of a viciously evil murderer. One who rapes babies, tortures black people to death because he thinks it's funny, and does any other acts such that we can all agree that he is not very nice, and that he is responsible for his actions and should be held accountable for them. Now, let's say that they die, and his consciousness ceases to be conscious (for lack of terminology). Five minutes later, he's resuscitated by some skilled EMTs and he comes through with essentially no brain damage, and still considers himself himself, remember everything that happened, and so on. But his consciousness is discontinuous. If we hold mental continuity as a stipulation for self-identity, we cannot prosecute that person for his crimes, or even hold him morally responsible, because
he did not do anything. At most we can say that he has false memories of a different person, but he no more did those acts any more than I performed any acts that I dreamt up. I
remember doing them, but I did not perform them.
Let's say then that it's physical continuity. This is harder to find a real life example of, since we cannot, at the moment, experience a physical discontinuity. So let me propose a subsidiary thought experiment instead. Take a hypothetical intelligent computer. It seems reasonable to think that these could exist, since we're intelligent, and there's nothing special about our bodies. They're
complex, but in theory you could represent us as a long series of messy functions on a computer, even if it meant simulating electron and neuron interactions in a physics modeler. So there is a computer, and it controls a mechanical body. It uses this mechanical body to murder a family, and then saves the current state of its operating state (the sum of its saved to storage data, operating memory, current instructions, etcetera) and then has this saved state transferred to a new and unrelated physical computer, wiping the previous body clean of all trace of its presence, so it's a blank string of zeroes on a computer. It then has itself turned on. Seeing as it just suspended its operations and restarted them up, I think it's persuasive to say (and correct me if you do not agree) that this is the same set of programmes running, that is, the same intelligence that has just moved bodies. Do we want to say it never committed those murders? We can fix up the example so not a single atom is shared in common with the original body, only the information that makes the consciousness operate. If there's anything special about the body that makes a person a person, that is lost and we can no longer hold this intelligence responsible for the acts committed by the previous body.
Of course, it could be a mixture of both. However, seeing as it can't be either alone, I find it implausible to think that it's a combination of both, and cannot think of a decent way to try to argue the case. If you have a method in mind, I entreat you to share your ideas.
What you're saying is especially interesting, since it opens a whole brave new world of possibilities. Imagine Bob hates John's guts and he wants to kill him. If John get's... uh... "duplicated" in body and mind (or just in mind, since that's what the person -your definition- is), then we could let Bob have it's way and dispose of John's original body and the firt instance of his mind. I wonder if the courts of the future would not consider it "murder":
Prosecution: This man has killed a human being, a living sentient being, John!
Defence: What are you talking about? John's right here!
John (instance 2, host 2): Hello there!
If what you're saying is that since the mind persists, well, yeah, nobody is arguing that. What I'm saying is that mind instance 1, host 1, very effectively dies. We could say, by what I think I understand from your argument, that only one set of the person has been eliminated.
I agree it opens up a whole brave new world of possibilities, this conception of an information based personality identity. I don't think you have one of them right there. I think what you're saying is rather like the defense claiming that because John has a new car, Bob could never have destroyed his old car. Allow me to back up and illustrate the important distinction.
In this example, Bob killed John's body, and John was given a new body with a copy of his mind inserted into it. But that's just it - Bob hasn't killed a human
being (person), he's killed a human
body. John
is still there, but his old body is not. I agree this would lead to interesting new case law about the status of a body versus a mind, but I don't think it poses a problem to the notion that we can have a discontinuous but still self-identified and functionally identical person. Even if we agree the mind died, the mind was also brought back, rather like someone who was killed by a murderer, but brought back to life by very skilled EMTs. We can still charge the attempted murderer for all sorts of things, but we don't treat the case as if there suddenly is a new person running around instead of John. The only difference between the EMT case and the postulated case is that the flesh is different. But since the flesh in itself isn't important, as shown by example above, then either it must be because there is some metaphysical specialness to flesh, which both of us want to deny, or because of some flaw in my argument, which I beg you point out to me should there be one.
What if we eliminate the problem of sentience, or a human mind altogether. A cat, subject A, is cloned and has the entirety of its mental processes (or whatever necessary to insure the preservation of its mental, personal uniqueness) transferred to a fresh clone, subject B. If you kill subject A, of course instance 1 of the common mind is over.
Yes, the continuity of consciousness ceases, and then starts up again at some point in the future. I still am not seeing why this is a problem for identity, unless you want to fiat some special attribute of some particular lump of flesh or silicon or what have you.
That's why I used the pinching example. Instance 1 (or original mind/person/personality) does not experience anything further after being killed. Instance 2 does, in its host. Taking it back to humans: if you pinch, say, frogcurry, I won't feel a thing, I will not experience the same. Oh, yeah, you might say, but your minds are different. Well, how exactly does having the same exact mind make a difference? Clearly we would be talking about 2 physical (or even logical, if you prefer) subjects. The fact that they both have the same mind is utterly irrelevant. Two living subjects. I think the right expression is that a copied mind in a new host does not produce "you", but rather "another you".
I would ask you to clarify what you mean by having the same mind. So, in the case of a simple discontinuous jump between bodies like Marina has proposed, you don't run into this problem, I don't think, any more than you run into it in the EMT case. If I pinch a person, then they die and are resuscitated, have I retroactively not pinched them? If we're talking about a single conscious mind that is duplicated into two media, and I pinch one, well, then they're no longer the same person. Their experiences have diverged, making them distinct from one another. The concept of "you" I do not take in this context to be static. An identity, since it's just information over time within the scheme being thought of, is a process, not an object, and so consequently you can have a fork in identity, resulting in two people from one common source, just as much as you can have a code fork produce two distinct but related programmes from a common source.
This is an important difference. Some of the confusion, I think, is due to a definition mismatch. For the notion of "another you" to make sense at all you have to think about an identity as an object in some sense. Obviously not a physical one, but there has to be some definite property, or mental concept, or metaphysical object that states, basically, "This thing here is Meredith" for example. Then when you have the duplication described in the thought experiment being considered, you get the further step, "This new thing over here is another Meredith". This I think gets confusing, and I want to reject that that's a valid move. Instead, I want to claim that the notion that I am the kind of thing that you can attach the appellation "This thing here is Meredith" is a category mistake. Instead, "Meredith" is a process, a collection of information defined by its content as it changes through time. You can have a fork that produces two collections of information that change through time both of which were at one point identical. Does this make them identical? No, of course not. They're related, but as time moves forward they will vary further apart from each other. Likewise, you could freeze that collection of information, analyse it, copy it over to a new body, and restart it. (Loosely speaking, do a brain scan and transfer that information to a new body/computer.) It would still be the same person insofar as a computer programme can be frozen and restarted again and still be, in some sense, the same programme.
You may be familiar with those claims that, even though helping just one person, saving just one person's life (from drugs, from starvation in a Thirld World country) doesn't make a real difference. And of course, one could always counter: well, for that person, it meant a world of difference. That's what I'm talking about. The continuity of experience. What do I care if my mind/personal uniqueness survives in a new host, if I'm going to die? As you said, my "person" (in your definition) still lives on. But I, Akkleptos, borne of woman on the 30th of March, 1974 -in my continuity of experience- die. No more pizza for me.
And yet, we don't have continuity of experience in the real world in all cases. And in a very absolute way of death and resuscitation, ignoring fuzzy cases like comas. My very point is that you mind/personal uniqueness
is all you are. Your physical host is just something you're attached to, literally and sentimentally. That may be a good reason to keep it, and for you it appears to be so, even if alternatives were available in feasible form, but if you didn't keep it for whatever reason, you would still be you in the important sense of the notion of 'you'.
