From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sun Jun 03 2001 - 14:05:18 MDT
Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de wrote,
> "I" and "me" are irrelevant: you are a physical system.
> If you address the physical layer, you've simultaneously
> dealt with any higher-level phenomena of the hardware layer.
> We could as well clone a swirling water box, or a running computer
> that I/Os with the real world. In fact when you do your
> gedanken it is really useful to choose systems which are
> not sentient -- the computer with machine vision and robotic
> arm assembling something would be actually a pretty good
> gedanken (which needs not to remain a gedanken -- just
> purchase two identical sets of hardware, program them,
> synch them, and let them interact with the real world,
> then suspend the processes after a timeout, and compare
> the core images and register sets bit for bit).
Agreed. I don't see anybody asking whether the copies are identical. I
don't think this is the question that is meant by the phrase "is it the same
me?" I think you are answering the wrong question.
A better phrasing of the question "is it the same me?" would be as follows:
Will the brain that feels pain from one body start feeling pain from the
other body? Will the brain that controls one body start controlling the
other body? Will one brain be able to perceive sensory input from both
bodies and control both bodies at the same time? Or, will both bodies be
controlled by separate brains that cannot directly perceive or control each
other?
Without neural connections between the two brains, I don't see how the two
sensory input stream or the two command/control streams will be delivered to
the same brain. It seems obvious that they are delivered to separate
hardware platforms, each running separate instances of software which
generate consciousness. These two hardware/software platforms are identical
but are not connected to each other. They can go about their separate ways
without being intertwined any more than unrelated humans would be.
Ignoring the point about how similar these copies are, what are the answers
to the above questions?
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> <http://Newstaff.com>
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