From: Hubert Mania (humania@t-online.de)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 09:23:49 MDT
Eugen wrote:
> Why do we keep having the same discussion, year, after year, after year?
Probably because of the unsolvable nature of the bifurcation paradox. There
will always be newbies who will ask the same questions over and over again
and even "old hares" will drop in from occasionally and catch fire one more
time. I bet anything that we will still discuss this in 2040. There's no
hope, Eugen :-)
Browsing through this long thread I get the impression that a term like
"continuity of consciousness" might be helpful. To put it simple: how can a
perfect copy ever be me as long as I still exist. Only if I, being the copy,
remember that I was scanned and saw me, as the carbon original, being
eliminated, there might be something like a continuity of consciousnes. As
soon as I still see him waving at me from the input side of the scanner, I
as the output product must acknowledge him as a different entity. And so,
continuity as we know it, as ONE single stream of consciousness flowing from
the original to the copy, might not be possible, apart from the fact that an
alienation takes places after the bifurcation point.
Maybe what we need in the first place is a completey new notion of
continuity of consciousness. Maybe we must develop a new generosity about
copies and originals unless we agree to get eliminated in the uploading
process for the sake of an old fashioned model of consciousness continuity.
humania
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