From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Oct 29 2002 - 10:01:25 MST
owner-extropians@extropy.org wrote:
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
>> gts wrote:
>>> Your false reasoning has lead you to promulgate the ridiculous
>>> conclusion that in the scenarios you describe, SELF = OTHER. That
>>> conclusion is clearly false by any sane and workable definitions of
>>> the words "self" and "other."
>>
>> Well, what is at stake is the evolutionarily new situation
>> of hypothetical duplicating machinery, applied to soulless
>> entities made up of atoms, a concept also that we are not
>> prepared for.
>
> What is at stake here is the validity of rational thought as a means
> of comprehending reality.
>
> Your argument attempts to equate two mutually exclusive concepts
> ("self" and "other").
### Now, let's do some rational analysis here.
If I stay with somebody in a room, we exchange atoms by breathing. If my
atoms are "self", soon there will overlap of "self" and "other".
Or maybe I start talking to somebody and exchange ideas. If "self" is made
of ideas, there soon will be overlap of "self" and "other".
Perhaps I would choose to establish a direct neural link to the person I
talked to. In that case her thoughts would be accessible to me like the
thoughts originating within my own skull. If the feeling of direct access is
what makes "self", then there would be overlap of "self" and "other".
Finally, after extensive mental communion (mediated by advanced hardware)
I/we would decide to rewire our prefrontal cortices (the material substrate
supporting the idea you call "self"), to voluntarily merge our motivational
concepts of self, without losing any of the memories and capabilities each
one of me/her had before we met. In that case again, there would be overlap
of "self" and "other".
"Self" and "other" are not simple mathematical statements that could be
"mutually exclusive". These are complex mental constructs evolved for
specific adaptationist goals, and as such cannot be easily stuffed in a
couple of glib definitions.
Be so kind and refrain from peremptory denouncement of your adversaries as
irrational. What we do, is not to play at sophistry and rejection of
rationality, but to expand the scope of rational thought to encompass and
possibly supplant the simple evolutionary adaptations which won't work well
anymore when uploading becomes available.
Rafal
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