esk@wucs.UUCP (Eric Kaylor) (11/30/84)
[] From: mwm@ea.UUCP (<mike) > Now, read the last line from me carefully: "I hope to be uploaded to > *something* ... ." Key word: "something." I claim that "I" can function on > other hardware, be it meat, silicon, plasma, or whatever. [I also claim I > can *prove* that that can happen, barring dualism!] Therefore, I can change > "bodies" - so I am not a body, any more than I am a house. Both are things > that "I" temporarily make use of. Well, actually I hope you're right, but here's why I think you're not. I don't think you can endure on any type of hardware except "meat". The reason is that your mental life is bound up with the type of activity that occurs in the brain, and this may be relevantly different from the type of activity in a silicon chip. My view is called "type-type materialism" (because it holds that each type of mental event is identical with a type of physical ("material") event), and you can find a defense of it in a recent (Je? 84) issue of the philosophical journal *Synthese*. I do not even grant that *you* could endure on different hardware even of the "meat" variety, though I do grant -- what is just as good -- that the resulting person of putting "your software" into "new hardware" might as well be you for all practical purposes, though strictly speaking it would not be you. "All practical purposes" here includes the implication that, though strictly speaking such a transfer would be the end of *you*, this would not constitute a reason for you not to do it. ______ | | |o. " ... and when I die |\ | | | and when I'm gone | o| o| | there'll be o| one child born to carry on ..." --Paul V. Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047 Please send any mail directly to this address, not the sender's. Thanks.
barry@ames.UUCP (Kenn Barry) (12/03/84)
[] From Paul Torek: > From: mwm@ea.UUCP (<mike) >> Now, read the last line from me carefully: "I hope to be uploaded to >> *something* ... ." Key word: "something." I claim that "I" can function on >> other hardware, be it meat, silicon, plasma, or whatever. [I also claim I >> can *prove* that that can happen, barring dualism!] Therefore, I can change >> "bodies" - so I am not a body, any more than I am a house. Both are things >> that "I" temporarily make use of. > > Well, actually I hope you're right, but here's why I think you're not. > I don't think you can endure on any type of hardware except "meat". The > reason is that your mental life is bound up with the type of activity that > occurs in the brain, and this may be relevantly different from the type of > activity in a silicon chip. My view is called "type-type materialism" > (because it holds that each type of mental event is identical with a type > of physical ("material") event), and you can find a defense of it in a > recent (Je? 84) issue of the philosophical journal *Synthese*. This seems to me clearly half-right (no equivocation here!). I'm sure if I were uploaded to a silicon brain I would change, and change in ways that would not have occurred if I hadn't been moved to different hardware. But, hey, I change every day, anyway. Whatever changes occurred would, I think, be gradual enough that I would still have the continuous sensation of "selfness". I'm already a far different entity than I was when I was 5, for instance; not only externally, but also in my experience of my own selfness. Am I the *same* person? Does it matter? Give me a shot a silicon immortality and I'll take it. That's the only answer I can give to this question; anyone have any other ideas? - From the Crow's Nest - Kenn Barry NASA-Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USENET: {dual,hao,menlo70,hplabs}!ames!barry SOURCE: ST7891