faustus (02/12/83)
Think of it this way: the only important thing that determines what you really are is the pattern of molecules and brain cells that make you up. So if you were disintegrated and reformed elsewhere by a transporter (a la Star Trek) you would not know the difference. You would still have the same memories, and the same body (or at least an identical one), so you would be the same person. But then, if you were to die normally, say, it is possible, given the laws of statistical mechanics, that a collection of molecules could randomly form an exact duplicate of you on the day that you died. So you would once again live. And given an infinity of time, this incredibly unlikely event will take place sometime. So you are immortal. I know, this is a silly argument, but for a bunch of similar and less far fetched examples of the strange ways that the phenomenon of consciousness works, and the paradoxes that you run into with it, read The Mind's I, edited by D. Hofstadter. Like, if you remove somebody's brain and put it into a tank, and then wire it to his body via radio links so that he experiences all of the sense perceptions that he would otherwise, where is he really? This is a very ambiguous question but still one that demands an answer. Say, what does everybody out there think of either of these propositions? I would be interested in what people have to say about what consciousness really is and how is works. I think that I am, therefore something thinks it thinks that I am, Wayne Christopher faustus@berkeley ucbvax!faustus