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Pastimes : Neocon's Seminar Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (988)	6/16/2004 11:29:27 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1112

The explanation for humans works pretty well for normal human experience. In some science fiction like hypothetical examples happened then things would get more confusing. But any speculation on those is speculation without real data. It might be interesting but at least until there was real data (if even then) it would be hard to form any solid conclusions. When you are talking about humans you can consider the person's physical continuity or their memories and accumulated changes in ideas and personality. Most people would probably consider the 2nd one to be more important, but physical continuity is not unimportant. If you copied someone exactly while retaining the original copy most people would consider the original to be the real person even though the new copy has a physical similarity and the same memories and ideas. If you destructively (destroying the body) copied someone's exact mental state and memories in to a computer many would hesitate to consider the computer the same person because it has neither physical similarity not any physical continuity. If you could swap memories and mental states between people I would think of the memories and mental states as being the real person not the body, but not everyone would agree. If you could edit people's memories and thoughts and you did a major edit would you be in a sense killing the person or just changing them? All of the above assumes that there is nothing outside of the physical body, memories and mental state that determine identity. Either there is nothing like a soul, or the soul merely is the memories and mental state, or the memories and the mental state are attached to the soul in some way. In Star Trek McCoy sometimes wondered if his soul was sent through the transporter. Your body including your brain was destroyed, another one with the same mental state is created hundreds or thousands of miles away, but is it the same person or just a copy. As far as others are concerned it is the same person, but is the person involved really dead while another person takes his place? If there is something (like a soul), outside of the physical or even the mental aspects of humanity, and that thing could be detached from your current memories and mental state then you could get a situation where you are still you, but you have no physical or even mental continuity with your previous state. One example of this would be reincarnation with no previous memories, another would be some sort of fantastic/magical switch with someone else where you not only take over there body (and they take over yours) but their mental state and memories as well. Tim