Comment by gf000
5 days ago
Well, if you were to magically make an exact replica of a person, wouldn't it be conscious and at time 0 be the same person?
But later on, he would get different experiences and become a different person no longer identical to the first.
In extension, I would argue that magically "translating" a person to another medium (e.g. a chip) would still make for the same person, initially.
Though the word "magic" does a lot of work here.
I'm not talking about "identical" consciousnesses. I mean the same consciousness. The same consciousness cannot split into two, can it?
Either it is (and continues to be) the same consciousness, or it is not. If it were the same consciousness, then you would have a person who exists in two places at once.
Well, "the same consciousness" it's not, as for example it occupies a different position in spacetime. It's an identical copy for a split second, and then they start diverging. Nothing so deep about any of this. When I copy a file from one disk to another, it's not the same file, they're identical copies for some time (usually, assuming no defects in the copying process), and will likely start diverging afterwards.
It might be deeper than you think.
Qualia exist "outside" spacetime, e.g. redness doesn't have a position in spacetime. If consciousness is purely physical, then how can two identical systems (identical brains with identical sensory input) giving rise by definition to the same qualia not literally be the same consciousness?
4 replies →
Consciousness has no agreed upon definition to begin with, but I like to think of it as to what a whirlwind is to a bunch of air molecules (that is, an example of emergent behavior)
So your question is, are two whirlwinds with identical properties (same speed, same direction, shape etc) the same in one box of air, vs another identical box?
Exactly, I guess this starts to get into philosophical questions around identity real quick.
To me, two such whirlwinds are identical but not the same. They are the same only if they are guaranteed to have the same value for every conceivable property, forever, and even this condition may not be enough.