>From: "John Clark" <jonkc@worldnet.att.net>
>
>The question nobody wants to answer clearly because is would just sound
>too stupid is this:
>
>Question: I've been making and destroying a billion Harvey Newstroms
>every second since you were a one celled zygote, so who is the original
>Harvey Newstrom?
Obviously the answer you're looking for is that the "original" Harvey was
the one-celled zygote you started copying way back when. But I think the
more pertinent question is "who is the original Harvey who knows he is
Harvey?"
After all, I belive you realize that *consciousness* is the thing we care
about and want to preserve. My baby toe on my left foot is just as much a
part of the physical me as any other physical part of me. But if my toe got
cut off, I would still consider myself to be fully alive and would be
convinced that *I* continue to exist. So you're right its not simply the
collection of atoms that makes me, it is the constituents of my
consciousness.
We could argue until the singularity comes about *when* consciousness has
sufficiently developed so that I realize that I exist. But, whenever it was
that my consciousness began to develop, that's when the original "me" began
to form.
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
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