In a message dated 10/12/00 22:36:28 GMT Standard Time, extropy@russo.org
writes:
<< If it has my thoughts and memories, it's I (2-6). Which piece of
meat or silicon is housing those thoughts and memories is no more of
a question of "Which is I?" than if you evaluated me with and without
a nose job, or with and without $1,000,000 in my bank account.
>>
I agree. As the human bodies cells die and are replaced. The I of today
is not the same as the I of yesterday. The I of today in theory does not
posses a single cell from the I of 11 or 12 years ago. Even the entire
skeleton has been replaced. Yet I am still me and I do not refer to the hairs
on my brush or skinflakes on the floor as "I".
To me. "I" is all about where my conciousness resides. If I am copied,
one of us will be me the other will just be a copy. It only enters a grey
area if my conscience is expanded into the copy and then split. I could
emagine this like the feeling when you have slept on an arm, woken up with
your arm paralysed and your conscience (be it only in feeling rather than
thought) spreads out down your arm until it is a part of you. And then
suddenly cut off. granted an arm is not capable of independent thought but is
that arm still a part of "I" or is it just an "it". To me It is an "IT"
untill it is rejoined to my body. This goes for every other part of my body
except obvoiusly the brain. Or maybe not. If I grew a new part of my brain to
replace another part and then removed the other part keeping my brain
function intact. The part removed would not be me or part of me, This goes
for every other part of my brain. So "I" would purely be the contents of my
brain, Memories, experience and the way I think, but all of these could be
duplicated in an external body , but it would not be me. So what is Me ?.
Just the conciousness itself ? If that were true then am I not me when I am
unconcious. hmmm.. that doesn't seem to leave anything. OK so I don't exist.
Alex
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