At 12:44pm -0800 12/10/00, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>You know, the old idea of Descartes (and much older of course) that
>human beings are some kind of immortal spiritual stuff in a material
>body is pretty interesting in light of recent discussions about
>immortality options involving uploading and transference of
>consciousness. If in fact we can gain sufficient knowledge to capture
>the unique "program" of a person's consciousness and transfer it to
>another body or computer or whatever then Descartes claim is not so
>bizarre after all. The immaterial spirit has become "information" or
>"the program" or the running emergent phenomenon thereof.
>
>- samantha
This parallel has occurred to me as well. Our "true essence" seems
to be contained in neither matter or energy, but in information.
Information cannot be touched or measured like physical matter or
energy. It is a non-corporeal entity that can exist in or out of a
particular body, or can be transferred between bodies. It can exist
or be lost, but it cannot interact directly with our physical
universe like matter or energy.
-- Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
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