From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Feb 06 2003 - 21:47:24 MST
Jef writes
> Max M wrote:
>
> > I understand the argument, and that our bodies and minds are playing
> > tricks on us. Delivering senses late, and then after-rationalise. Taking
> > decisions and then telling the self that it was it who did it. But
> > this does not mean that there is no self. It only means that we are a
> > slightly more distributed system than most people think.
>
> Yes, the well-known split brain experiments, and other recent discoveries
> tell us that we are not quite who we think we are. So how far might this
> extend...?
I talk about this in an old essay "The Dissolution of Identity",
http://www.leecorbin.com/dissolu.html , which still accurately
conveys my worries about that.
> > Changes are part of being alive. We are running the program so to
> > speak. If we did not change we would be in a state of death. So
> > living is changing.
I agree with what Max literally writes, but perhaps not with
what he means. An old argument on this forum is the degree
to which one can be said to be living if one is in a loop,
say, experiencing the same year over and over again exactly.
I consider that to be quite alive, thank you, and if I get
my way, someday I'll have versions of myself running which
do nothing but re-experience 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and
so on. (If CPU time is cheap enough, of course.) If there
is an objective physics time pointer, and the value of that
pointer is (at the instant I am typing this) 2262 AD, then
I am indeed glad that a future me has succeeded in having
2003 run again!!
> I think we are referring to two different things here. I agree with you
> that living implies changing. I was saying people conventionally think
> of themselves as having some essentially continuous or unchanging aspect,
> and suggesting that this too is suspect and will have low value to us as
> we advance beyond our evolutionary bonds.
But some of our aspects, like our beloved old memories are
unchanging, or as nearly so as we can manage.
> > You have yet to prove that the self is illusionary! The
> > theory goes against both common sense and observations.
>
> I say it's illusory because it's not what it appears.
>
> I am not arguing that self is not a useful concept. I'm sure that a sense
> of self has been essential to survival at the most fundamental level. A
> successful organism must distinguish between Inside and Outside in order to
> fight and defend.
>
> I'm suggesting that the conventional concept of self is due for upgrading as
> we move beyond evolutionary constraints.
Yes, I think that you and Max are converging here, and I do
agree with you. Except that while I indeed hope my self
evolves---perhaps in the direction you indicate---that should
not have to occur at the expense of my backup versions running
the old selves.
And it is for sure that one of the primary motives for wishing
that lives be saved is that the selves who inhabit those lives
are real and ought to persist and prevail.
Lee
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