hedonologist

(edited to add the part in bold)
I don't think your memories make you, you, I think your memories tie your experiences to other experiences which "different selves" have had in that brain… that is, unless there is more to the experiencer that is preserved through time, than memories.

Say you had these options:

1) Having total amnesia, accept afterward you would relearn at an unprecedented rate, such that within a few months you would have learned "anything" objective you know of now, which you like/need to know. (Say you could use total virtual reality to have experiences like a baby.) [ I realized this option is either going to have to include things like childhood memories with your family, friends, etc, or it is not, so this hypothetical doesn't provide the distinction I was trying to make. So nevermind the part in italics, if you want. Maybe I will think of a different hypothetical.]

2) Your current brain could transfer all of your memories into an identical brain, meet this brain and make sure everything was "working", and then die.

Which would you prefer? I would choose 1.
Interesting. I'm not sure what you mean by "mysterious". I suppose I would be called a "substance dualist" to you then, though I'm not sure how you equate the sort of consciousness I think I have, with a "substance" as opposed to a "property". "Substance" and "property" both seem to be like objective distinctions, whereas I am saying we are subjects.

I do think that all reality can be viewed as one. Would it be one "substance" or one "energy" or one "experience" or one "experiencer" (who may be called "God" by some), seem to be just linguistic distinctions, ie differences in defining and associating those words, not differences in the raw "concept" or "perception" of the one reality, differences in how it is attempted to be described.

[ January 26, 2002: Message edited by: hedonologist ]</p>

hedonologist

excreationist, I started a new thread for all the "sexual" stuff <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=44&t=000131" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=44&t=000131</a>

When I get behind would you rather I start with your more recent posts and work my way back or vice versa? I would rather you do the former in case I have improved my thinking or expressed something more briefly, such that the earlier info would not need a reply because it had already been replied to.
So wouldn't it be true to say that I have the "freedom" to desire and choose pain, while knowing that it is pain, and not trying to get some pleasure in a round about or "subconscious" way, so long as my brain is NOT working "properly"? hehe
I think people can be "content" being pretty miserable, if they don't know they could have a better life, though all I would want is contentment as far as what I would think would be possible. So it is true that all that could matter to a person were contentment.
I suppose it takes some amount of faith to believe that a life of eating banana peals and rolling cigarettes would suck. hehe
How would you prove that you are the same experiencer who experienced the original sense data of the recorded the memories in your brain?

excreationist

hedonologist:
I answered this in my previous post. I'll just copy and paste what I wrote. (to avoiding thinking hard)

So I'm saying that you'd need some kind of brain and senses (and muscles, at least at some stage in your life) to be considered aware. I don't think there is a little organ of the brain that holds the consciousness that you can just pull out and hook it up to a life-support system. I think for me to be "me" it requires my memories - which make up most of my brain - and my senses and emotional system, etc, which make up the rest of my brain.

Well I wouldn't call a person that can't form new memories "properly functional" - or a person that has the IQ of a very drunk sheep. I'm saying that the system I'm describing its functioning properly in every single brain. It's like explaining how feet work and pointing out that not everyone has feet that work.

Yeah I know - I'm just saying that some electrical signals can be classified as being valid or invalid (kind of like pleasure and pain) which are only "valid" or "invalid" in a particular *context*. If the same code was run on a Mac or PC, it probably wouldn't even run at all. So it is about *context*. Pleasure and pain signals found in our brain have a certain function in our brain - not to other brains - but only to our own. From the brain's perspective or context they have a certain function.

Well I think the brain calculates how pleasurable or painful something is in a deterministic way. Then the result is also deterministic. (Though if quantum randomness exists then it is semi-deterministic)
It is deterministic physics that is "forcing" this all to happen, though the center-piece of it all is the processor of STM (in my theory) and I think that the "we" - the experiencer is a different name for exactly the same thing.
So I guess you could say that the mechanics of the universe is "forcing" us to think, etc. But if you look at it as a flow chart, the processor of STM is what has the "awareness" and what transforms input (experiences) into output (behaviour) - kind of like a CPU, even though a CPU is obviously deterministic.

If you looked at the entire thing you quoted, I didn't say memories were the only thing.

Well if your memory was completely wiped then they are both equivalent though you'd be made up of the same atoms rather than a copy of the original. I think if you wiped all my memories so that I was like a newborn baby my coherent "inner voice" - which makes me aware that "I" exist would have to start again from scratch. And it would probably develop in a different way - if only a couple atoms in my experiences are different this could cause the brain to develop in a slightly different way and so the fundamental "voice" and linguistic tying together of our memories (so that they can be freely accessed) would mean that is no longer "me". So the copy might be more like the real me. And it is safer too... the information of the original is only destroyed after I've seen that it worked properly. Though I guess VR is more interesting... I'd like to relive the past and even change history... but if my memories were wiped, I wouldn't know about my past self.

I don't really know what the difference between substance and property dualism though. I thought one kind of dualism involves matter and the spirit/soul - amd this is a mysterious thing. (Explaining how it is supposed to interact with matter, etc)

I think one substance is very different to saying there is one experiencer. When I talk about experiencers I mean that they are aware of many things simultaneously... well I guess the mechanical universe is kind of like that - applying its "rules" across the whole universe. But I don't think this process really can be said to have "intelligence".... I think that it involves huge amounts of randomness, and there are just small areas of intelligence, like on Earth.

Well so far I think I've been answering your earliest posts first. You can respond to mine in any order. (Assuming that I haven't answered exactly what you want to ask already)

Well I think if you motivational system isn't working properly at all then you wouldn't have the motivation to do anything. But usually people respond at least to physical pain.
As I said earlier, some people with damaged limbic systems can feel the physical injury signal but it doesn't feel "bad" to them. So they can seek this physical injury signal... it might seem bad because of other reasons - such as social rejection (other's don't like people harming themselves) but it can seem good because of pleasures like newness/danger/thrills.
So this person might be bored and crave some newness and decide to break their arm. They would feel the pain signal very intensely (like seeing an intensely red car - just a sensation - not pain) - and feel some thrills I guess. But eventually they'd probably feel guilty for not looking after their body (unless their friends don't mind).

Ultimately, yeah. Although some people want to aim high instead of living on low wages (which might give them more free time, etc).

You can't, but since the same brain is involved I thought it would be pretty obvious... e.g. say you did a heart transplant... the person would probably still be the same. Or a heart and lungs transplant... or a full body transplant except the head... the person would still be the same (unless the "soul" is below the neck). Or transplanting the body, face, eyes and skull with someone elses.... I thought the person inside would still be the same.

hedonologist

I wasn't talking about mixing the personalities I was talking about trading yours for mine. Like maybe I could convince you I had a better math skill so then you let me replace your math skills with mine. Then when it came to "desires" I would be asking the other desires in your current brain to evaluate the one desire I wanted to replace, in hopes that they would like "mine" more than "yours", then it would become "your" desire.

Maybe after replacing a whole bunch of my desires the combo-brain would become a "dualist" and then think it didn't want to replace the parts which are thought to be "experiencer", and the whole plan would "backfire" on "me". On the other hand, I would actually want to keep some of your desires in "my" new brain, because I don't identify myself with desires that I happen to have, and many desires would be voted out by the more primary desires which I consider more beneficial. A purpose of hedonology is to find which desires are beneficial, as opposed to being led by whatever desire happens to be present at a particular time.
Here again, I don't know what you mean by "you", unless you are not only defining me as the subject or experiencer "who I am now", but assuming that such a subject is preserved through time, instead of becoming a different person "proportional" to the physical changes.
I think you were saying you wanted to copy your personality, so I asked what that was. You said personality is behavior. In that hypothetical behavior is copied. So I'm showing that copying "personality" is not the same as copying "you". Why identify with a personality just because it is "yours", as opposed to choosing a personality to the extent you had this choice (though we are NOW limited in our ability to choose between personalities, because we have so many compulsions, etc, we have limited control over)?
(I put this at the bottom because I think I have said it before.) It seems you are still defining yourself as the subject of an experience, and that you are trying to reproduce the experiencer and memories vital to that experiencer. If you defined yourself as "physical" wouldn't you know whether either or each of those physical things were "you"?

hedonologist

Why doesn't it (you) think that it is information in a brain, instead of thinking it is a particular brain?
I think that just depends on how you define desire. I define it as subjective, thus it is impossible to find a neuro-state that IS desire, while it is inevitable that there be some neruro-state which corresponds with (subjective) desire or the recorded memory of such desire, rather. We have discovered the experience of the memory of desires corresponds with the brain, we may find a more specific correspondence (ie part of the brain where a particular desire is "felt", etc) but no matter how precise we are, we will always be left with the same dualist experience of sensing a brain from the outside vrs "being that brain". What you or I sense I call "body", what you or I are I call "mind" or experiencer, assuming you are not a zombie.
Well, we will let it slide this time, but from now on we want you in the corner, silent as a mouse, hands folded, taking notes.