Hi.
A simple thought experiment occurred to me earlier today and I wanted to share it to see if anyone can see any problems with it.
DISCLAIMER: This thought experiment is a simple yet fresh (I believe) take on a problem that has been Done to Death. As far as I am aware, I have never seen this exact formulation discussed before, and I think it has very important ramifications that other thought experiments of this ilk fail to illustrate.
It explores the idea of maintaining personal identity (i.e., continuing to survive as the same person) even after transferring your consciousness into a machine, leaving your biological body lifeless and inert, and it seems to dispel the fairly common claim that such a thing is not possible. (Indeed, in this thought experiment, it seems impossible to deny that identity has been maintained.)
Because I'm feeling narrative and it's 5:00 in the morning and I'm hoping it will make this less boring to read, I am presenting it as thus:
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[Thought Experiment:]
You have cancer; it's terminal. They're sure: there's nothing they can do to help you.
Your body is going to die.
However, your brain is entirely unaffected. (So far, at least.) The cancer hasn't spread there yet. You are fully lucid and functional, and you're still your same old, happy-go-lucky self. (Other than the physical symptoms of the cancer, of course.)
That's why you're here at The Clinic today: you want to preserve that self.
You want to survive the inevitable death of your body.
So we begin the procedure:
You sit down in a comfortable chair.
Next to you is another chair and sitting in that chair is a perfect mechanical replica of your body. I'm not exaggerating: it is a literally perfect replica. Every single biological detail has been unfailingly, faithfully recreated. The replica is functionally identical to your current body (sans the cancer, of course); it is made from different materials than your human body, but it has been carefully engineered to be functionally indistinguishable from your biological form. From head to toe, from brain to bladder, it is functionally identical. However, it is dormant. It hasn't been "turned on" yet; once it is "turned on" though, it will behave in a fashion indistinguishable from and perfectly identical to the way your present human body behaves, in all respects.
It's a truly wondrous product of engineering.
The procedure today is going to be simple:
We are going to connect your brain to the Replica's brain. As you may or may not know, your brain is divided into various regions that are each responsible for performing certain mental tasks: for example, there is a section of your brain responsible for processing language, another for performing arithmetic, and various other regions responsible for processing each of your senses -hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch, etc. The Replica also has these exact same regions, and the Replica's regions have been engineered to be exact copies of those found in your current brain. The exactness of this copying is important: as you may or may not know, even tiny changes in brain structure can have profound influences on behavior and personality, so we have gone to excruciating lengths to ensure that this Replica is a perfectly faithful recreation of your current brain. (You've probably been wondering why all of those scanning devices are hooked to your head: this is what those are for. As we are talking, your brain is undergoing tiny structural changes in response to our conversation: these scanners pick up those changes and alter the Replica to ensure that it maintains its perfect likeness of your brain.)
We are going to hook every individual region of your biological brain to the corresponding region in the Replica's brain. So, for example, your region for sight will be hooked to the Replica's region for sight, and your region that handles language will be hooked to the Replica's region that handles language.
The nature of this connection is complicated (and proprietary), but it is such that it allows your brain and the Replica's brain to actually interface with one another: that is, your brain and the Replica's brain will be able to connect and smoothly operate as one unit.
In fact, that is the core of our procedure that we will be performing today: One region at a time, we are going to disable a region in your biological brain while simultaneously "turning on" the corresponding region in the Replica's brain and -this is the cool part- because your brain and the Replica's brain are connected together, the activity of the Replica brain's regions will seamlessly mesh with your biological brain's activity and smoothly take over handling the duties that the now-disabled biological region used to handle.
So, for example, we will turn off the part of your biological brain that performs arithmetic while simultaneously "turning on" the part of the Replica brain that performs arithmetic, and the Replica's "arithmetic region" will start performing all arithmetic calculations for you.
To test this, we will ask you to perform a simple arithmetic operation ("1+1 = ? ") prior to the "switch off-switch on" and then we will ask you to do that same arithmetic operation again afterwards. The first time you answer, you will have computed your response using your biological "arithmetic region"; the second time, you will compute your response using the Replica's "arithmetic region".
It will simply seamlessly merge with the activity of your still-living brain! You won't lose consciousness, feel disoriented, or suffer any sort of cognitive irregularity: the procedure is smooth and seamless. Most importantly, you will maintain a metacognitive awareness of the entire procedure: we will do a 3-2-1 countdown prior to performing the "switch", so you will be consciously aware of the moment when we transfer some of your mental processing over to the Replica. Furthermore, all of these fancy monitors and screens you see in front of you will display real-time scans of your brain activity (and the Replica's brain activity) so you can visually see when the "switch" happens.
You will be awake and aware the entire time. None of your mental functions will be compromised or interrupted. (This includes your memory.) Your consciousness will be maintained throughout the entire procedure.
This process works so smoothly because the Replica is such a perfectly engineered copy of your brain. The Replica will be monitoring your biological brain's activity in perfect detail, so it will be ready to exactly mimic and resume that exact activity the moment we perform the "switch" -Your brain literally won't miss a beat. The Replica region will seamlessly integrate with all of the regions of your biological brain that are still functioning and you won't even be able to feel the difference.
We will do this process repeatedly, one region at a time, until your entire biological brain is disabled and the entire Replica brain is "turned on". At that point, your consciousness will have been completely transferred to your new, cancer-free Replica body!
Here at The Clinic, disposal of your crappy old--erm, I mean, uh... burial and funeral services for your former body are included at no extra cost!
[/Thought Experiment]
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So, some interesting questions arise from that:
(1.) Imagine the first "switch": let's say they are going to "switch" your arithmetic region first.
Prior to performing this very first "switch" they ask you: "What is '1 + 1 = ? " And you answer "2".
Question: At this point in time, are you still yourself?
The obvious answers seems to be yes, since they haven't even done anything to you yet.
Now, imagine that they perform that first "switch". They "turn off" the arithmetic region of your biological brain while simultaneously "turning on" the arithmetic region of the Replica brain. The Replica's arithmetic region smoothly and seamlessly accommodates itself into your mental activity. The net result is that there is no discernible difference in net brain activity. It's as if nothing changed, as far as brain activity is concerned. You are, of course, metacognitively aware that your brain has been meddled with: the monitors clearly showed the halting of activity in your biological "arithmetic region" and the simultaneous beginning of activity in the Replica's "arithmetic region". You waited with nervous anticipation as The Clinic operator counted down "3...2...1...switching", and you sat in anxious silence afterwards for what seemed like an eternity waiting for something to feel...different. (Although that feeling never came.) And through all of that, you were awake and aware and coherent.
They ask you again: "What is '1 + 1 = ? " And you answer "2".
Question: At this point in time, are you still yourself?
It is tempting to say no, because part of you has "died" and been replaced by a foreign "thing", but I think that answer is flawed.
When a person loses their leg and has it replaced with a prosthetic, would you say that they are no longer the same person?
I am assuming most people answer 'no' to that question (because some seriously absurd scenarios can occur if you answer 'yes'); If so, how is this "brain region prosthetic" any different than a prosthetic leg? I would contend that it is not any different at all.
If that argument isn't compelling for you, consider this: You were awake and aware the whole time this "switch" was happening. You felt anxiety as the countdown occurred; you clenched the handles of the chair tightly in fear as the machines around you made strange noises during the "switch", you watched as the colored regions on the monitors changed during the "switch", and you waited anxiously in fear afterwards to see if you felt any different.
It seems incoherent to say that it was a different person experiencing all of those things. And if it wasn't a different person, then you are forced to admit that you are still yourself, even after the "switch" has occurred.
So it seems that we must admit that doing this first "switch" does not compromise your identity.
Similarly, then, subsequent "switches" should not compromise your identity either.
But what about the final "switch": the one where they kill the last active region of your biological brain and "turn on" the final region of the Replica and thereby permanently and irrevocably separate your consciousness from your biological body?
You are just as aware and coherent for that "switch" as you were for all the others. The Clinic operator even warns you that: "This is the final switch. This will turn off the last bit of your biological brain and your consciousness will be completely transferred over to your new body." You experience the fear and apprehension as he says that, you experience the anxiety and doubt and conflicting emotions as you watch the last bit of your biological brain fade away on the monitor, and you experience the uncertainty afterwards and the confusion as to why you don't really feel any different.
It seems incoherent to deny that it is the same person experiencing all of those things. All of the memories and emotions and thoughts are perfectly interconnected, in a real, objectively verifiable, historically accurate way. How can it possibly be the case that my thoughts, feelings, hopes, memories, and fears one moment result in the creation of an entirely new person that is not in any way identical to myself the next moment? (And that this sudden creation of a new person is accompanied by my sudden and abrupt extinction.)
It seems, to me at least, that the only coherent conclusion is that identity is maintained throughout the procedure.
If that's the case, then it is true that it is entirely possible for an individual to survive the death of their body and to continue living. Right?
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Edit: Further reflection has convinced me that the section below that I originally included here is incorrect. I'll leave it to avoid any confusion regarding responses to it, but I have realized that while this thought experiment is indeed immune to the "copies problem", it is immune for different reasons.
Further, in thought experiments of this variety, people often address the idea of "copies": the idea that numerous Replicas are made instead of just one. The "copies" problem often results in bizarre scenarios and contradictions and is one of the main objections to the idea of maintaining identity past bodily death.
This thought experiment is immune to the "copies" problem. Because one of the premises of the procedure is that you do not suffer any cognitive irregularities, it is necessarily true that no "copies" could be made here. (An example that illustrates this clearly is imagining what would happen if you "switched" the vision region of the brain to a bunch of "copies" instead of just one Replica: suddenly, the person undergoing the procedure would find themselves seeing out of the eyes of numerous "copies" instead of just seeing out of one set of eyes. This is obviously a massive departure from regular cognition and would destroy the integrity of the procedure.)
A simple thought experiment occurred to me earlier today and I wanted to share it to see if anyone can see any problems with it.
DISCLAIMER: This thought experiment is a simple yet fresh (I believe) take on a problem that has been Done to Death. As far as I am aware, I have never seen this exact formulation discussed before, and I think it has very important ramifications that other thought experiments of this ilk fail to illustrate.
It explores the idea of maintaining personal identity (i.e., continuing to survive as the same person) even after transferring your consciousness into a machine, leaving your biological body lifeless and inert, and it seems to dispel the fairly common claim that such a thing is not possible. (Indeed, in this thought experiment, it seems impossible to deny that identity has been maintained.)
Because I'm feeling narrative and it's 5:00 in the morning and I'm hoping it will make this less boring to read, I am presenting it as thus:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Thought Experiment:]
You have cancer; it's terminal. They're sure: there's nothing they can do to help you.
Your body is going to die.
However, your brain is entirely unaffected. (So far, at least.) The cancer hasn't spread there yet. You are fully lucid and functional, and you're still your same old, happy-go-lucky self. (Other than the physical symptoms of the cancer, of course.)
That's why you're here at The Clinic today: you want to preserve that self.
You want to survive the inevitable death of your body.
So we begin the procedure:
You sit down in a comfortable chair.
Next to you is another chair and sitting in that chair is a perfect mechanical replica of your body. I'm not exaggerating: it is a literally perfect replica. Every single biological detail has been unfailingly, faithfully recreated. The replica is functionally identical to your current body (sans the cancer, of course); it is made from different materials than your human body, but it has been carefully engineered to be functionally indistinguishable from your biological form. From head to toe, from brain to bladder, it is functionally identical. However, it is dormant. It hasn't been "turned on" yet; once it is "turned on" though, it will behave in a fashion indistinguishable from and perfectly identical to the way your present human body behaves, in all respects.
It's a truly wondrous product of engineering.
The procedure today is going to be simple:
We are going to connect your brain to the Replica's brain. As you may or may not know, your brain is divided into various regions that are each responsible for performing certain mental tasks: for example, there is a section of your brain responsible for processing language, another for performing arithmetic, and various other regions responsible for processing each of your senses -hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch, etc. The Replica also has these exact same regions, and the Replica's regions have been engineered to be exact copies of those found in your current brain. The exactness of this copying is important: as you may or may not know, even tiny changes in brain structure can have profound influences on behavior and personality, so we have gone to excruciating lengths to ensure that this Replica is a perfectly faithful recreation of your current brain. (You've probably been wondering why all of those scanning devices are hooked to your head: this is what those are for. As we are talking, your brain is undergoing tiny structural changes in response to our conversation: these scanners pick up those changes and alter the Replica to ensure that it maintains its perfect likeness of your brain.)
We are going to hook every individual region of your biological brain to the corresponding region in the Replica's brain. So, for example, your region for sight will be hooked to the Replica's region for sight, and your region that handles language will be hooked to the Replica's region that handles language.
The nature of this connection is complicated (and proprietary), but it is such that it allows your brain and the Replica's brain to actually interface with one another: that is, your brain and the Replica's brain will be able to connect and smoothly operate as one unit.
In fact, that is the core of our procedure that we will be performing today: One region at a time, we are going to disable a region in your biological brain while simultaneously "turning on" the corresponding region in the Replica's brain and -this is the cool part- because your brain and the Replica's brain are connected together, the activity of the Replica brain's regions will seamlessly mesh with your biological brain's activity and smoothly take over handling the duties that the now-disabled biological region used to handle.
So, for example, we will turn off the part of your biological brain that performs arithmetic while simultaneously "turning on" the part of the Replica brain that performs arithmetic, and the Replica's "arithmetic region" will start performing all arithmetic calculations for you.
To test this, we will ask you to perform a simple arithmetic operation ("1+1 = ? ") prior to the "switch off-switch on" and then we will ask you to do that same arithmetic operation again afterwards. The first time you answer, you will have computed your response using your biological "arithmetic region"; the second time, you will compute your response using the Replica's "arithmetic region".
It will simply seamlessly merge with the activity of your still-living brain! You won't lose consciousness, feel disoriented, or suffer any sort of cognitive irregularity: the procedure is smooth and seamless. Most importantly, you will maintain a metacognitive awareness of the entire procedure: we will do a 3-2-1 countdown prior to performing the "switch", so you will be consciously aware of the moment when we transfer some of your mental processing over to the Replica. Furthermore, all of these fancy monitors and screens you see in front of you will display real-time scans of your brain activity (and the Replica's brain activity) so you can visually see when the "switch" happens.
You will be awake and aware the entire time. None of your mental functions will be compromised or interrupted. (This includes your memory.) Your consciousness will be maintained throughout the entire procedure.
This process works so smoothly because the Replica is such a perfectly engineered copy of your brain. The Replica will be monitoring your biological brain's activity in perfect detail, so it will be ready to exactly mimic and resume that exact activity the moment we perform the "switch" -Your brain literally won't miss a beat. The Replica region will seamlessly integrate with all of the regions of your biological brain that are still functioning and you won't even be able to feel the difference.
We will do this process repeatedly, one region at a time, until your entire biological brain is disabled and the entire Replica brain is "turned on". At that point, your consciousness will have been completely transferred to your new, cancer-free Replica body!
Here at The Clinic, disposal of your crappy old--erm, I mean, uh... burial and funeral services for your former body are included at no extra cost!
[/Thought Experiment]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, some interesting questions arise from that:
(1.) Imagine the first "switch": let's say they are going to "switch" your arithmetic region first.
Prior to performing this very first "switch" they ask you: "What is '1 + 1 = ? " And you answer "2".
Question: At this point in time, are you still yourself?
The obvious answers seems to be yes, since they haven't even done anything to you yet.
Now, imagine that they perform that first "switch". They "turn off" the arithmetic region of your biological brain while simultaneously "turning on" the arithmetic region of the Replica brain. The Replica's arithmetic region smoothly and seamlessly accommodates itself into your mental activity. The net result is that there is no discernible difference in net brain activity. It's as if nothing changed, as far as brain activity is concerned. You are, of course, metacognitively aware that your brain has been meddled with: the monitors clearly showed the halting of activity in your biological "arithmetic region" and the simultaneous beginning of activity in the Replica's "arithmetic region". You waited with nervous anticipation as The Clinic operator counted down "3...2...1...switching", and you sat in anxious silence afterwards for what seemed like an eternity waiting for something to feel...different. (Although that feeling never came.) And through all of that, you were awake and aware and coherent.
They ask you again: "What is '1 + 1 = ? " And you answer "2".
Question: At this point in time, are you still yourself?
It is tempting to say no, because part of you has "died" and been replaced by a foreign "thing", but I think that answer is flawed.
When a person loses their leg and has it replaced with a prosthetic, would you say that they are no longer the same person?
I am assuming most people answer 'no' to that question (because some seriously absurd scenarios can occur if you answer 'yes'); If so, how is this "brain region prosthetic" any different than a prosthetic leg? I would contend that it is not any different at all.
If that argument isn't compelling for you, consider this: You were awake and aware the whole time this "switch" was happening. You felt anxiety as the countdown occurred; you clenched the handles of the chair tightly in fear as the machines around you made strange noises during the "switch", you watched as the colored regions on the monitors changed during the "switch", and you waited anxiously in fear afterwards to see if you felt any different.
It seems incoherent to say that it was a different person experiencing all of those things. And if it wasn't a different person, then you are forced to admit that you are still yourself, even after the "switch" has occurred.
So it seems that we must admit that doing this first "switch" does not compromise your identity.
Similarly, then, subsequent "switches" should not compromise your identity either.
But what about the final "switch": the one where they kill the last active region of your biological brain and "turn on" the final region of the Replica and thereby permanently and irrevocably separate your consciousness from your biological body?
You are just as aware and coherent for that "switch" as you were for all the others. The Clinic operator even warns you that: "This is the final switch. This will turn off the last bit of your biological brain and your consciousness will be completely transferred over to your new body." You experience the fear and apprehension as he says that, you experience the anxiety and doubt and conflicting emotions as you watch the last bit of your biological brain fade away on the monitor, and you experience the uncertainty afterwards and the confusion as to why you don't really feel any different.
It seems incoherent to deny that it is the same person experiencing all of those things. All of the memories and emotions and thoughts are perfectly interconnected, in a real, objectively verifiable, historically accurate way. How can it possibly be the case that my thoughts, feelings, hopes, memories, and fears one moment result in the creation of an entirely new person that is not in any way identical to myself the next moment? (And that this sudden creation of a new person is accompanied by my sudden and abrupt extinction.)
It seems, to me at least, that the only coherent conclusion is that identity is maintained throughout the procedure.
If that's the case, then it is true that it is entirely possible for an individual to survive the death of their body and to continue living. Right?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit: Further reflection has convinced me that the section below that I originally included here is incorrect. I'll leave it to avoid any confusion regarding responses to it, but I have realized that while this thought experiment is indeed immune to the "copies problem", it is immune for different reasons.
This thought experiment is immune to the "copies" problem. Because one of the premises of the procedure is that you do not suffer any cognitive irregularities, it is necessarily true that no "copies" could be made here. (An example that illustrates this clearly is imagining what would happen if you "switched" the vision region of the brain to a bunch of "copies" instead of just one Replica: suddenly, the person undergoing the procedure would find themselves seeing out of the eyes of numerous "copies" instead of just seeing out of one set of eyes. This is obviously a massive departure from regular cognition and would destroy the integrity of the procedure.)
