One's Continued Subjective Experience example essay topic

I often ask myself, why me. There are billions of brains on this planet alone, and no one knows how many sentient beings exist in the galaxy, or in the entire universe. I share 99.8% of my DNA with chimps (if I remember well), and even more with any human on the planet. Granted, there is no brain that works exactly like mine. But the differences seem trivial. Why must I be witness to the data processing that occurs inside this particular brain?

The problem has been obscured for a long time, because no two people are exactly alike. Even identical twins end up with slightly different DNAs and different environmental influences make them into very different people. ' Everyone is different, so that is why I'm me and nobody else' - a weak thinker would tell you. When asked about the nature of these differences, they would go on to describe the various tastes and behaviors that peoples how. But what is making them believe these things that they are saying, is actually the shape of people's faces. They look different, so they must be different.

Furthermore, I am used to seeing this face in the mirror, therefore I do not doubt that I am this person associated with this face, and I do not need to know the nature of this 'association'. Consider nanotechnology. Using nanotechnology, it will be possible to arrange atoms in any desired fashion, precisely. Atomic copies will become possible. The difference between an object, and its atomic copy, will be, exactly, none. Provided that the replication process is precise and that no atoms are moved around, it will not be possible, not even in principle, to tell the difference between the two objects.

It will be a foolish claim to say that the two have 'differences'. They will have no differences. Seems trivial, but wait. What if you made a copy of a person using the same method.

Suppose it is your best friend. After the copy is made, you'd be left with two best friends (good deal). As I explained, there will be no difference between the two; being people, they " ll both 'feel' alive and remember to have agreed to the experiment. Either one will resent being told that 'he is the copy'. With time, the two would slowly become different people, for they would have different experiences.

But if you duplicated your friend and before any time passed went on to destroy the original? To you, this would not have made any difference. Your friend would still remember the old times, and you could forget about the experiment and live the rest of your days without noticing a difference in your buddy. If you have uncertainties at this point, please go back and read over, because things get tough from now on. Duplicating your friend was fun, but let's suppose you now want to duplicate yourself. At the end of the experiment, there would be two 'you's in the room.

We will try to answer a few questions about their identities and the relationships between the two. First, we would be tempted to ask, who's the original, and who is the copy. We have already decided that an atomic copy leaves no room for differences - two atoms of a same element are perfectly identical. So how can it be possible that we still see things from only one pair of eyes? If we agree that there can be no difference between the original and the copy, then we must agree that seeing from only 2 of those resulting four eyes is suspicious.

Don't start the 'but they will be different people' argument. It is not relevant here. In fact, to help you get that out of the way, we have performed the experiment in a perfectly symmetrical room. Magnetic fields, thermal fluctuations, the wallpaper... everything is identical down to the smallest detail. The doors are locked. The two people in the room (you and you) will continue to have the exact same inputs from all senses; therefore, they will continue to be exact copies.

It could be very difficult to create such an environment in the real world, but in virtual reality it certainly will be possible. So you " re locked in this room with your copy. At one point, a speaker located in the middle of the room announces: one of you guys will be executed. From a third person perspective the execution of one of the identical copies has no negative consequences.

You are identical, so the information loss is zero. Furthermore, your relatives won't miss you, because one of you will go ahead and continue your regular life. Still, I suspect, if you were in this situation you'd have a STRONG preference as to who gets executed. How can this be? The person who entered the experiment, who can now be labeled only because we have tracked their movement and we saw where they have been (we know their position history), still feels " locked' inside one body, notwithstanding the fact that a perfect copy of his substrate (body) exists. Puzzled by this situation, I began to look for a way in which the two people could be different.

A difference that would allow me to say, ah-ah, that is why I'm still me and the copy is someone else. I thought, their atoms are different - it could be that, although atoms of the same element are indistinguishable, in some way exactly which atoms are making up your body determines your identity. This theory went down the sink when I realized that every time you eat or sleep, massive numbers of atoms are replaced in your brain and body, and that I have very few of the atoms in my body that Ihad when I was 12, still I feel alive and well! Another theory was that somehow the particle history 'kept track' of your identity so that smooth changes in composition could preserve a continuity of substance that allowed for one's continued subjective experience. This is fuzzy - who is keeping track and how? I have had long discussions on this topic with people from all over the world.

Some believe that the information stored in the brain defines their individuality - they claim that they would not mind being executed after a perfect copy of their brain has been made functional. I cannot take their position seriously. Some other believe that what we are is a pattern of information processing - as long as that particular kind of information processing is kept functional, we won't die. Well, there are billions of analogous information processes on the planet; there were plenty before I was born too, and yet I do not remember anything that happened before I was born. I have no direct experience of other people's subjective states, even though their data processes are very similar to mine.

It is my position that even if you could make a copy of yourself, even if you could give every atom the precise electron cloud distribution the original has, even replicating all possible details, you'd never see with four eyes. This line of thought has led us to believe that even completely identical processes do not share their subjectivity. So whether we are comparing ourselves with an identical copy, or with an imperfect copy (another human being), does not really make a difference. Forget about the copy.

The real mystery here is why me. Why not you. Why am I not the person reading this, rather than the person writing this. At each step of this meditation, we'd be tempted to say, I'm me because I'mme. Although many will answer such things, the statement contains no meaning. But I want to generalize further.

If it is true that I am me, and not you, well I also want to know, why am I me and not a cat. Why not a rock. Why not anything else but me, me, always me, every day, no matter what do, I am always me. Many are eager to upload their brain on a permanent medium. I am also very eager, but I fear that the difference between me and the medium will be the same that exists between me and an atomic copy, the same that exists between me and you, the same that exists between me and a rock. I am not conscious as a rock, as you... and possible, as a permanent medium.

It's time to talk about processes. The brain is just a physical process. The falling of rain is also a physical process. Pushing buttons on a calculator is a process. A rock is a process, albeit a very simple one. Actually not that simple - the temperature of all the atoms inside the rock fluctuates.

And the 'rock PLUS tree's ystem, is also a process. The distance between each of the rock's atoms and each of the tree's atoms varies with time, as the tree grows and as the rock gets kicked around. Very complex system. Maybe more than your pentium chip can simulate. So there are infinitely many processes in the world, for every object, every event can be thought of as a process. The human brain is a process; you have input coming in from the eyes, it is analyzed by the brain and split into distinct objects, these objects are manipulated, the relationships extracted, the possible interactions evaluated, the results of these interactions computed and compared with all available results from past interactions.

Emotions (low-level p recoded instructions) are triggered, and logical thinking interacts with these instructions to create a response. This is the human black box, the brain in-out pathway, very simplified. It is a process. Inside this process, there is as much vitality, as much soul, as you can find in the distance between the rock atoms and the tree atoms. Oh but the person speaks!! The air around their mouth vibrates!

They tell us oh, don't hurt me, so they must be more alive than a rock, right? But if you knew exactly how the brain is wired for that person and went step by step following the instructions that the input triggers, you'd get to the voice coming out of their mouth and still be asking yourself, so where is this consciousness. Where is this soul. The brain is a parallel machine, not a linear one, you can't just debug it with a disassembler. But that makes no difference.

The person, no matter who you examine, simply does not qualify as spiritual entity. We are all mechanical processes. Whether we are deterministic or casual I don't care. But there is no reason to have subjective sensations. It makes absolutely no sense, and if you do understand the meaning of these words, you will be left in a strange world.

One where you actually don't exist. I am my brain. I am a process. What does it mean to be a process? There are many processes out there, but there seems to be an association between the feeling of being 'me' and this particular process, my brain. When you realize how crazy this is, you will not harm animals anymore.

You will understand that it is no more crazy to postulate sentience inside an animal's mind than to postulate sentience inside a human mind. This is the source of a particular kind of morality. Although we have no scientific evidence that a subjective feeling of being alive should arise in a process like the human brain, we experience this phenomenon. We therefore know (if we are to believe what we feel) that there exists another particular state of subjectivity, one that is closely associated to that other brain (just pick one), and that cannot be separated from it. We will have to accept that all animals are conscious. Their lower intellect, the fact that they cannot " protest' cannot be used as an excuse to be intellectually weak and pretend that they do not feel pain.

It would be very strange if only one process in the universe (our mind) was associated to some kind of experience, and all the other processes were just " dead'. The most likely theory here is that every process is associated with some kind of subjectivity. This includes all people of all races, all animals, all things that move, and, yes, that tree-rock system, and, the rock itself. These ideas are sometimes referred to as pan-psychism. HansMoravec, a famous robotics scientist, has discussed them in detail in his essay Simulation, Consciousness, Existence.

Possibly the most intelligent piece of writing I have ever read, this essay shows us the role of auto-interpretation. All interpretations of any process, in which conscious beings regard themselves as being conscious, actually contain conscious beings! I highly recommend this essay. What Moravec fails to explain, is the old, old question.

Why this process, why me. It seems that our first-person view of the world and the popular and useful scientific third-person view are in conflict whenever 'we' ourselves become the focus of investigation. Some have tried to reconstruct physics on the base of actions and events, rather than particles. I have tried something analogous - to reconstruct reality based on self, rather than on objects.

Itis a crazy, messy theory, that may have nothing to do with reality. But its an example of theory that can be created, and that would put us in avery different place in the world. So here it is. I will begin with the popular problem of 'free will'.

When people found out that physics obeys to laws, and that our mind must - as well, they felt threatened. Their freedom was at stake. They just could not believe that their every move was already decided. Some, rejected these protests because they were illogical - if our brain is a machine, then knowing its particle history and atomic structure would be equivalent to being able to tell what the person will do next. Free we are not. They said.

But in my opinion, their theories are flawed. The simulation of thought (such as the simulation performed by the human brain) proceeds in a deterministic way. The future is already decided. There is nothing you can do about it, unless you can change the laws of physics with your thought (which would still not grant you " freedom's ince the thoughts that determined how the laws would change were deterministic).

However, from a first person point of view, things are different. You have data. You make decisions. It makes no sense to say 'you have no free will', for this would seem to deny the ability of analyzing data and making decisions.

But this ability is yours, you use it all the time. Your free will is the system of heuristic algorithms that decide on things. Free will means being able to decide, it does not imply that these decisions must be outside of the realm of physics. Some feel that if we really have no choice and must act the way we act, then it is not justifiable to lock people up in prisons when they misbehave.

They then comfort themselves with the thought that they can't help it. But from the first person perspective, those people DID have a choice. They analyzed their data and made a decision that led them to damage the system. What is actually punished is their subjective decision-making self, their first-person subjectivity, which is, as we said, free. This is just one more example of first-person and third-person views clashing. In the case of the atomic copy: from a third person point of view the original you and the copied you are exactly the same.

However, from the inside, you are very different. One of you is like an icon on the desktop. The other is the operating system itself. You can delete an icon and go on with life, but not delete the operating system. That will destroy all data, all icons. Your personal death is equivalent to the death of the universe, and all objects contained in it.

Each mind that simulates the world (or each process that can be interpreted as such), creates an inner simulated universe. First-person observations can be made on this inner universe. Third-person statements can be made on the actual outside universe. Everytime 'we' become the subject of investigation, this inner universe must bethe area of research. Not the outside universe, in which our operating system is but a dispensable icon. By understanding the difference between 'icon' and 'operating system' we can begin to probe the nature of our subjective experience.

'I' is no longer a person in the world, but rather a world in itself. You, as seen from my point of view, are a part of me, and the distant galaxies of which I see only blurred snapshots on the web are also part of me. There is a world for every head, in other words. But more precisely, a world for every process, which is equivalent to an infinity of worlds.

We are not meat puppets or an electrochemical reaction any more, but the entire world, with its large and curled up dimensions. 'We are the whole world' must be the real meaning of having a subjective experience. Every subjectivity exists - by creating an intelligent robot we will have created an interface to a pre-existing 'robot world' of a certain kind (as Moravec says - and if you have not read his essay do it before continuing). If we agree to this, uploading a brain to a permanent medium and destroying the original brain would be equivalent to making a copy of the entire contents of a universe and then nuking the original universe. If I was an innocent creature on some planet, I'd be against it. Now this is hardcore so get a glass of beer.

Let us consider a subjective state or sensation as a 0-dimensional point in a new set of dimensions. Lets also say that what we really are is a smooth curve defined by 0-dimensional points in this new set of dimensions. The curve itself is multidimensional of course. Let's call this new set of dimensions the S set (for Subjective). These dimensions can be mapped as minus infinity to plus infinity for a given number of dimensions on a cartesian diagram. Every point in the S set is equivalent to a certain subjective state (ex.

I am hot, tired and this pineapple juice aftertaste is on my tongue, plus I am typing and my wrist hurts). We have said that since we were children, our atoms have changed completely, our brains' contents have changed completely, and still we have remained conscious and 'associated' to one mind. Postulate, for sake of discussion, that this is because we have followed a continuous curve in the S set of dimension, which is equivalent to saying that our subjective-experience coordinates have changed smoothly, which is equivalent to saying 'we Are this curve'. The changes in conscious experience that arise smoothly and take us from childhood to old age, follow a smooth line in the's-set and therefore keep our life-curve intact.

Sudden death is equivalent to an abrupt termination of the curve at one point. Yes, we are made up of atoms and these atoms work together to create the conscious experience, but at the same time, experience is all that counts for without it nothing can exist - science is to the third person point of view what the's-set theory is to the first person point of view: the two must be used together, they are just mental tools to understand the universe with its subjectivity rules. But what I have described until now has no practical use, it is just a useless creation of my mind. Yes - but it does shed some light on the problem. First of all it gives us a way of measuring smoothness of consciousness. If we are a curve, then let's use the mathematical knowledge on curves to find out where we stand!

A curve #1 is different from a curve#2 if they have no point in common. If the curves are attached, they are both just one curve. Hence, a continuous subjective experience (life) can be had if the curve is not broken at any point - for then, two distinct curves would form. And so, all transitions that involve messing with out supporting process (the brian) must occur so that our perception of the world proceeds smoothly. If you go to bed, and while you sleep a copy of you is created, and you are killed without you noticing, and the copy is placed in the exact same place you occupied, then you " re ok. The curve was 'patched' in the point of intervention by not allowing you to notice what was being done.

If this copy had a switch, that allowed it to let his brain run faster and faster, but this switch was turned off at the time of replacement with the original, then the switch would be safe to turn on gradually after the replacement. Because the point of replacement was patched correctly and no discontinuity of experience was felt by the subject. Uploading one's brain, then, also seems feasible, IF the change happens gradually (the famous " progressive uploading'). How gradual this change must be, we don't know, but the rate of atom replacement that we see in normal human growth seems to be a safe bet. Since this continuity, I repeat, is a continuity of experience and sensation, abrupt replacement of functional parts (arms, neurons... ) should not in principle create discontinuities, if these replacement are perfect substitutes.

Changing one's memories, on the other hand, seems a good way to disrupt personal individuality, just like we would expect. What would happen then, if one made a copy of oneself, let him runaround for a while and THEN kill oneself? There are two cases. In the first case, there has been a divergence in the's-set (the two accumulate different memories etc.) - in this case, the two entities will be similar but distinct, and by killing himself, the original would destroy not only the last five minutes of experience, but his entire inner universe.

Just like we would expect, no 'soul transfer' would happen between the dying body and the healthy copy. Second case - if divergence has not happened, you can kill yourself, IF YOU don't notice that you " re doing it. Probably someone else would have to do it. Because noticing that you are dying would differentiate you from the copy and divide the curves in the multidimensional's-set, while not noticing would preserve continuity and the original's life-curve would simply be 'part' of (totally included in) the copy's life-curve. Suicide would have to happen instantaneously and without causing a 'I am dying " sensation (isn't this the way they do it in Star Trek? ?) One more paradox we can now handle is the decomposition paradox.

Which says, suppose you cut off your arm and put it back where it was with atomic precision, leaving no damaged tissue. Is that still you? Now try cutting up every cubic inch in your body and putting the pieces back together so that the ending atomic structure is exactly identical to the initial structure. Is that still you?

Now you can try atom by atom, with your brain. Will you still be alive? What if time passes between the decomposition process and the rebuilding process? This's-set theory claims that if you don't notice any difference (because the parts are perfectly rebuilt) after you " ve been put together, then you should be all right.

Time passes? That's fine, as long as the subjective experience curve proceeds smoothly. So as long as you make these experiments faster than you can notice you " re being messed with, and as long as you " re atomically identical after the experiment, you will not die. We return to common sense, talking about subjective experience! Nowt his is news! I am tempted to use calculus to describe exactly what discontinuities could look like (for example a sudden change of trajectory could be seen as a discontinuity) but I don't know if this can have relevance.

In conclusion: - You can be uploaded if the upload is gradual- The copy paradox is solved: both copies in the symmetrical room follow the same life-curve. With whose eyes do you see? Well, you can't say one or the other because the inputs are identical! In that time nobody can distinguish which body you " re in just like nobody can distinguish two curves that are completely overlapping: ) - Backing up one's brain will not restore a person's life after an accident, for continuity in experience is not possible- Teleportation is possible, if the original never notices that he is being dematerialized and the experiential curve is kept smooth- Cryonics is possible - time 'holes' in experience cannot interrupt the life-curve which is based on an internal experiential clock (as my last general anaesthesia confirmed). - Experiencing other people's subjective consciousness can also be possible, provided a machine is invented that can transform you smoothly into that person, and back to what you were maintaining your memories intact and your life-curve smooth.

This could work for any entity from animals to ETs although in some cases a machine could be impossible to create. The last thing that I want to say is that what I have discussed above is only one example of what one regular person can think up to explain subjective consciousness. I do not know how much of this could really be true, but it stands up well among other similarly crazy theories on consciousness. You should really not exist. Why you feel like do is a mystery, and even more, is the eternal question: why this process, why me.