Leftists be like, "The Maoist uprising against the landlords," but then when a trans nonbinary vegan stabs their landlord with a katana suddenly they're all like "it's a death cult"
Okay, so this is predicated on the assumption that the self is fundamentally just data (memories, feelings, thoughts), and if a machine can simulate that data accurately enough then it will have have recreated that self even if the previous self is gone.
I believe worrying about if "I'm gone" if my data copy is alive is metaphysics. There is no "I" - there's only the data I'm made of.
Going further, because the data of the self is always being corrupted and lost, worrying about perfection is also metaphysics. I am I even if my data is incomplete, because our dataforms are always changing anyway just the the course of living.
Ok,then I guess I believe in a soul or something like it apparently
Because I care more about the continuity of my consciousness rather than a data archive existing after my expiration date
Don't get me wrong,it's good for future generations to have access to that knowledge,but I can't help but think that the spark within me that is alive right now would be gone
Hell,no way to know if either of us are wrong,and I do see your point,but I just think that unless you ensure the continuity of consciousness,what you're gonna get is a new being,very similar to me, but never really "me" so to speak
Also,not to sift through old struggle sessions,but I can't help but think a certain killer of Kissinger would not look favorably upon that take (or not,never interacted that much with the person)
I can't write a good post but yeah, the phenomenal character of being (like, existing, experiencing, etc) is more than mere data.
Your brain is not a computer, putting it in a robot body would be so far from the embodied experience of being you that I don't think even that would be "you".
So, what about a clone body?
Again, thats perhaps the limit. Clone body for the original brain. Cloning the whole thing is no longer you.
If you have a clone brain that has all the same memories as the original brain then is there a difference?
Yes. It's a copy. No longer any attachment to the world that I was born in.
It's like the Joyce line about the omphalos telephone line back to eve. The clone won't have any more attachments to the history of the world in the way that you or I, through our mothers, do.
That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.
It will be a separate existence, born anew, and no longer the "me" born xx years ago.
Btw putting your brain in a clone might well have incredibly weird phenomenological aspects that like, I don't know if I'd want to do.. the ideal future is one where medical technology allows for the repair and maintenance of the bodies we have.
The clone remembers having those attachments, so it does have attachment to the world you were born in.
Let's say your clone with your memories replaces you, like a Star Trek transporter incident. Your mother won't be able to tell the difference, your clone won't be able to tell the difference, and the rest of the world won't be able to tell the difference. What's the actual physical difference between your clone remembering your mother and you remembering your mother? Seems to me that nothing actually changed.
It's no longer me. The clone doesn't actually have the material connection to my mother, to the historical world we live in. It's made of different stuff.
Again, for others, it might be able to play the role of "me". But it isn't me, will never be me. It will have been created in a new way, and brought into history in a different way.
I think that as historical materialists we need to hold the line on this kind of thing. Just as the bringing into being of a commodity imprints the history, the labor, the life into it, so does the bringing into being (continually and autopoetically) of the self constitute the historical and material conditions of its life.
The material conditions that create the clone are not me. It will never be me even if it "remembers" being me.
I don't see it. If you copy a book it doesn't become a different story, just because it's written on different paper.
Yes but the history of the book is different. The text of Augustine's confessions is the same but the copy produced by penguin is DIFFERENT from a manuscript produced by a medieval scribe. They have different histories and are different things in the world.
You can't say that my book and your book are the same. The "text" may be the same, but they aren't the same thing.
Unless you discount the materiality of life entirely you will never be your clone.
I believe worrying about if "I'm gone" if my data copy is alive is metaphysics. There is no "I" - there's only the data I'm made of.
Not weighing in on the actual debate here, but just pointing out that "there is no I - there is only the data I'm made of" is also definitely metaphysics.
Well my self is also embodied in my actual flesh. I am my scars and gut flora and muscles and genetic predispositions.
My self isn't even fully contained in my body! My self is also in my living space and my family and my friends and my coworkers and all my other social connections. I am I because of everything and everyone around me.
And I am also my historical and material context, what makes me "me" can't be separated from my class position within this epoch of capitalism.
But those, too, can be simulated as more data points. I really don't think there's anything that can't be represented as data.
Fully on board the ontic structural realism and extended cognition bus. Just pointing out that it absolutely is a metaphysical position, and that giving arguments for it is doing metaphysics.
Fair. Metaphysics actually seems to be a fuzzy term: it can mean studying the relationship between mind and matter i.e. what I'm doing (although really I'm saying that "mind" can not be separated from matter, they are the same thing) and speculation about scientifically unanswerable questions i.e. beyond physics. I only mean to say that there's nothing nonphyiscal or immaterial about the self. It can be contained and explained purely through materialism.
I agree entirely; philosophy of science is philosophy enough, to paraphrase Quine. If you haven't read it (and are interested in some pretty hard-core contemporary philosophical elucidation of this stuff), you might enjoy James Ladyman's book Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized.