Argument that an afterlife exists

[ZackMartin]

Above, I meant to say "God creating you contradicts your denial of a previous non-existence".

Given my particular understanding of creation - not creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), but creatio ex se (creation out of herself). When God creates you out of nothing, you begin existence, since prior to your creation you were nothing. If God creates you out of herself, you do not truly begin existence, since prior to your creation you were not nothing, but rather, you were God herself.

[robertb]

But what is a "thing"? Whether they are "things" or not depends on how you define "thing". I'm generally very liberal with "thingness". To me, a "thing" is simply a subject which may be predicated. States of affairs may be predicated, so existence and non-existence may be predicated. (Of course, they cannot be predicated in first order logic, but human thought isn't restricted to the first order.)

I suppose I view things as being either material or conceptual. So I should have been more careful in my wording. However, my point was that existence and non-existence are words that describe something about something. They have no existence; pardon the pun, apart from that function.

One could also say it was a "possible state of affairs", or a "way that reality might be". I don't see possible states of affairs as being linguistic or symbolic unless they actually contain symbols or language within them.

Again, they, the words, are only linguistic and symbolic.

Which is exactly what I am saying. Except you seem to think I am confusing the two, and I think I am trying to distinguish them carefully (modulo the fact that I was tired when I wrote it and so maybe garbled my response a bit.)

You implied that there was no difference between an idea of something and that something itself, or at least that is how I read you. You even seemed to repeat this a few times.

Logical positivism claimed that for a statement to be meaningful, we needed some way to verify it, to determine if it is true. In the precise detail in which they formulated the principle, it generally turned out to be self-refuting, as I've argued elsewhere. But the basic question - "if you don't know how to tell if a statement is true, do you really know what it means?" - is nonetheless a reasonable one.

Perhaps, though you may know what a statement means, but simply have no way to tell if it is true. So, situational at best, I suppose.

Not in my understanding - note I said God creating us out of her own self. So in my view, minds can never be created or destroyed, but minds can merge and divide - two or more separate and distinct minds can merge together to become one single mind; and one single mind can split apart to become two or more separate and distinct minds. So God divided herself into many minds, and all of those minds (bar one), she then took and emptied of divinity to become us. So, God's "creation" of me does not contradict my beginningless existence, since before God created me, I was God. But that's not an exclusive claim on my part - you used to be God just as much as I used to be God; and even though we are separate persons now, when we were God, we were one and the same person (God), and I was you and you were me.

You used the word created. I guess you didn't mean created, but something else. Regardless, what you call you was not you prior to whatever God did at some point, semantics aside.

Still not clear how I am moving from the meaningfulness of the idea of something to the meaningfulness of the something itself.

You did so in the statement I originally referred to. Perhaps you simply didn't realize you had done so.

I meant to write "it would be more accurate to say that the referent of a meaningless concept can neither be said to exist nor not to exist" but accidentally dropped the words "the referent of".

If by a "concept", all we mean is some string of words, then I agree that meaningless concepts exist. If a "concept" means, more than just a string of words, but an actual way that reality might be (even if it is in fact not), then I would say that meaningless concepts don't really exist.

I would disagree, in my view concepts exist as concepts as the word exist is simply a description concerning the state of being of said concept.

[robertb]

Given my particular understanding of creation - not creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), but creatio ex se (creation out of herself). When God creates you out of nothing, you begin existence, since prior to your creation you were nothing. If God creates you out of herself, you do not truly begin existence, since prior to your creation you were not nothing, but rather, you were God herself.

But you were not actually God herself, even if you were extracted from God herself. These, you and God, are two different things.

[ZackMartin]

But you were not actually God herself, even if you were extracted from God herself. These, you and God, are two different things.

Well, that depends on what theory of personal identity you adopt. I remember Derek Parfit's example of the broken teleportation machine in his book Reasons and Persons, which I will now (loosely) recount. Let's go forward a few centuries. Humans have colonised Mars. You work for an Earth-based company with interests in the Mars colony, and so from time to time you need to travel to Mars on business. You have done it several times, but the multi-month-long trips cause severe hardship to your personal and family life. Then, a breakthrough new technology is developed - teleportation. Using teleportation, you can reach Mars in an instant. You can go to Mars in the morning and be home in time for tea.

The way this form of teleportation works though, is it destroys your body, and then creates a perfect replica at the other end. The replica has all your memories; it is convinced it is you. But there is a bit of controversy about it - some people say, that when your body is destroyed at the sending side, you die, and the replica at the new end isn't you at all, just a replica of you. They say that ever time you are teleported, you cease to exist, and so teleportation is a form of suicide. Some religious people agree that teleportation is a form of death, with a new person made at the other end. One TV evangelist reckons that the unsaved who are teleported, their souls go straight to heaven or hell, and God creates a new soul for their replica at the receiving end - "better be saved before you step into that teleportation machine, or it'll teleport you straight to hell!" However, let's say you don't believe any of that religious stuff, that you are an atheist. But you are still a bit concerned about the whole ceasing to exist part; yet you'd really like to get to Mars much faster. But one of your good friends is braver than you, and he's already done it a few times. "Trust me man, I'm still the same person I've always been. I swear all that 'you cease to exist' stuff is just nonsense, you just step into the machine at one end, the door shuts, the machine goes beep, the door opens, you are at the other end. I'm still the same me, aren't I?" So, trusting your friend, you step into the machine. You step out on Mars. You believe your friend now, that this "ceasing to exist" stuff is nonsense, and you are back home on Earth in time for dinner.

Years go by, and you go back and forth from Earth to Mars hundreds of times. Then one day, something goes wrong. You step into the machine, you hear an unusual noise and pass out. You awake lying on the floor. The door opens and an attendant rushes in. "Oh sorry sir, there has been a teleportation accident, are you all right?" The director of the teleportation service comes to see you. "Sir, we are so sorry but there has been an accident." You say "I don't feel very well, but I guess I'm okay, I'm still here." The director replies "Well, yes, you are still here, but you are also over there." "What do you mean?", you ask. "Well, the machine successfully created your replica on Mars, but it failed to destroy the original you here on Earth. So now, there's two of you."

So are Earth-you-now and Mars-you-now two different persons? Yes. But is Mars-you-now the same person as Earth-you-preteleport? And also Earth-you-now the same person as Earth-you-preteleport? Well, you have to answer yes to both, otherwise all those other times you used the teleporter, you died.

If Mars-you-now teleports back to Earth, and then both Earth-you and Mars-you show up at home saying to the wife and kids "Hi honey I'm home!" Who's the husband? Did your wife just get forced into polyandry by a broken teleportation machine?

In Parfit's example, they go on to tell you that the teleportation process has fatally injured Earth-you-now, and so Earth-you-now will soon die. But don't worry, Mars-you-now will go on living, and be back home to see your wife and kids in time for dinner. Should Earth-you-now be afraid or sad at their impending death?

[robertb]

Yes, that is a good story. The answer is that the teleported "you" is a replica, which is proven by the situation created by the malfunction. So yes, everytime you teleport, you die and everytime you teleport a replica of you is created. The replica of you is not, in this example, you.

A better question is if the fact that the replica is not you really matters as far as you are concerned. It would seem, under normal operation, it really doesn't.

However, what is most interesting about this story is how it relates to the point you have been trying to argue. In this reality, you could actually verify your own non-existence, that is the non-existence of the previous you unless you are now populating eternity with multiple versions of yourself, of course.

[ZackMartin]

Yes, that is a good story. The answer is that the teleported "you" is a replica, which is proven by the situation created by the malfunction. So yes, everytime you teleport, you die and everytime you teleport a replica of you is created. The replica of you is not, in this example, you.

Well, that's your answer. The fact is that philosophers have spent years arguing over whose answer is the right one, and there seems to be no end in sight. Some even argue, to put it simply, that the question itself is meaningless; since in this view there is no real "you", there is no real answer to the question of what happens to "you" - "I", "me", "self" are just linguistic illusions, with no ultimate reality about.

My answer is that, minds can merge and divide. So in all the prior teleportation cases, where your old body was destroyed, your mind was "detached" from the old body and "reattached" to the new one. Whereas, in the case where the destruction of the original fails, your mind is now split into two, one still attached to the old body, the other now attached to the new body. In my view, one single mind has split apart into two separate and distinct minds. Prior to the point of division, the two minds are completely identical to one another in every way, and thus one and the same mind.

A better question is if the fact that the replica is not you really matters as far as you are concerned. It would seem, under normal operation, it really doesn't.

So you wouldn't mind dying if we duplicated you first? Suppose you were found guilty of some crime - let's even say you are innocent and you didn't do it - but then the judge in sentencing offers you a choice. You can have twenty years in prison, or immediate execution. However, if you pick the immediate execution, the judge will use his perfect matter duplication machine to create a copy of you who can go home to your friends and family, after watching the execution of the original will. So, would you choose execution, or imprisonment?

However, what is most interesting about this story is how it relates to the point you have been trying to argue.

Well, I raised it to try to explain my idea that minds divide. So when God divides her mind to become us, each of us used to be God. So all of us have always existed, but originally we were all the same person (God).

In this reality, you could actually verify your own non-existence, that is the non-existence of the previous you unless you are now populating eternity with multiple versions of yourself, of course.

I don't think so. I would not consider teleportation to involve a cessation of my existence, just a transfer of my mind from one body to another in the usual case; or, in rare cases of malfunction, the splitting of my mind into two copies each belonging to a different body. "Verification of non-existence" only happens here if you assume a certain answer to the question of "what happens in teleportation?" which not everyone agrees to.

[robertb]

Well, that's your answer. The fact is that philosophers have spent years arguing over whose answer is the right one, and there seems to be no end in sight. Some even argue, to put it simply, that the question itself is meaningless; since in this view there is no real "you", there is no real answer to the question of what happens to "you" - "I", "me", "self" are just linguistic illusions, with no ultimate reality about.

I hope philosophers didn't spend that much time arguing this fairly self-evident question, at least self-evident with respect to the example you provided. A teleportation machine that works by recreating a person while destroying the original version.

My answer is that, minds can merge and divide. So in all the prior teleportation cases, where your old body was destroyed, your mind was "detached" from the old body and "reattached" to the new one. Whereas, in the case where the destruction of the original fails, your mind is now split into two, one still attached to the old body, the other now attached to the new body. In my view, one single mind has split apart into two separate and distinct minds. Prior to the point of division, the two minds are completely identical to one another in every way, and thus one and the same mind.

Your example does not say that your consciousness is somehow transferred. What it seems to imply is that your consciousness is recreated. Different.

So you wouldn't mind dying if we duplicated you first? Suppose you were found guilty of some crime - let's even say you are innocent and you didn't do it - but then the judge in sentencing offers you a choice. You can have twenty years in prison, or immediate execution. However, if you pick the immediate execution, the judge will use his perfect matter duplication machine to create a copy of you who can go home to your friends and family, after watching the execution of the original will. So, would you choose execution, or imprisonment?

If my duplicate was basically me, by default, it still wouldn't actually be me. I would be dead. It would be my replica that thought it was me. SO...probably imprisonment, unless I had some sort of death wish. Now, if on the otherhand, my actual consciousness was somehow transferred to another body, then execution would be the deal, though that mechanism would have to be an actual brain transplant.

Well, I raised it to try to explain my idea that minds divide. So when God divides her mind to become us, each of us used to be God. So all of us have always existed, but originally we were all the same person (God).

I see, though I do not undertsnad the mind as existing apart from the brain that generates it.

I don't think so. I would not consider teleportation to involve a cessation of my existence, just a transfer of my mind from one body to another in the usual case; or, in rare cases of malfunction, the splitting of my mind into two copies each belonging to a different body. "Verification of non-existence" only happens here if you assume a certain answer to the question of "what happens in teleportation?" which not everyone agrees to.

True, it wouldn't be your existence, as it was not you that got vaporizzed by the teleportation device. Merely for conceptual purposes though, it might help you to visualize the idea of it.
And finally, I am not sure what there is to agree to. A teleportation which works by destroying a person and recreating a replica of that person at another location would, per your view, populate eternity with multiple versions of yourself and moreso, multiple versions of yourself that, at a time prior to a certain teleportaion event, did not exist.

[ZackMartin]

I hope philosophers didn't spend that much time arguing this fairly self-evident question, at least self-evident with respect to the example you provided. A teleportation machine that works by recreating a person while destroying the original version.

They have indeed spent a lot of time arguing it, because what is self-evident to you is not self-evident to others. You are obviously one of those who treats "the person" and "the person's brain" as synonymous, and if you accept that equation then yes it will be self-evident. But not everyone accepts that equation - not even all materialists accept the equation. Some materialists see the mind as "software" and the brain as "hardware", as so the mind could be moved from one physical brain to another (or even some other physical substrate, like a digital computer) and yet still be the same mind - just as I can copy an application (including its data) from one physical computer to another and still have the same application and the same data. These people still are materialists though, because they still believe the software cannot exist without hardware to run it on - while an idealist like myself would reject that view, and insist that "software" can exist without "hardware", and all "hardware" is really "virtual hardware" implemented in "software". (So might, approaching the issue from a rather different direction, a radical Platonist such as Max Tegmark.)

Your example does not say that your consciousness is somehow transferred. What it seems to imply is that your consciousness is recreated. Different.

The example simply states that the body gets destroyed at one end and recreated the other. Whether the consciousness gets destroyed and recreated or not, depends on your understanding of how the consciousness relates to the body.

If my duplicate was basically me, by default, it still wouldn't actually be me. I would be dead. It would be my replica that thought it was me. SO...probably imprisonment, unless I had some sort of death wish. Now, if on the otherhand, my actual consciousness was somehow transferred to another body, then execution would be the deal, though that mechanism would have to be an actual brain transplant.

So you identify your consciousness with your brain? Well, here's another example philosophers use. Suppose we could build strong artificial intelligences - computers just as intelligent as human beings. Suppose even we could build a computer that was a "brain simulator", which could take a very detailed map of a human brain, down to the structure of each neuron, and produce the same results as a real brain would produce. Now, suppose we send nanobots into your brain, to carefully record every tiny detail of your brain, albeit destroying it in the process. Then they upload the details into the brain simulator, which starts up. The brain simulator thinks it is you. It has all your thoughts, feelings, ideas, memories, personality, character, etc. Is it you? Well, like the teleportation case, you might argue it is a new and separate person, which is a replica from you.

Suppose now we move the strong AI or brain simulator to a new machine. This is just like moving your mind to a new brain - does this mean the strong AI or brain simulator ceases to exist, and a new one is created? But why should the brain simulator identify itself with the particular hardware it is running on? If we look at modern computing (especially cloud computing), many applications (consider e.g. Google Search, or Facebook) run on vast clusters of machines, working together, such that any single machine can die and the application survives - just like how any neuron in your brain can die, but your brain lives on. So why should the strong AI or the brain simulator identify itself with any single machine it runs on, anymore than you identify yourself with any single neuron? Such an application, by progressive replacement of the machines in the cluster, can be moved to completely new hardware without ever being turned off. These days, a lot of the hardware we use is actually "virtual hardware" - the computer you are using could be relocated to the other end of the room, or the other side of the planet, and you'll never notice. So it makes no sense to say the artificial (strong AI or brain simulator) person is the hardware they run on; they are just software. But if the artificial person can be moved to new hardware without ceasing to exist, why not the biological person also?

If every neuron in your brain was replaced, not all at once, but one by one, would you still be the same person at the end, despite having a completely new brain? But suppose instead we engineer a "digital neuron", which is a non-biological (e.g. silicon-based) neuron that acts however just like the biological ones do. We send the nanobots into your brain. Slowly and progressively they replace your biological neurons with digital ones, but giving your brain time to adapt to the change in each case (just as it adapts to the death of biological neurons now, or it would adapt to the creation of new ones.) At the start, your brain is purely biological. At the end, it is purely electronic. But it is a continuous change in between. Are you still alive at the end? Or did you die at some point? If so, where? When the first digital neuron was introduced? When the last biological neuron was removed? When the number of digital neurons exceeded the number of biological ones? And if you are alive at the end, now you could be software, able to be relocated just as any other software can be. You've started out in the real world and moved into the Matrix. But if this is possible, it just goes to show that whatever you are, you aren't your brain, you are just a pattern of information which happens to be attached to your brain, but which could be attached to something else instead.

If you take materialism seriously, you have to acknowledge that there is nothing "magical" about biological brains, and there is no reason in principle why a sufficiently advanced digital computer could not have a mind or be a person just as well as a biological brain can. But the end result, I think, is the identification of "mind" or "person" with "brain" is revealed to be questionable, even while sticking all the time to materialist assumptions. Once we adopt the idea that the mind is "software" or "information" rather than "hardware" or "brain", our answer to the "do we survive teleportation?" question changes from "No" to "Yes".

I see, though I do not undertsnad the mind as existing apart from the brain that generates it.

But many will argue, that even if your mind is currently a product of your brain, it could potentially be the product of something else, and so can't actually be the same thing as your brain.

True, it wouldn't be your existence, as it was not you that got vaporizzed by the teleportation device. Merely for conceptual purposes though, it might help you to visualize the idea of it.
And finally, I am not sure what there is to agree to. A teleportation which works by destroying a person and recreating a replica of that person at another location would, per your view, populate eternity with multiple versions of yourself and moreso, multiple versions of yourself that, at a time prior to a certain teleportaion event, did not exist.

Again, assumption that "brain" = "person". Dropping that assumption - as many materialists do - takes you from your view to one closer to mine.

[robertb]

They have indeed spent a lot of time arguing it, because what is self-evident to you is not self-evident to others. You are obviously one of those who treats "the person" and "the person's brain" as synonymous, and if you accept that equation then yes it will be self-evident. But not everyone accepts that equation - not even all materialists accept the equation. Some materialists see the mind as "software" and the brain as "hardware", as so the mind could be moved from one physical brain to another (or even some other physical substrate, like a digital computer) and yet still be the same mind - just as I can copy an application (including its data) from one physical computer to another and still have the same application and the same data. These people still are materialists though, because they still believe the software cannot exist without hardware to run it on - while an idealist like myself would reject that view, and insist that "software" can exist without "hardware", and all "hardware" is really "virtual hardware" implemented in "software". (So might, approaching the issue from a rather different direction, a radical Platonist such as Max Tegmark.)

I do not see how one would equate the mind with software. Software is a set of instructions to be carried out by the hardware. If I were to relate this to the brain, I would call the brain ‘hardware’, the processes which govern the functioning of the brain ‘software’ and what that software actually does, the product, I would call the ‘mind’.

The example simply states that the body gets destroyed at one end and recreated the other. Whether the consciousness gets destroyed and recreated or not, depends on your understanding of how the consciousness relates to the body.

Consciousness is the result of certain brain activity.

So you identify your consciousness with your brain? Well, here's another example philosophers use. Suppose we could build strong artificial intelligences - computers just as intelligent as human beings. Suppose even we could build a computer that was a "brain simulator", which could take a very detailed map of a human brain, down to the structure of each neuron, and produce the same results as a real brain would produce. Now, suppose we send nanobots into your brain, to carefully record every tiny detail of your brain, albeit destroying it in the process. Then they upload the details into the brain simulator, which starts up. The brain simulator thinks it is you. It has all your thoughts, feelings, ideas, memories, personality, character, etc. Is it you? Well, like the teleportation case, you might argue it is a new and separate person, which is a replica from you.

Is it me? No, it is a copy of me.

Suppose now we move the strong AI or brain simulator to a new machine. This is just like moving your mind to a new brain - does this mean the strong AI or brain simulator ceases to exist, and a new one is created? But why should the brain simulator identify itself with the particular hardware it is running on? If we look at modern computing (especially cloud computing), many applications (consider e.g. Google Search, or Facebook) run on vast clusters of machines, working together, such that any single machine can die and the application survives - just like how any neuron in your brain can die, but your brain lives on. So why should the strong AI or the brain simulator identify itself with any single machine it runs on, anymore than you identify yourself with any single neuron? Such an application, by progressive replacement of the machines in the cluster, can be moved to completely new hardware without ever being turned off. These days, a lot of the hardware we use is actually "virtual hardware" - the computer you are using could be relocated to the other end of the room, or the other side of the planet, and you'll never notice. So it makes no sense to say the artificial (strong AI or brain simulator) person is the hardware they run on; they are just software. But if the artificial person can be moved to new hardware without ceasing to exist, why not the biological person also?

Moving it is, in reality, still copying it. What you are describing is moving data from one place to another.
A single neuron is not me, so this is probably a bad analogy. Nor is my mind the result of a cluster of brains, (machines), nor is it generated by a digital cloud, (a cluster of machines). Even if a copy of my mind could be uploaded to a cluster of machines, this copy of my mind would still not be me.
So yes, in the sense of the brain, you are basically the specific hardware that you run on.

If every neuron in your brain was replaced, not all at once, but one by one, would you still be the same person at the end, despite having a completely new brain? But suppose instead we engineer a "digital neuron", which is a non-biological (e.g. silicon-based) neuron that acts however just like the biological ones do. We send the nanobots into your brain. Slowly and progressively they replace your biological neurons with digital ones, but giving your brain time to adapt to the change in each case (just as it adapts to the death of biological neurons now, or it would adapt to the creation of new ones.) At the start, your brain is purely biological. At the end, it is purely electronic. But it is a continuous change in between. Are you still alive at the end? Or did you die at some point? If so, where? When the first digital neuron was introduced? When the last biological neuron was removed? When the number of digital neurons exceeded the number of biological ones? And if you are alive at the end, now you could be software, able to be relocated just as any other software can be. You've started out in the real world and moved into the Matrix. But if this is possible, it just goes to show that whatever you are, you aren't your brain, you are just a pattern of information which happens to be attached to your brain, but which could be attached to something else instead.

This is relevant to the specific function of neurons. If they are in some way analogous to bits of memory, then it would seem likely that replacing one neuron at a time and allowing for each neuron to be assimilated into the brain before moving to the next would probably leave you being yourself.

If you take materialism seriously, you have to acknowledge that there is nothing "magical" about biological brains, and there is no reason in principle why a sufficiently advanced digital computer could not have a mind or be a person just as well as a biological brain can. But the end result, I think, is the identification of "mind" or "person" with "brain" is revealed to be questionable, even while sticking all the time to materialist assumptions. Once we adopt the idea that the mind is "software" or "information" rather than "hardware" or "brain", our answer to the "do we survive teleportation?" question changes from "No" to "Yes".

But adopting such an idea would seem to be completely unwarranted. Why would one do so, apart from some kind of personal preference, exactly?

But many will argue, that even if your mind is currently a product of your brain, it could potentially be the product of something else, and so can't actually be the same thing as your brain.

I await the evidence you will provide to suggest that the mind is a product of something else.

Again, assumption that "brain" = "person". Dropping that assumption - as many materialists do - takes you from your view to one closer to mine.

I am not sure I need to even make such an assumption for my statements regarding your examples to be true. They are true because every example you have provided have, in fact, referred to copies of an original.

[ZackMartin]

I do not see how one would equate the mind with software. Software is a set of instructions to be carried out by the hardware. If I were to relate this to the brain, I would call the brain ‘hardware’, the processes which govern the functioning of the brain ‘software’ and what that software actually does, the product, I would call the ‘mind’.

Well, plenty of people equate mind with software. Many AI researchers, philosophers, cognitive scientists and others do so. At some point in my materialist days I did the same:

"Cognitive scientists often say that the mind is the software of the brain." - "The Mind as the Software of the Brain"

Someone else arguing that the mind isn't software - "Busting the Metaphor: The Brain is Not a Computer" - although they acknowledge how popular that viewpoint has been: "The brain is a computer, the mind is software." That's been the ruling metaphor of cognitive science, neurology and AI studies for decades. I would question, however, if the Cornell research shows what they think it does. If you read the original paper "Continuous attraction toward
phonological competitors", Michael J. Spivey, Marc Grosjean, and Gunther Knoblich, PNAS, July 19, 2005, it seems clearer that all they have done is disproved one particular computation model of language processing, rather than the general idea that the brain is a computer. The author of that page seems to be making the assumption that a computer cannot simulate a continuous system, but the continuous can be simulated out of the discrete. Of course, if you look at a small enough scale, you would see then that you were dealing with something discrete rather than something truly continuous - but there experiment hasn't investigated at a small enough scale to rule out such discreteness.

Let me put it this way - if you accept strong AI, then a strong AI would likely be software rather than hardware. If the strong AI would be software rather than hardware, why not biological intelligence also?

Consciousness is the result of certain brain activity.

Does A being a product of B mean that if B is created and redestroyed then A must be? Suppose I write a novel in my word processor. I then copy the novel to a USB stick, and then delete the original file off the hard disk. Then I stick the USB stick into another computer, copy the novel off the USB stick unto that computer's hard drive, and then delete it off the USB stick. The novel has as its substrate first the first computer's hard disk (and RAM and CPU), then the USB stick, then the second computer's hard disk (and RAM and CPU). So the underlying computer file is destroyed and a new copy created at least twice, and likely more times if we count temporary copies that only exist in memory while the file is being edited. But how many times is my novel created and destroyed? Zero. It is still the same novel on the second computer as it was on the first one, even though the underlying physical substrate has changed.

Moving it is, in reality, still copying it. What you are describing is moving data from one place to another.
A single neuron is not me, so this is probably a bad analogy. Nor is my mind the result of a cluster of brains, (machines), nor is it generated by a digital cloud, (a cluster of machines). Even if a copy of my mind could be uploaded to a cluster of machines, this copy of my mind would still not be me.

Maybe my point would be clearer if I explained more what I meant. I work in the field of computing, and I work with clustered architectures. Let's say I want to install a business application, say "ACME Accounting". Now, like most enterprise business software today, ACME Accounting has a few layers. The application is accessed through a web browser. Let's say it is written in Java, and runs on a Java (J2EE) application server like IBM WebSphere or Oracle WebLogic. It actually stores its data in a relational database (RDBMS), such as IBM DB2 or Oracle Database. Now, a common design strategy here is to put the application server and the database on different machines. And then, for reliability, and to handle the load, we don't just run the application layer on a single machine, but on multiple machines simultaneously in a cluster. A hardware load balancer is used to distribute the incoming web traffic to multiple machines in the app cluster. The HTTP sessions are replicated, so if one of the machines in the app cluster suddenly dies, or is brought down for maintenance, the end users need not notice, and the hardware load balancer automatically routes their requests to another machine in the cluster. The hardware load balancer itself isn't a single box, but a pair of boxes, so if one dies, the other will take over immediately. (A hardware load balancer is basically just a computer, but it is not a standard computer - frequently they contain specialised networking circuitry that standard computers don't; this specialised circuitry enables higher performance than a standard computer of the same cost could achieve.) Then at the database level, you can likewise split the DB across multiple machines - using e.g. Oracle RAC, or IBM DB2 Purescale. Then behind the DB layer you have the SAN, which is a massive box filled with hundreds of hard disks, that stores all the data, and multiple machines can access the same hard disk at once. The same data is duplicated across multiple hard disks for performance and reliability (the system can survive with data intact the loss of any one disk.) And then you will commonly have this setup replicated in another data centre somewhere else, as a backup in case the primary data centre fails (e.g. it loses power, or catches fire, or gets flooded, or terrorists blow it up, or whatever.) And then fibre links replicate all data changes from the primary data centre to the secondary one (either at the SAN or database layers). And then you stick a GLB(global load balancer) in front of each site's hardware load balancer, to route traffic to the alternate site if the main one dies.

QUESTION: On which computer does "ACME Accounting" run?

ANSWER: "ACME Accounting" doesn't run on any single computer. It runs on a whole bunch of computers collectively, and it keeps on running even if any one of those computers dies. A plane could crash into one of the buildings it runs in, and it would still keep on running.

Once we have an application running on multiple computers, we can in theory perform upgrades, hardware replacements, etc., without bringing the application down at all. (I can tell you in practice that often doesn't happen, due to the complexity and expense and technological limitations, but with newer technologies it is becoming easier and more common.)

If I use virtualisation software, like e.g. VMWare, Xen, etc., then the "machines" my ACME Accounting application runs on aren't even real machines, they are virtual ones. Using "live migration", I can relocate a virtual machine from one physical machine to another, and no one will notice - it will look like the virtual machine just keeps on running. Often, users won't even realise they are using a virtual system.

Now imagine if "ACME Accounting" was instead "ACME Strong Artificial Intelligence". The same would apply - we would have a mind which did not run on any one single piece of hardware, but which was spread across many items of hardware, and we slowly could change that hardware under it without it noticing. So a mind - as software - can continue to exist even as the underlying hardware is replaced.

This is relevant to the specific function of neurons. If they are in some way analogous to bits of memory, then it would seem likely that replacing one neuron at a time and allowing for each neuron to be assimilated into the brain before moving to the next would probably leave you being yourself.

So your current brain could be replaced with a new one, and you'd still be yourself? If we then plugged your new electronic brain into a supercomputer cluster, could we slowly migrate it again from being in your head to being spread out over thousands of machines in some vast data centre, shared by thousands of other minds? Once we remove you from your body, we could incinerate it and you'd still live. Maybe one day you'll be part of the Internet?

But adopting such an idea would seem to be completely unwarranted. Why would one do so, apart from some kind of personal preference, exactly?

If one believes that strong AI, mind uploading, etc., are possible (even if just logically possible), then it follows that the mind can't be the brain.

I await the evidence you will provide to suggest that the mind is a product of something else.

We need to distinguish two claims (1) "the mind is a product of the brain" (2) "the mind is the brain". You seem to subscribe to (1) and (2). Some materialists subscribe to (1) only. If (2) is true, then destroying the brain must destroy the mind. If (1) is true, then destroying the brain need not destroy the mind, so long as we transfer the mind to something else first. So long as whatever the mind is running on (the physical brain, a massive cluster of computers, etc.) is still ultimately physical, materialism could still be true, but the particular sort of materialism that (2) represents would be false.

I am not sure I need to even make such an assumption for my statements regarding your examples to be true. They are true because every example you have provided have, in fact, referred to copies of an original.

I write out a short story on a piece of paper. I photocopy the piece of paper. Now I burn the original. Is it the same short story? Yes. Works of literature, computer programs, works of music, sound recordings, even this discussion we are having here - these are all things that exist independently of any particular physical substrate. A materialist would still argue there has to be at least one physical substrate still existing for the thing to still exist and be the same thing, but the thing can remain the same thing even as the actual substrate(s) are replaced multiple times. The question then is, what is the mind more like? A physical object? Or an intangible object like a novel or a play or a computer program?

[robertb]

Well, plenty of people equate mind with software. Many AI researchers, philosophers, cognitive scientists and others do so. At some point in my materialist days I did the same:

"Cognitive scientists often say that the mind is the software of the brain." - "The Mind as the Software of the Brain"

Someone else arguing that the mind isn't software - "Busting the Metaphor: The Brain is Not a Computer" - although they acknowledge how popular that viewpoint has been: "The brain is a computer, the mind is software." That's been the ruling metaphor of cognitive science, neurology and AI studies for decades. I would question, however, if the Cornell research shows what they think it does. If you read the original paper "Continuous attraction toward
phonological competitors", Michael J. Spivey, Marc Grosjean, and Gunther Knoblich, PNAS, July 19, 2005, it seems clearer that all they have done is disproved one particular computation model of language processing, rather than the general idea that the brain is a computer. The author of that page seems to be making the assumption that a computer cannot simulate a continuous system, but the continuous can be simulated out of the discrete. Of course, if you look at a small enough scale, you would see then that you were dealing with something discrete rather than something truly continuous - but there experiment hasn't investigated at a small enough scale to rule out such discreteness.

Let me put it this way - if you accept strong AI, then a strong AI would likely be software rather than hardware. If the strong AI would be software rather than hardware, why not biological intelligence also?

Intelligence may be considered one of the properties of what we refer to as a mind. I do not think that intelligence, itself, is a mind.

Does A being a product of B mean that if B is created and redestroyed then A must be? Suppose I write a novel in my word processor. I then copy the novel to a USB stick, and then delete the original file off the hard disk. Then I stick the USB stick into another computer, copy the novel off the USB stick unto that computer's hard drive, and then delete it off the USB stick. The novel has as its substrate first the first computer's hard disk (and RAM and CPU), then the USB stick, then the second computer's hard disk (and RAM and CPU). So the underlying computer file is destroyed and a new copy created at least twice, and likely more times if we count temporary copies that only exist in memory while the file is being edited. But how many times is my novel created and destroyed? Zero. It is still the same novel on the second computer as it was on the first one, even though the underlying physical substrate has changed.

You are still describing a copy of the original. The copy can be the same in each and every respect, completely indistinguishable from the original in fact. It is still a copy, relevant to our discussion, it is still another.

Maybe my point would be clearer if I explained more what I meant. I work in the field of computing, and I work with clustered architectures. Let's say I want to install a business application, say "ACME Accounting". Now, like most enterprise business software today, ACME Accounting has a few layers. The application is accessed through a web browser. Let's say it is written in Java, and runs on a Java (J2EE) application server like IBM WebSphere or Oracle WebLogic. It actually stores its data in a relational database (RDBMS), such as IBM DB2 or Oracle Database. Now, a common design strategy here is to put the application server and the database on different machines. And then, for reliability, and to handle the load, we don't just run the application layer on a single machine, but on multiple machines simultaneously in a cluster. A hardware load balancer is used to distribute the incoming web traffic to multiple machines in the app cluster. The HTTP sessions are replicated, so if one of the machines in the app cluster suddenly dies, or is brought down for maintenance, the end users need not notice, and the hardware load balancer automatically routes their requests to another machine in the cluster. The hardware load balancer itself isn't a single box, but a pair of boxes, so if one dies, the other will take over immediately. (A hardware load balancer is basically just a computer, but it is not a standard computer - frequently they contain specialised networking circuitry that standard computers don't; this specialised circuitry enables higher performance than a standard computer of the same cost could achieve.) Then at the database level, you can likewise split the DB across multiple machines - using e.g. Oracle RAC, or IBM DB2 Purescale. Then behind the DB layer you have the SAN, which is a massive box filled with hundreds of hard disks, that stores all the data, and multiple machines can access the same hard disk at once. The same data is duplicated across multiple hard disks for performance and reliability (the system can survive with data intact the loss of any one disk.) And then you will commonly have this setup replicated in another data centre somewhere else, as a backup in case the primary data centre fails (e.g. it loses power, or catches fire, or gets flooded, or terrorists blow it up, or whatever.) And then fibre links replicate all data changes from the primary data centre to the secondary one (either at the SAN or database layers). And then you stick a GLB(global load balancer) in front of each site's hardware load balancer, to route traffic to the alternate site if the main one dies.

QUESTION: On which computer does "ACME Accounting" run?

ANSWER: "ACME Accounting" doesn't run on any single computer. It runs on a whole bunch of computers collectively, and it keeps on running even if any one of those computers dies. A plane could crash into one of the buildings it runs in, and it would still keep on running.

Once we have an application running on multiple computers, we can in theory perform upgrades, hardware replacements, etc., without bringing the application down at all. (I can tell you in practice that often doesn't happen, due to the complexity and expense and technological limitations, but with newer technologies it is becoming easier and more common.)

If I use virtualisation software, like e.g. VMWare, Xen, etc., then the "machines" my ACME Accounting application runs on aren't even real machines, they are virtual ones. Using "live migration", I can relocate a virtual machine from one physical machine to another, and no one will notice - it will look like the virtual machine just keeps on running. Often, users won't even realise they are using a virtual system.

Now imagine if "ACME Accounting" was instead "ACME Strong Artificial Intelligence". The same would apply - we would have a mind which did not run on any one single piece of hardware, but which was spread across many items of hardware, and we slowly could change that hardware under it without it noticing. So a mind - as software - can continue to exist even as the underlying hardware is replaced.

This is very interesting stuff. To make this analogous to what we are discussing, I would not equate the software with the ‘mind’ it creates.

So your current brain could be replaced with a new one, and you'd still be yourself? If we then plugged your new electronic brain into a supercomputer cluster, could we slowly migrate it again from being in your head to being spread out over thousands of machines in some vast data centre, shared by thousands of other minds? Once we remove you from your body, we could incinerate it and you'd still live. Maybe one day you'll be part of the Internet?

I am not sure where I said that my current brain could be replaced with a new one leaving me as me. I referred specifically to neurons, if in fact neurons can be viewed as analogous to bits of memory. Perhaps I was unclear.

If one believes that strong AI, mind uploading, etc., are possible (even if just logically possible), then it follows that the mind can't be the brain.

Mind uploading may be possible, in theory, via the creation of a near perfect model of neurological activity, a snapshot perhaps. Again, this would still be a copy of the original, not the original.

We need to distinguish two claims (1) "the mind is a product of the brain" (2) "the mind is the brain". You seem to subscribe to (1) and (2). Some materialists subscribe to (1) only. If (2) is true, then destroying the brain must destroy the mind. If (1) is true, then destroying the brain need not destroy the mind, so long as we transfer the mind to something else first. So long as whatever the mind is running on (the physical brain, a massive cluster of computers, etc.) is still ultimately physical, materialism could still be true, but the particular sort of materialism that (2) represents would be false.

Yes the mind is a product of the brain.
No, the mind is not the brain.

I am a product of the environment, I am not the environment.

If you destroy the brain, the mind generator let’s say, you destroy the mind. If you destroy parts of the brain, you destroy the parts of the mind generated by those parts of the brain you destroyed. This is evidenced by things like Alzheimer’s disease, or electro-shock therapy, for example.

I write out a short story on a piece of paper. I photocopy the piece of paper. Now I burn the original. Is it the same short story? Yes. Works of literature, computer programs, works of music, sound recordings, even this discussion we are having here - these are all things that exist independently of any particular physical substrate. A materialist would still argue there has to be at least one physical substrate still existing for the thing to still exist and be the same thing, but the thing can remain the same thing even as the actual substrate(s) are replaced multiple times. The question then is, what is the mind more like? A physical object? Or an intangible object like a novel or a play or a computer program?

The copy is not the original, even if the copy is 100% indistinguishable from the original it is still a copy nevertheless.

To your questions:

What is a mind more like? A physical object? Or an intangible object like a novel or a play or a computer program?

The mind is generated by a physical object. The mind, itself, is the result of multiple processes, like what you see on your computer screen is the result of multiple processes, but is not any of those processes individually.

[magellan004]

The mind is generated by a physical object. The mind, itself, is the result of multiple processes, like what you see on your computer screen is the result of multiple processes, but is not any of those processes individually.

You may have rsponded to this before - if so just ingnore my question:

The mind is generated by a physical object. Can you think of a way of testing this assertion? What sorts things would you do the test on, and what things would you measure? I am not so much interested in a 'He did it before' claim but on how such conclusions are arrived at.


Magellan

[Tassman]

You may have rsponded to this before - if so just ingnore my question:

The mind is generated by a physical object. Can you think of a way of testing this assertion? What sorts things would you do the test on, and what things would you measure? I am not so much interested in a 'He did it before' claim but on how such conclusions are arrived at.

Magellan

Without wishing to preempt robertb, I think you are asking the wrong question. All indications to date are that when the brain is destroyed the individual ceases to exist along with such presupposed entities as the 'mind’ or ‘soul’. There is no credible evidence that signifies otherwise. If you wish to assert that the ‘soul or mind’ somehow lives on then the burden of proof rests with you.

[magellan004]

Without wishing to preempt robertb, I think you are asking the wrong question. All indications to date are that when the brain is destroyed the individual ceases to exist along with such presupposed entities as the 'mind’ or ‘soul’. There is no credible evidence that signifies otherwise. If you wish to assert that the ‘soul or mind’ somehow lives on then the burden of proof rests with you.

My question is a direct consequence of Robertb's 'formula' for how a mind is generated/made/created : 'The mind is generated by a physical object.'

So I was not asking about 'What happens later on to the mind once it has been created' but 'How is it created?'

As far as your point - 'What happens to the mind later?' there is a history of many thousnads of years of evidence of an afterlife, We have witness statements, we have experiments, we have near-death-experiences. We have scholars, mystics, teachers and seers teaching us about these things. We have books and paintings. We have insights and revelations.

Sorry if I missed some of the hundreds of types of evidence for an afterlife, I just wrote down a few.

Magellan

[robertb]

You may have rsponded to this before - if so just ingnore my question:

The mind is generated by a physical object. Can you think of a way of testing this assertion? What sorts things would you do the test on, and what things would you measure? I am not so much interested in a 'He did it before' claim but on how such conclusions are arrived at.


Magellan

Perhaps we can consider that the mind is that which is aware of itself. I think that this can be generally accepted as a basic requirement to call something a mind without too much argument.

Consider the brain in the black box, the person with no physical senses, thought experiment. Would such an individual be aware of their own existence? If so, how would such an individual actually conceive of it? What frame of reference would they have to conceptualize anything at all?

A mind without mechanisms to populate it with information has no ability to gain awareness of itself and would seem to be therefore no mind at all.