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: <JT>First, I hope you had a good weekend. On to the show...</JT> : : So if your brain were made of a different set of atoms you would not subjectively exist, but the brain would belong to different conscious entity who only looks and acts like you. : <JT>That's an interesting question. Since we're not talking about a copy of your brain, but a move, I suppose that brain and its consciousness would believe itself to be you. : What makes this conversation difficult is that we seem to have two different umptions. I think that there is no such thing as a consciousness apart from a physical brain. You think that a consciousness is something which exists apart from the physical universe, so that if you destroy one brain and create another exactly like it, there's a consciousness which tries to find its home in the copy. : Correct me if I'm wrong in my interpretation of your umptions.</JT> : : Given that the atoms in your own brain have undergone substantial replacement in the past 10 years, this leads to some interesting questions. For example, what percentage of atoms must be replaced before this switch of persons occurs? All of the atoms, 51 percent of the atoms, or just one atom? : <JT>You misunderstood what I meant. Part of that is my fault for imagining a disembodied "you" which <I>sees</I> this new copy of you, thus giving it a separate identify from yourself. : Our brains are undergoing change at every second of our lives. If they didn't, we would not be conscious of the page of time. What we think of as a "self" is not "attached" to the matter of the brain. I think I've made that as clear as I possibly could. The "self," i.e., memories and personality, is the <I>pattern</I>, the synaptic paths, of your brain. : This is why if you created another brain with a different set of atoms but with the exact same pattern as yours, that other brain would be exactly the same as you up until the moment of creation. Then the fact of your possessing separate brains and bodies would differentiate "you" from "him." : How they'd settle this legally is an interesting question, but I have no idea. I don't think we can, because we have such mixed premises about what an individual is.</JT> : : And how does this switch take place? Did the person who existed before you gradually loose consciousness as you took over and gradually gained consciousness? And how did the two persons, each unaware of the other, share responsibility for controlling the same body? : : Or did the switch occur all at once. Maybe one morning your body woke up and with a brand new person, and the former person no longer existing. : <JT>I'm having trouble understanding you here. We're talking about a theoretical "switch" so the mechanics of it are completely imaginary. : In a way, you are a different person every second you live. You're ping off your body, so to speak, to your future self at each second. But please don't take this seriously. I'm just musing.</JT> : : Further, are we to presume that the specific atoms that make up your brain have some special property that creates you, and which no other set of atoms can produce? What physical property would that be? : <JT>Well, there are some who theorize that consciousness arises out of the quantum properties of the atoms which make up our brain, but I have no idea what they're talking about, and I don't think there's a serious scientific concensus on that topic. : I don't hold this view at all. I think one atom is as good as any. : I believe, and everything I know about the brain and everything I learned in psychology supports this, that a brain is like a hard drive, and consciousness, the software written upon it. : But the hard drive influences how the software is written. It's as if every single computer in the world had its own individual operating system and programming language, similar to others, but unique in its own way. This is the nature part of "nature vs. nurture." : <B>Is</B> the hard drive the software? Is the brain the mind? I say yes, because unlike a hard drive, you cannot simply erase what's been written, and the software cannot be translated directly onto another hard drive, because we haven't "ed" the brain yet. : I guess a more suitable ogy would be a write-once CD-ROM with an extremely recursive software written on it.</JT> : : And what are the odds of those specific atoms coming together in the same brain? Given the number of atoms in the physical universe, that makes your conscious existence unbelievably improbable, almost beyond calculation. : <JT>Again, I don't believe that consciousness is tied to the matter of the brain. : I never denied that we're all unique and special. I have no idea where you're going with this.</JT> : : These are all intelligible questions. Your answers? : <JT>You started with the topic, "Mind reducible to the brain? Argument against." : Much of what you said above has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I think I've stuck pretty well with my argument that the mind is in fact "reducible" to the brain.</JT>

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