Posted by Noctillucent on July 16, 19101 at 18:50:37:
In Reply to: There ya are. posted by John Tchoe on July 13, 19101 at 13:54:34:
Here’s where I see an inconsistency with your statements:
You agree that the atoms in your present brain have no special or unique property that makes them different from other atoms of the same type.
If this is true, it should make no different to your present consciousness if your brain were made of different set of atoms than the ones it presently has. You would still be YOU, not someone else who only acts like you.
This is, of course, a hypothetical question. Still, it raises an important point. If your brain consisted of a different set of atoms, and YOU did not exist, but someone else instead, we would have no choice but to conclude that the atoms producing your consciousness are in fact unique in some way. Moreover, given the vast number of atoms in the universe, the chance of just those specific ones coming together in the same brain, AND, forming a highly specific configuration, would be fantastically improbable. Almost beyond calculation.
So let’s accept your statement that the atoms in your brain are not unique in any way, and if your brain were made of any other set of atoms, you would still be YOU. If true, then a duplicate brain would be the material realization of this very statement. The difference, of course, is that the duplicate brain would a second brain in addition to the one already existing.
Here’s the important point. The atoms in the second brain can’t know if your present brain already exists. How can they? Atoms are mindless bits of matter. So whether your present brain exists or not can make no possible difference to the atoms of the second brain, and thus to the consciousness ociated with those atoms.
The atoms in the duplicate brain can’t say, “Hey! There’s another brain out there and we are only its duplicate. John can’t be here because he already exists in the other brain, so we must produce a consciousness who only ACTS like John.” That would be absurd, especially given that the terms ‘original’ and ‘duplicate’ mean absolutely nothing to the atoms. They simply are what they are, and consciousness ociated with them is what it is. This would be true whether your present brain exists or not.
Yet obviously there cannot exist two YOUs either, as that would allow you to look at yourself from outside yourself, which is logically impossible. Having ruled out that atoms are individually unique, this would seem to leave us with only two possibilities. One possibility is that some kind of spooky communication would be taking place between the two brains, and thereby cause the second brain to produce someone who only ACTS like you whenever the first brain is present somewhere in the universe.
Such a communicating signal would be VERY strange. It must pervade the entire universe in order to ensure that a second identical brain doesn’t exist somewhere. The signal must be able to penetrate anything. It would also be oddly selective in that it would only activate in the presence of its own duplicate. But most oddly of all it would be related to consciousness itself, for it is not the physical brains that create the problem, but the consciousness ociated with those brains.
I think you would agree such a force would be pretty hard to take seriously.
The other possibility is that YOU – your I-ness – simply defies a physical explanation. This has serious philosophical implications.
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