how would you go about transferring human awareness from the human body into an alternative form?

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience' started by just me, Dec 5, 2019.

  1. just me Registered Senior Member

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    I don't want THIS THREAD to be contaminated by philosophy, so I am starting another specifically about awareness.
    and the current state of scientific and philosophical knowledge is only just sufficient for me to prevent my death.
    don't tell me what to do and what not to do.
     
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  3. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    I haven't told you what to do you yet.
    You are going to die and you aren't going to accomplish this task. Go and do your homework and don't get back on your computer until it is done.

    Do you hear me young man!
     
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  5. just me Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not a man.
    also do my homework on what?
     
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  7. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Don't you have some homework to do? Don't lie.
     
  8. just me Registered Senior Member

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    well, I am homeschooled, so all of my work is homework, but I already did it in the early hours.
     
  9. just me Registered Senior Member

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    I am going to prevent my death and there is nothing you can do about it.
     
  10. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Just you watch me...
     
  11. just me Registered Senior Member

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    can't watch you, don't know who you are.
     
  12. just me Registered Senior Member

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    what are you going to do? kill me? through a computer?
     
  13. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    Do you feel home schooling has damaged your ability to feel empathy for others?
     
  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    No. Everyone is going to die.
     
  15. just me Registered Senior Member

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    even if that was true, it still wouldn't entail you preventing me prevent my death.
     
  16. just me Registered Senior Member

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    no, Its actually come back a bit now that I have some space from people, but not much.
     
  17. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    What was it like when you weren't home schooled?
     
  18. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry I took so long answer. I am also sorry to break this to you but you are going to die.
     
  19. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    If your nanobots are not performing the functions of cells, what did they replicate?
    You can't have it both ways.
    If this:
    then you end up with a human body that has to do all the things a human body does.

    If you're building a robot, you can't move into it.

    Okay. It may be possible, but you haven't thought through the process.
     
  20. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    PS - You are going to die, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it. You can, however, waste a great part of a life that might otherwise be rewarding and enjoyable, preoccupied with futile attempts to prevent your inevitable death.
     
  21. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

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    3,320
    Brains don't have electronic components processing the information (the adjective "electronic" references an artificial domain).

    Accordingly, in this topic you seem to be referring to something more along the line of a p-zombie type "awareness", that's very narrowly instantiated by clinical conditions like blindsight. As in either an extraordinarily defective human body or autonomous machine just being able to navigate and identify circumstances in its environment without having any experiences slash phenomenal representations of such.

    In which case, "consciousness" as usually intended isn't what you really want to discuss here, but instead learning algorithms and technological sensing of surroundings and autonomous navigation that operationally occur unaccompanied by the manifestations and feelings associated with biological consciousness.
     
  22. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    5,902
    Right. Sciforums has an earlier thread somewhere wondering whether, if we downloaded your consciousness into a younger/healthier clone body, it would still be your consciousness. Or would it be somebody else's (the new clone-body's) consciousness that happens to have all of your memories?

    I'm inclined to think that consciousness is generic. We are all "me", aren't we? So the clone-body will think of itself as 'me' when it awakens, just like the downloaded individual did before the operation. The question then is which particular identity is associated with the 'me'. That seems to be to be a combination of history and bodily continuity. And the most important component of that would probably be memory and personality patterns (emotional responses and stuff). You would think of yourself as being whoever you remember yourself as being.

    There are lots of problem cases that could arise there that arise in the philosophy of personal identity. (For example, what if your memories and personality patterns are downloaded into two clone bodies and 'you' are duplicated?) But I think that if your memories include memories of you being terminally ill or something and being prepared to be downloaded into a new body, and then an experienced 'me' wakes up in a new body with those memories, you would probably accept your continuity with the person in the former body.

    Just as you accept that you are the same person in the morning that went to sleep the night before.

    That's the practical problem. Before we can talk realistically about downloading memories, personality (and consciousness?) into a new body, we would need to have a very good understanding of how memory and personality are encoded in the brain. Not only that, we would need to have a method of recording that information and then imprinting it in another brain. At the present time we are nowhere close. (I don't think that we will be for a long time.) So it's just science-fiction at this point.
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2019
  23. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    So what do you want to talk about?

    Your 'nanobot' idea seems to presuppose that we know the relevant (to consciousness and personality) function of every neuron in the human nervous system. (It isn't just neurons. There's an endocrine aspect to mood and personality as well, the action of hormones and so on. We would need to capture that too.) Not only that, we would need to know how all of these neurons interact with one another in the neural network. (There are many billions of neurons, each with multiple synapses.) The complexity of just the description and mapping task appears overwhelming. Then we would have to develop a way to replace every one of those neurons with a functionally equivalent 'nanobot'. (It might be easier to model the functional network in a supercomputer.)

    While one might think about it hypothetically, it does't sound even remotely possible in real life. Certainly not in this day and age. Maybe for some future neurobiology and technology. In 2019, it's just science-fiction.
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2019

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