Can humans reach enlightenment?

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Myles,
Sure, it remains a house. But is it the same house. At what point do the changes become parallel to having a brain transplant. Sure, if I get a heart for someone else, I am (mostly) the same guy. But a brain?
And even in a normal 50 years....If all the materials are different, the temperment, 95% of the memories, the body is larger and has vastly different capabilities, is it the same person?

Is language use a good indicator of reality? I am certainly aware that common understanding is that the self continues through time.

yes. What are the necessary properties or the self, mind or brain?

The purpose would be to question memory as proof of identity. There are other ways to come at the problems of using memory as a basis for identity, but I think computers raise a nice bothersome one. It is not that the memories are necessarily 'still there' but perhaps they have been copied over and over and are not the same - even being distorted over the generations of copying.

But it is not clear that a self is continuous through the changes. Perhaps a new consciousness is constructed each time we wake up. Not a new personality, but this awareness. Perhaps consciousness will be found to have frames like film, where over very short intervals it flashes like a rapid strobe over whatever it is aware of. The strobe light have a changing continuity but the experiencer being made over and over and not having continuity.

I do recognize that the change may very well only be gradual. I certainly know this is true on the cellular level. I am not sure about this in relation to consciousnessness. But these gradual changes can be argued to elimate identity over certain longer periods of time.

1) does the memory have to be the same as it was years ago? 2) oddly enough a memory is a record of a change in the brain. What you remember is a difference in your brain from the person who actually was experiencing whatever it was. Every memory is a difference. Can we hinge identity on differences?


Is this sense of self something we should trust? What is it based on?

Yes, yes. I know this Myles. As I said to Sarkus, I am rooting for him to brush back my arguments well.

Sometimes you seem to have taken on a role, Myles. I want to make it clear that I do not see it as your duty to answer my questions. I say this without rancor: I find 'That's the best I can do.' an odd thing to say.

I also find this last quote odd:

I don't see it as indulging. Should I be more humble? Ask less questions? Speculate less? Am I taking away from their work?

 

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You really think this "brain transplant" is possible???

The "I" is unlikely to be something that can be transferred from brain to brain precisely because it is an emergent property of a given brain - i.e. it is related intrinsically to the physical properties of that brain - it IS the pattern of neurons / pathways / synapses etc.

The idea that you can swap one's sense of "I" from body to body - INCLUDING the brain - is science fiction.
It is probably possible to do all parts of the body EXCEPT the brain, although, given time, it might be possible to identify which part of the brain (if not all) gives rise to the property of "I" and transplant or alter the other parts without altering that sense of "I". Brain damaged patients give support to this idea.

Someone advocating a non-corporeal "I" - something which is independent of the brain but using it as a vehicle, for example - might think the transplantation of "I" from one body to another is possible.
But if one thinks that "I" is the pattern of the brain - one would need establish that same pattern in the new brain to create the same (sense of) "I".

The problem with this computer analogy is that it is possible to copy software (memories) perfectly - digitally - as it is just a matter of discrete, binary dots etc. And the copying of software is dependent upon this.

Although I may be missing the point?

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And this is where rational thinking must kick-in.
Unless you have evidence to the contrary - the simpler (in terms of fewer unknown elements) is deemed correct.
The idea that we are a new consciousness each time we wake, or that it changes discretely, introduces unknown elements that are not needed compared to the non-changing continuous.

How do we know that time itself is not like a strobe-light - stopping for what could be millenia (if measured from an external point of view) before progressing again, but with us none the wiser?
An interesting thought, perhaps, but not rational.

There is a difference between identity (e.g. personality) and consciousness. Consciousness is the root "I" - whereas identity is the self-description of that "I". The latter can change, and does (I do not have the same personality I had when I was in my adolesence, for example) but the "I" remains the same.
But this might just be semantics.

The only evidence we can have of the past is through memory - recorded in our brain or elsewhere.
If we discredit the idea of "memory" sufficiently - and claim we are all newly conscious with each passing change, with implanted memories to give us a kick-start when we wake up (ever seen "Dark City") etc - then it leads to absurdism - how can we be made responsible for actions that can not be proven to have been those of the "conscious" person, and not their previous consciousness.
One can also not "prove" that anything happened in the past.
Memory is all there is.
Each moment could be the first moment of existence with what we understand as the "past" merely set in place for when existence is switched on... such as the idea that God planted dinosaur bones in the earth so that people would think the earth millions of years old and not 6,000 as per the Bible.

 

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That in fifty years there will be some way to put a brain in another body? Seems possible to me. The problems of connecting the brain to the other nervous system seem daunting to me in my ignorance even of current abilities. I certainly can't rule it out.

I'm too lazy to keep looking on the web, but perhaps more radical things have been done since.

I meant the brain is given to a healthy body. But issues of identity could certainly be raised by more piecemeal receptions. If my hippocampus has shrunk or undergone damage due to PTSD or physical trauma does receiving a new one impinge on my identity? Even if it is cloned and grown from my own cells? The amygdala? Would we be threatened less by the visual cortex?

But I was thinking about someone whose torso and organs had undergone great damange and could be have this brain placed in another body. Clearly this other body would have a new identity.

If you can do it with all the parts except the brain you have essentially transplanted the other brain you wrapped the body around.

Aren't there a lot of people who are investigating the idea of uploading the mind into computers. Some certainly view this as copying the brain. Others seem to view this as uploading. For me it would be some sort of copying.

Well, I think memories undergo changes over time. Perhaps the copying in our brains, since it is analog (?) does lose bits of information.

Non-changing continuous is not an option. Or?

Well, I was going somewhat on my experience of going to sleep and waking. There seemed to be elements of dissolving and coming into existence. I don't want to push this too far, but there is between REM states a sense of not having been around sometimes.

If I examine conscousness I find no qualities with which I can identify it as the same as previous ones. Or what I experienced at earlier times. It seems identityless.

I want to see dark city. I am not trying to put this forward as a practical philosophy. Objections to determinism could be made along those lines, but discussions seem to take place anyway - perhaps we can't help it, ha ha. We also consider amnesiacs not to have died, for example. And as we get older we do not generally consider memory loss partial deaths. I am sure some do, but I don't think it is simple to hinge identity on memory.

And as I said to Myles, memories are essentially changes in the brain. Every memory is a difference from an earlier self. Sure if I find a scratch of my initials I made on a white, egg shaped rock years ago I can be fairly certain that it is the same rock. But when thinking of brains the scratch is a sign of difference in a material all the atoms of which have changed. I am not sure memory is a solid ground to base identity on. Also memories can be implanted via hypnosis and one can have memories that are actually experiences one's parents had or a sibling. But the story got stuck in our brain complete with images.

see above.

Yes, I am not that kind of extreme skeptic who would want to say it could be.

 

Actually - yes.
Because usually, each subsequent phase is conditioned and set by the preceding phase.
And if a person would not go through which much change within one phase, the next phase won't be much different, either. This is how change is slow.

 

Apologies - for some reason I interpreted your previous words as being that the brain transplant would NOT affect identity - i.e. if you had a brain transplant you would still be the same person but with a new brain - just as if you had a heart transplant you would be the same person (same sense of "I").
Whereas I think (hope) we agree that an entirely new brain would constitute a new sense of identity - the new one being the "I" that comes with the new brain.

We have to be careful of what we mean by "identity" - as to me it is merely how we describe our self, our "I". And in this sense identity does change all the time - with each passing experience, in fact. Trauma can make massive changes quickly - but otherwise it is generally gradual.
But "I" remains constant throughout.
I am most certainly the same "I" that existed the many years ago when I first went to school. I can not prove it - other than through hazy memories that are gradually deteriorating. But I am aware of the continuous nature of "I".

Yep - my misunderstanding (as detailed above).

Now granted that this aside is semantics - given that we generally consider the transplant to occur to the "I" (e.g. "He has had a heart transplant" - we don't say "the heart has had a rest-of-body transplant) - would the person undergo a brain transplant - or a rest-of-body transplant? I.e. the sense of "I" within the brain remains in tact and it is the rest of the body that is transplanted around it.
If, on the other hand, the sense of "I" was contained / attached to the rest of the body, and the brain had no bearing on the "I" - then yes, a "brain transplant" would have occurred.

Up-loading is one thing, and they're only (as far as I'm aware) contemplating the memories - which is merely accessing the storage compartments and copying them.
But reading a CD is not the same as building a CD from scratch and then recording onto it.

And the mind is more than just our memories - of that I hope we agree - otherwise computers that are capable of storing more than our 1,000 or so TB of data would have a "mind"? The mind is thus clearly more than that - and unless they find a way of recreating the precise neural make-up of what does constitute the "mind"....

Not necessarily a distinction between analogue and digital - but the storage medium itself.
Old vinyl records were effectively analogue - and would keep forever if stored right.
Tape cassettes, also analogue, degrade over time - and so it is with our memories - due to the death over time of connections within the brain.

But your sense of "I" remains intact when you wake up.
It could well be that when you wake up it is the first time you are conscious - and that it is only your memories (short- and long-term) that enable you to infer that it is NOT the first time.

There are the interesting cases of people who have no / limited memory (e.g. retrograde amnesia) - and every time they wake up they think it is the first time they have been conscious.
However, even they do not lose their sense of identity - they know who they are.

There is apparently a psychological condition called "Fugue state" - very rare - where people either lose or abandon their identity, coupled with amnesia etc.


So from evidence with retrograde amnesiacs - identity is possibly "hard-wired" into the brain.
e.g. as we experience things, our brain forms new (and breaks) neural connections - and this occurs much more in our formative years than later on. As we experience, we also dump our experience into our memory.
If we lose our memory, the hard-wired connections still remain (except through trauma, for example) and thus our identity remains.

 

I'm intrigued....

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How is the word "energy" abused by physics?
I would have thought that, in any field of knowledge, physics would be where it is most accurately used?
Care to elaborate?

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Enlightenment is an experience, and one possible for us all in real life. It is not impossibly rare, and not at all some kind of arcane or supernatural event.

It doesn't change anything. You still "Chop wood, haul water".

It doesn't last, for most people, although it is memorable.

The experience is time, or rather a timeless duration, spent in alertness but without a self - the dissolution of the "self" or identity in non-pathological circumstances, the actual and experienced identification of "oneself" with the immediate world and vice versa.

The neurological correlates of the state would be fascinating, I think. There is some evidence that certain drugs can help produce the event.

 

Is there not a similar process on an atomic level in the body?

This one I am familiar with - not the father's beard one. I see this as both symbolic - of consciousness - and also an attempt to break the hold of language on the mind. I am not quite sure how it relates.

I agree.

Yes, but as I said memories are records of change. They may tie us to the person who had the experience but not to the one before that experience. In fact they are where we differ. But on an atomic level aren't the blocks being replaced. yes, I recognize that some patterns stay there. As they would in my elaborate lego house. Let's say I use an odd contruction and replace the blocks with same colored blocks. Why is identity not based on the material or corporeal body's actual components? Why with humans does it shift to the patterns - which, I might add also change, though not completely.

As far as I can tell there is no reason, from a scientific standpoint, to posit a self that is continuous through time. Discrete or gradual changes are both changes. That the physical base for the consciousness and this sense of the idea changes completely - in terms of its building blocks not in terms of patterns - and that the patterns within that base - which generally would be considered all of the self by science - have changed remarkably since we were 10 also seems to raise the question of what this continuous self is based on.

We certainly like to think that it is the same 'I', but I cannot see a solid foundation for it being the same. I can see a case being made for it being simlilar or having some % of identity with earlier existing forms, but not for 100% or even %ages near that.

Could it not be that this idea of the continuous self will be seen as as mythological as God currently is by most scientists?

As you have pointed out elsewhere some Buddhists tend to view the self as mythological. They find no consistant quality over time.