Mark Peaty writes:
> Brent: 'However, all that is needed for the arguments that appear on this list is to recreate a rough, functioning copy of the body plus a detailed reproduction of memory and a brain that functioned approximately the same. That much might not be too hard. After all, as Stathis points out, you're not the same atoms you were a week ago'
> MP: Well! I'm not going to let YOU pull the levers or press any buttons if I have to be faxed anywhere soon! You make philosophers' copy-machines sound like props for Frankenstein's Monster or that movie 'The Fly'. Furthermore " ... memory and a brain that functioned approximately the same" would seem to be rather less than what Bruno's arguments about copying require. But my point is that, whilst the ideas are cute, they are also nonsense any way. Most people have problems enough living from day to day, and the only time that 'copying' of a person really has any relevance is where surgery or prosthetic augmentation of some kind really should be done to alleviate suffering or prevent premature death.
> As for Stathis's assertion about seemingly minor changes which commonly occur to people's brains as they get older, like the odd little stroke here and there, it is always a question of the facts in each case. Some deficiencies turn out to be crucial in terms of quality of life: loosing the use of one or two fingers could be annoying, embarrassing and on occasion quite dangerous. Losing the ability to remember the names of all the people you know, would likewise not be nice. On the other hand, losing the ability to recognise things on the left side of your world, or losing the ability to see the people you knew before as being THOSE people such that you become convinced that the person you are with is a substitute, now that could be very dysfunctional and very distressing. I have seen it written that in fact most people who survive past middle age, do in fact suffer from 'micro' strokes quite often but usually the perceived experience is that of progressively weakened memory. Not Alzheimer's which is a league of its own, but just difficulty remembering certain things.
Our bodies, including all neural tissue, are constantly falling apart and being rebuilt. Experiments with radiolabeled amino acids in mice, for example, suggest that the half life of protein in the brain is about 10 days. The turnover at synapses is even faster, a matter of minutes. So given months or years, you really are like a car in which every single component has been replaced, the only remaining property of the original car being the design.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Fri Jan 05 2007 - 21:30:39 PST