Friends:
Siding with Mark (almost?<G>)
just to a 'wider' view of mentality than implied by
physicalistic - physiologistic - even maybe
comp-related frameworks, indicating the domains we did
not even discovered, but love to disregard. Upon Marks
post
--- Stathis Papaioannou (wroteamong more):
<stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
>...
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....<
Is it really?
Are we a mchanistic isolated structure and an
unchanging mechanism fabricates the replacements
exactly according to the 'origina' blueprint?
All that in a world that changes continually?
Don't the 'fanricating' units also change (including
the rules of fabrication? Don't the changed
replacement
parts influence the complexity of actions? Are we not
subject to a changing world with responding to more
than just 'inside' activity-patterns?
That may be applicable to a computer-contraption of
our present (first) embryonic primitivity and its
restriction into a hardware designed exactly and
exclusively for a type of software similarly designed
for exclusive application, - in 'that' hardware using
that ridiculously primitive binary system 'we' so
ingeniously invented to simulate in a 'very first'
elevation SOME of our mental functions (in the first
place arithmetical ones).
I am sure you do not deny a plasticity (I like
elasticity better) of the mind - I would add: and
body, i.e. ourselves, (everything in the world?)
stemming for 'replacements' with adjustment to the
changing ambiance - even unlimited environment (just
consider as an example our 'plastic' recollections vs
a rigid machine-memory) as in eye-witness reports.
Do you have exactly the same mentality by rigidly
replaced identical 'neuronal etc.' substitutes as was
the little rascal who went to his first communion?
Or even same-thinking as you did when joining this
list?
A negative to that: senescence is part of it, change
is not only 'addition', it is by 'streamlining' also
eliminating design-aspects all the way to destructing
the 'original' design. In a world-dynamism. Complexly.
John M
>
> 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 Sat Jan 06 2007 - 09:13:13 PST