Re: Immortality

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2001 07:07:59 -0700

Hello Marchal

On 10-Oct-01, Marchal wrote:
> Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>> But then why do you say that a duplicate of your brain processes in a
>> computer would not be conscious. You seem to be discriminating
>> between a biological duplicate and a silicon duplicate.
>
> I have never say that. A duplicate of me (at the right level which
> exists with the comp hyp) would be as conscious as me.
>
> What I do have said somewhere (and I guess the misunderstanding comes
> from that) is that a computer cannot be conscious, nor can a brain,
> nor can any piece of matter (if that exists at all). Only a person,
> which by comp is immaterial, can be conscious.

OK, I understand - I think. But as I understand your ontology,
everything is immaterial - even matter. So the question is, are there
consciousness' that are not associated with material things. Can there
be disembodied consciousness as supposed by mystics and people who have
OBE's (out of body experiences)?

I was (in some context)
> preventing
> the "Searle error" consisting in believing that "I am a brain",
> instead of the more correct "I have a brain" which follows by comp.
> Only latter in the reasoning will substancial matter "disappear" too,
> so that the brain itself will appear somehow immaterial.
>
> I suggest you reread the UDA where I explicitely use the fact that
> not only a duplicate of me in a computer would be conscious, but even
> the many duplicate of me in arithmetic are conscious. That is why
> my next future depend on all computations existing in the arithmetical
> plato heaven.

I'm not sure I grasp the concept of duplicates in arithmetic.
Arithmetic is abstract and immaterial. There can be duplicate
representations of 2+2=4 but I don't see how there can be duplicate
facts in Platonia corresponding to 2+2=4. As an immaterial fact of
logic it can't be duplicated because there can be no distinction
between two instances of it.

Brent Meeker
 "The human mind did not evolve in order to create a race of
  philosophers or scientists"
      --- Bainbridge
Received on Wed Oct 10 2001 - 19:43:38 PDT