Consider the following scenarios.
1.) A man is on his deathbed. He is a wealthy man; a man with the means to hire the best minds on the planet to come up with some way of prolonging his life. One day his most trusted adviser comes to him bearing good news. He tells him that they have found a way to clone him (as a young man of course), and more than that, they found a way to imprint the clone with the man's thoughts and memories. Ah, but the adviser has made a crucial misstep. A clone has already been made, imprinted with the man's memories as fresh as the past 24 hours. The adviser makes the fatal blunder of bringing the clone to the man's bedside to introduce him. The man beholds the clone in horror. He sees in it, not a continuation of himself, but rather a replacement. He knows that the clone is not really him, because although it possesses the imprint of his thoughts and memories, he can not see out through the eyes of the clone. It's mind is closed to him. It is something other...different. It is every bit as much a stranger to him as anyone else in the room, or even the world. He orders the clone destroyed and lapses into deeper despair.
2.) Okay, now this scenario is the same as the first, the same man, the same cloning technology, ect. but without the adviser making the fatal blunder. In this case the adviser simply comes to the man and tells him that they have found a way to transfer his mind into a clone as soon as he dies. "Transfer his mind", those are the words that the adviser uses, but he really knows nothing more about these metaphysical mysteries than anyone else does. He only knows that the man's thoughts and memories will be imprinted on the new clone. He just says, "transfer your mind" to the man to reassure him. And it does reassure the man...for a while. But at night, when he's left alone with nothing but the beeping and pinging of his medical equipment, he begins to have doubts. He ponders his own essence. Will this clone really be him? Will he really be there, or will he be gone, leaving someone else to live his life with his memories? This "not being there" tortures him more than the thought of death itself. He stares up into the dark.
3.) Okay, let's leave the dying man aside for a moment to consider a hypothetical proposition. Suppose that our consciousness isn't the continuum that we think it is, connected from birth until death. Maybe every time we drift off to sleep or fall unconscious our consciousness dies. Maybe it disintegrates when it's not actively sustained. Then when we wake up, it is with an entirely NEW consciousness which has simply inherited all the memories of the old consciousness. In other words, every time we wake up it's as an entirely new person who just thinks they're the person who went to sleep simply because we remember being that person. This is an unfalsifiable theory...or at least apparently so as this point. Still, it's not completely far fetched. What reason do we really have to think that our consciousness maintains a continuity with our identity? Perhaps consciousness is just an abstract commodity, accessed when needed. When you turn your computer on, you find the same stuff in memory, the trusty icons arranged the same way on the desktop, but yet you wouldn't think that this was being powered by the identical electrons in the electrical current, right? What if the vital spark operates in a similar fashion? The dream may even be a kind of booting up process, a side effect of the new consciousness accessing the memory. This would kind of explain why we can never remember our prior waking lives during the dream.
This is, of course, highly speculative. But you notice that it bears a similarity to scenario 2. We've only removed the concept of the clone from the equation. Just like the man on his deathbed, we face the possibilty of "not being there" when we wake up, but somehow it isn't really troubling at all, is it? Why exactly would that be?
4.) Consider an even wilder hypothesis. Suppose that a few years back you sat at the bedside of a dying friend. We'll call him Freddy. You were with him at the very end. Now what if, at the moment of death, the essence of Freddy's consciousness leapt from him and into you, due to your close proximity. This consciousness either supplanted your own or blended with it. But it was only his consciousness, none of his memories. Once he was in your brain, he only had access to your memories. So in effect, from that day forward you weren't "you" anymore, you're now Freddy, but you only remember being "you", and you talk act just like "you", and so you never noticed that anything was different. Again, we're in highly unfalsifiable territory, but yet the idea isn't all that disturbing, is it? Whether your "you" or Freddy or the King of Siam, you're still HERE, still able to breathe the air, and feel the sun on your face, and be thankful for it.
5.) Okay, final scenario. Let's return to our dying man. The adviser comes to see him and tells him that he has found a mystic who claims that he can transfer the man's consciousness into someone else's body, but only his consciousness, none of his memories. The adviser brings a bright-eyed young man to meet the man on his deathbed. He tells him that when he dies he will leap into this young man's mind, seeing through his eyes, but only ever remembering being the young man. The adviser, naturally, doesn't know whether this mystic is a fraud or a fool or the genuine thing, but he senses that it doesn't matter. If the procedure is a success, no one will ever really know for sure. The man on his death bed senses this as well, and he drifts off, his mind finally at ease.
1.) A man is on his deathbed. He is a wealthy man; a man with the means to hire the best minds on the planet to come up with some way of prolonging his life. One day his most trusted adviser comes to him bearing good news. He tells him that they have found a way to clone him (as a young man of course), and more than that, they found a way to imprint the clone with the man's thoughts and memories. Ah, but the adviser has made a crucial misstep. A clone has already been made, imprinted with the man's memories as fresh as the past 24 hours. The adviser makes the fatal blunder of bringing the clone to the man's bedside to introduce him. The man beholds the clone in horror. He sees in it, not a continuation of himself, but rather a replacement. He knows that the clone is not really him, because although it possesses the imprint of his thoughts and memories, he can not see out through the eyes of the clone. It's mind is closed to him. It is something other...different. It is every bit as much a stranger to him as anyone else in the room, or even the world. He orders the clone destroyed and lapses into deeper despair.
2.) Okay, now this scenario is the same as the first, the same man, the same cloning technology, ect. but without the adviser making the fatal blunder. In this case the adviser simply comes to the man and tells him that they have found a way to transfer his mind into a clone as soon as he dies. "Transfer his mind", those are the words that the adviser uses, but he really knows nothing more about these metaphysical mysteries than anyone else does. He only knows that the man's thoughts and memories will be imprinted on the new clone. He just says, "transfer your mind" to the man to reassure him. And it does reassure the man...for a while. But at night, when he's left alone with nothing but the beeping and pinging of his medical equipment, he begins to have doubts. He ponders his own essence. Will this clone really be him? Will he really be there, or will he be gone, leaving someone else to live his life with his memories? This "not being there" tortures him more than the thought of death itself. He stares up into the dark.
3.) Okay, let's leave the dying man aside for a moment to consider a hypothetical proposition. Suppose that our consciousness isn't the continuum that we think it is, connected from birth until death. Maybe every time we drift off to sleep or fall unconscious our consciousness dies. Maybe it disintegrates when it's not actively sustained. Then when we wake up, it is with an entirely NEW consciousness which has simply inherited all the memories of the old consciousness. In other words, every time we wake up it's as an entirely new person who just thinks they're the person who went to sleep simply because we remember being that person. This is an unfalsifiable theory...or at least apparently so as this point. Still, it's not completely far fetched. What reason do we really have to think that our consciousness maintains a continuity with our identity? Perhaps consciousness is just an abstract commodity, accessed when needed. When you turn your computer on, you find the same stuff in memory, the trusty icons arranged the same way on the desktop, but yet you wouldn't think that this was being powered by the identical electrons in the electrical current, right? What if the vital spark operates in a similar fashion? The dream may even be a kind of booting up process, a side effect of the new consciousness accessing the memory. This would kind of explain why we can never remember our prior waking lives during the dream.
This is, of course, highly speculative. But you notice that it bears a similarity to scenario 2. We've only removed the concept of the clone from the equation. Just like the man on his deathbed, we face the possibilty of "not being there" when we wake up, but somehow it isn't really troubling at all, is it? Why exactly would that be?
4.) Consider an even wilder hypothesis. Suppose that a few years back you sat at the bedside of a dying friend. We'll call him Freddy. You were with him at the very end. Now what if, at the moment of death, the essence of Freddy's consciousness leapt from him and into you, due to your close proximity. This consciousness either supplanted your own or blended with it. But it was only his consciousness, none of his memories. Once he was in your brain, he only had access to your memories. So in effect, from that day forward you weren't "you" anymore, you're now Freddy, but you only remember being "you", and you talk act just like "you", and so you never noticed that anything was different. Again, we're in highly unfalsifiable territory, but yet the idea isn't all that disturbing, is it? Whether your "you" or Freddy or the King of Siam, you're still HERE, still able to breathe the air, and feel the sun on your face, and be thankful for it.
5.) Okay, final scenario. Let's return to our dying man. The adviser comes to see him and tells him that he has found a mystic who claims that he can transfer the man's consciousness into someone else's body, but only his consciousness, none of his memories. The adviser brings a bright-eyed young man to meet the man on his deathbed. He tells him that when he dies he will leap into this young man's mind, seeing through his eyes, but only ever remembering being the young man. The adviser, naturally, doesn't know whether this mystic is a fraud or a fool or the genuine thing, but he senses that it doesn't matter. If the procedure is a success, no one will ever really know for sure. The man on his death bed senses this as well, and he drifts off, his mind finally at ease.
Thoughts?
