Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 12

[Randall]

Books are, of course, unlike persons in many ways ...

No kidding. A book doesn't have a living point of view, a unique frame of reference. People do. A copy of a person can only make a different person, regardless of the identicalness of everything else. Even two separate but identical books are uniquely individual. The book on the shelf is not the book on the table, and if the book on the table is thrown onto the burning pile of books outside, the one on the shelf doesn't suddenly burst into flames.

The Buzz Light Year in the store window is not the same Buzz Light Year in the child's toy chest. An x number of identical copies do not constitute a single giant book. They constitute x number of individual copies. But perhaps if all the copies had some sort of hive mind, the lines might get blurry. No. Let me correct that. The lines would definitely get blurry ( at least for me at the present time ).

 

[Soupie]

A book doesn't have a living point of view, a unique frame of reference. People do. A copy of a person can only make a different person, regardless of the identicalness of everything else. Even two separate but identical books are uniquely individual. The book on the shelf is not the book on the table, and if the book on the table is thrown onto the burning pile of books outside, the one on the shelf doesn't suddenly burst into flames.

I ultimately agree with you but I think it’s more subtle than you acknowledge.

From the POV of the person teleported, they will feel like the same person. (People often don’t grok this). Both copies would insist they were the original.

They will share the same memories, personality, thinking patterns, etc. as the person they are a copy of. At least for the first few minutes after teleportation.

Within mere minutes, their different experiences will quickly accumulate, causing them to become unique (much like identical twins).

But something else to consider before dismissing this quickly: is a person at 5 years old the same person at 15 years old, etc.

The five year old body will be completely different than the 15 year old body. All new material. The particles in our bodies are constantly being replaced. (Perhaps some brain cells the same, I think we determined in the past.)

An argument can be made that personhood is better identified with the pattern embodied in the biological substrate, than the biological substrate itself.

The whole ship of Theseus thing.

 

[Soupie]

But the interesting thing for our purposes in this thread, is how one things the consciousness of the individual would be impacted by teleportation.

 

[Randall]

I ultimately agree with you but I think it’s more subtle than you acknowledge.

From the POV of the person teleported, they will feel like the same person. (People often don’t grok this). Both copies would insist they were the original.

They will share the same memories, personality, thinking patterns, etc. as the person they are a copy of. At least for the first few minutes after teleportation.

Within mere minutes, their different experiences will quickly accumulate, causing them to become unique (much like identical twins).

But something else to consider before dismissing this quickly: is a person at 5 years old the same person at 15 years old, etc.

The five year old body will be completely different than the 15 year old body. All new material. The particles in our bodies are constantly being replaced. (Perhaps some brain cells the same, I think we determined in the past.)

An argument can be made that personhood is better identified with the pattern embodied in the biological substrate, than the biological substrate itself.

The whole ship of Theseus thing.

Yes. Farlig brought these issues up in the Newsletter where they are addressed ?. BTW, I do get the subtleties, or at least more than the newly initiated. That's why I tend to partake in these discussions, and on that point, there is yet another layer of subtlety that I touched on earlier in this thread that nobody bothered to comment on, but is very relevant to this particular issue. I'm sort of hoping someone else will bring it up this time though.

 

[Randall]

But the interesting thing for our purposes in this thread, is how one things the consciousness of the individual would be impacted by teleportation.

I suppose we ought to make sure we discern the difference between teleportation and replication. If we go with the idea that teleportation is synonymous with relocation, and the teleported person is aware that this is the process, then their consciousness would not include the experience of what it's like to be a copy as opposed to being the same person in a different location.

 

[Soupie]

I suppose we ought to make sure we discern the difference between teleportation and replication. If we go with the idea that teleportation is synonymous with relocation, and the teleported person is aware that this is the process, then their consciousness would not include the experience of what it's like to be a copy as opposed to being the same person in a different location.

Yes. Teleportation = replication

 

[Soupie]

One reason this is an interesting topic is that it may suds out some of our views/thoughts re consciousness. @Constance and @smcder don’t like to speculate much but in a discussion a few months ago they both seemed to hint that an organism’s consciousness is casually tied in some way to their causal history.

Thus an organic replica of an organism would have a consciousness like X because its physical body—despite being identical to the original organism—would not have the same causal history.

I’m of the opinion that causal history is only indirectly related to our current conscious experiences at any moment. This the hypothecate copy would have similar conscious experiences to the original.

Also re @Constance I could be very wrong, but I get the sense that here view holds that while consciousness is in large part embodied and emergent from biological processes, once emerged, consciousness as such has a “life of its own.” Evolving/changing apart from the body and possible of separating from the body in some cases. Thus, a biological replicate might not have a replicated consciousness of the original on her view.

 

[Randall]

Yes. Teleportation = replication

In that case, I'd say that making teleportation synonymous with replication isn't logical, because teleportation implies moving something to another location, not creating a copy of it at another location. A replica isn't the original thing.

 

[Randall]

One reason this is an interesting topic is that it may suds out some of our views/thoughts re consciousness. @Constance and @smcder don’t like to speculate much but in a discussion a few months ago they both seemed to hint that an organism’s consciousness is casually tied in some way to their causal history.

Thus an organic replica of an organism would have a consciousness like X because its physical body—despite being identical to the original organism—would not have the same causal history.

I’m of the opinion that causal history is only indirectly related to our current conscious experiences at any moment. This the hypothecate copy would have similar conscious experiences to the original.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that if a person in a sensory deprivation tank were instantly duplicated, along with their sensory deprivation tank, then from their perspective, neither would have any way to tell that they weren't the original. This to me seems reasonable.

Also re @Constance I could be very wrong, but I get the sense that here view holds that while consciousness is in large part embodied and emergent from biological processes, once emerged, consciousness as such has a “life of its own.” Evolving/changing apart from the body and possible of separating from the body in some cases. Thus, a biological replicate might not have a replicated consciousness of the original on her view.

It seems to me that @Constance may have once held that view ( above ), but has since evolved, but I'll leave that for her to confirm. Personally, I don't see consciousness as having any "life of its own", something that can wander off and be its own person. I see it as entirely neutral with respect to personhood. I see it as what gives a person their experience of being not their being. These are two entirely different things, and seem to be at the core of the ongoing debates about such things as OOBEs and afterlives.

In other words, assuming a person in a coma is having no subjective experience of anything, they are still the person who is in the coma, not someone else e.g. the person in the bed next to them. Consequently, if whatever mechanism that gives rise to consciousness can be repaired, they would then regain the experience of being the person who was in a coma, not someone else. The current Newsletter touches on this, and is a key component of why afterlives are impossible according to the typical supposition of what afterlives mean.

 

[Constance]

I suppose we ought to make sure we discern the difference between teleportation and replication. If we go with the idea that teleportation is synonymous with relocation, and the teleported person is aware that this is the process, then their consciousness would not include the experience of what it's like to be a copy as opposed to being the same person in a different location.

Then, as you've been saying for a few posts today, you don't think it would be possible to actually 'teleport' a 'person' with all the aspects of that individual's personhood [beliefs and attitudes, accumulated knowledge about his or her own history to date and the conditions of the world to date at the time of the teleportation, his or her capacities for functioning in a group setting or a team task of some/any sort, and indeed his/her own personality. So the teleported individual would be a blank slate so far as consciousness and mind are concerned. Setting all that aside, I wonder how 'teleportation' could put Humpty Dumpty together again from molecules? atoms? constituting his former body at some new location.

Honestly, I think this discussion is nothing more than wild speculation with a basis only in science fiction. But I will stand by and watch how it evolves.

 

[Randall]

Then, as you've been saying for a few posts today, you don't think it would be possible to actually 'teleport' a 'person' with all the aspects of that individual's personhood [beliefs and attitudes, accumulated knowledge about his or her own history to date and the conditions of the world to date at the time of the teleportation, his or her capacities for functioning in a group setting or a team task of some/any sort, and indeed his/her own personality ...

I am not saying the above.

So the teleported individual would be a blank slate so far as consciousness and mind are concerned. Setting all that aside, I wonder how 'teleportation' could put Humpty Dumpty together again from molecules? atoms? constituting his former body at some new location.

I am not saying the above. I am saying only what I actually said. Nothing about that implies that a teleported person would not be the same person, nor does it comment on any of the other things you mention. However, it might clarify if I were to say that there would no substantial difference to a person whether they use a teleporter or an elevator. The only difference is in the mechanism of transport.

This is being contrasted with the idea of a copied person, which in my view would result in an entirely different person than the original. Even though they might appear to be the same person, and perhaps even think they are the same person, they are not the same person. This differentiation is of tremendous significance in the areas of AI, the merging of human consciousness with technology, and the concept of afterlives.

Honestly, I think this discussion is nothing more than wild speculation with a basis only in science fiction. But I will stand by and watch how it evolves.

It isn't so much wild speculation as it is a thought experiment: Thought Experiments (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Constance]

. . . Also re @Constance I could be very wrong, but I get the sense that her view holds that while consciousness is in large part embodied and emergent from biological processes, once emerged, consciousness as such has a “life of its own.” Evolving/changing apart from the body and possible of separating from the body in some cases. Thus, a biological replicate might not have a replicated consciousness of the original on her view.

I don't think that "consciousness has 'a life of its own'" beyond its embodiment and continuous embeddedness and activity {enaction} within the 'world' we dwell in here on earth, within its and our temporality and the history of our species' existence. Our individual consciousnesses are always developing in the course of our lifetimes. When I experienced the spontaneous OBE I have described several times here, what I experienced was finding my consciousness/my awareness relocated to a far corner of the room in which I was reading, close to the ceiling, and seeing my body from above and behind, still seated at the desk apparently reading.

But I was no longer reading there. I was observing my body as a 'thing', inert and unalive, frozen for the time being, and I was not concerned about it as 'mine'. I paid attention, instead, to the marvel of this relocation of my awareness and the things that happened as my awareness, consciousness, mind moved slowly along the ceiling to a position directly across the room from my body (still seated at the desk, my blue Harris Tweed coat still draped over the back of the chair on which I sat.

I also experienced a voice (an adult female voice I didn't recognize) suddenly speaking from a position to my left, within my consciousness, saying first "she's in a mess, but this is no big deal" and then leaving. At that point my consciousness returned to its usual location in my body. I was suddenly in my body and realized that I had just had a very unusual experience I could not account for, packed up my books, and walked upstairs to the university counseling office, located in the same building I had been working in.

I'd never been inside that office before but passed by it often and thus knew where it was. I was seen almost immediately by the head of the department who called a neurologist near the campus and asked him to see me. I got to that office and was examined by that doctor who said he could see no neurological explanation for the OBE and prescribed a tranquilizer.

 

[Constance]

I am not saying the above.

I am not saying the above. I am saying only what I actually said. Nothing about that implies that a teleported person would not be the same person, nor does it comment on any of the other things you mention. However, it might clarify if I were to say that there would no substantial difference to a person whether they use a teleporter or an elevator. The only difference is in the mechanism of transport.

This is being contrasted with the idea of a copied person, which in my view would result in an entirely different person than the original. Even though they might appear to be the same person, and perhaps even think they are the same person, they are not the same person. This differentiation is of tremendous significance in the areas of AI, the merging of human consciousness with technology, and the concept of afterlives.

It isn't so much wild speculation as it is a thought experiment: Thought Experiments (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

". . . This is being contrasted with the idea of a copied person, which in my view would result in an entirely different person than the original. Even though they might appear to be the same person, and perhaps even think they are the same person, they are not the same person. This differentiation is of tremendous significance in the areas of AI, the merging of human consciousness with technology, and the concept of afterlives.

It isn't so much wild speculation as it is a thought experiment: Thought Experiments (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)."


Thanks. I know what 'thought experiments' are, Randall. They are not all created equal. This one reminds me of the Medieval speculations about how many angels could sit on the tip of a pin. But proceed as you will.

 

[Randall]

I don't think that "consciousness has 'a life of its own'" beyond its embodiment and continuous embeddedness and activity {enaction} within the 'world' we dwell in here on earth, within its and our temporality and the history of our species' existence. Our individual consciousnesses are always developing in the course of our lifetimes. When I experienced the spontaneous OBE I have described several times here, what I experienced was finding my consciousness/my awareness relocated to a far corner of the room in which I was reading, close to the ceiling, and seeing my body from above and behind, still seated at the desk apparently reading.

But I was no longer reading there. I was observing my body as a 'thing', inert and unalive, frozen for the time being, and I was not concerned about it as 'mine'. I paid attention, instead, to the marvel of this relocation of my awareness and the things that happened as my awareness, consciousness, mind moved slowly along the ceiling to a position directly across the room from my body (still seated at the desk, my blue Harris Tweed coat still draped over the back of the chair on which I sat.

I also experienced a voice (an adult female voice I didn't recognize) suddenly speaking from a position to my left, within my consciousness, saying first "she's in a mess, but this is no big deal" and then leaving. At that point my consciousness returned to its usual location in my body. I was suddenly in my body and realized that I had just had a very unusual experience I could not account for, packed up my books, and walked upstairs to the university counseling office, located in the same building I had been working in.

I'd never been inside that office before but passed by it often and thus knew where it was. I was seen almost immediately by the head of the department who called a neurologist near the campus and asked him to see me. I got to that office and was examined by that doctor who said he could see no neurological explanation for the OBE and prescribed a tranquilizer.

Very interesting. I certainly believe that people have OOBEs. However I don't believe they represent an actual awareness of the experiencer's objective surroundings. I think it much more likely to be an extrapolation created by the brain and delivered to consciousness. Unfortunately I don't recall the investigator's name at the moment, but I like to use her story as an example. She was a researcher into PSI phenomena in the UK. She had an OOBE during which she floated out of her room and up over the roof of the building she was in.

She was able to recall the view and architecture in vivid detail, and the building being quite old appeared to have a roof like those from the period in which it was built. To confirm the experience, she had the caretaker give her access to the roof, which turned out to have been completely redone and nothing like she experienced. Her mind had created in lifelike detail what she expected it to be like, not like how it actually was.

This sort of situation has been repeated in numerous cases I've looked at over the years. Some are more accurate than others, but IMO there is insufficient evidence to conclude that any actual remote location of consciousness has actually taken place, or even could actually take place.

 

[Constance]

This sort of situation has been repeated in numerous cases I've looked at over the years. Some are more accurate than others, but IMO there is insufficient evidence to conclude that any actual remote location of consciousness has actually taken place, or even could actually take place.

Apparently you haven't looked at enough OBE cases. How did you miss the one in which an elderly woman near-death in a hospital told a medical social worker attending her that she had floated out of the hospital and upward several floors and discovered a pair of worn red tennis shoes on a ledge? This social worker soon checked on a number of floors above the woman's room and did indeed discover the red tennis shoes on the ledge beneath one of the upper windows. Let it go, Randall. I don't want to argue with you -- just to say that I've read widely for more than a decade in psychical and parapsychological research and you seem to have barely scratched the surface of a portion of the data available on the internet. No offense, but I don't care what you believe, and you don't need to bother yourself about what I by now believe about OBEs and NDEs.

 

[Soupie]

In that case, I'd say that making teleportation synonymous with replication isn't logical, because teleportation implies moving something to another location, not creating a copy of it at another location. A replica isn't the original thing.

But you are moving something from one location to the other...

“Imagine, in the early days of books, a small library consisting entirely of original manuscripts. Some of them are very old, and have been attacked by mice. Some have deteriorated so much that their pages crumble to dust when the custodian of the library tries to read them. He mourns the loss of these books, and contemplates the inevitable decay of the remaining books with sorrow. To be sure, new manuscripts are occasionally added to the library, but they cannot replace the volumes that are lost forever. This goes on until, one day, the young assistant librarian has an idea. “This book will be unreadable in five years,” he tells his elder. “But I can read it now. If I copy the words of this book onto sheets of new vellum, and bind them in a strong new binding, we will be able to read it for many decades to come.” The old librarian tenderly strokes the cracked spine of the crumbling volume, and shakes his head. “What good is a copy? It wouldn’t be the same book.”

If we copy the “pattern” of a human and replicate it, then we are teleporting the pattern. Arguably the most important aspect of the human.

Unlike the old man who sentimentally clings to the physical copy of the book and doesn’t realize the most important part is the information it contains, we can recognize that the important part of the human organism is it’s pattern, and not the biological substrate embodying the pattern.

 

[Michael Allen]

It seems we both need to work toward clearer expressions of what we understand to be the seeds or roots of consciousness since we do not "agree" at all about what they are. You seem to have read Stevens's stratement that "the spirit comes from the body of the world" as confirming your agreement with Metzinger's hypothesis that consciousness arises not from our embodiment as sensing beings open to and responsive to direct experience in and of the world in which we are biologically embedded, but rather that consciousness responds to "self-modeled epistemic spaces" turning up in the brain alone and presenting us with representational models of 'self' and 'world'.

I've now read several papers by Metzinger identified in his reference notes to the paper @Soupie linked and am beginning to understand the radical nature of his proposals. Interestingly he continues to use the term 'phenomenology' but only in his restricted and I think falsifying way. I do find some of his claims to be interesting, if wrong, and recognize that he is a system-builder par excellence. The question each consciousness researcher needs to ask himself or herself, once recognizing what he is claiming, is 'how can I make sense of my own experience within Metzinger's system?' Perhaps you can still persuade us that we should attempt to do so? If so, I think you need to work at being a clearer expositor of what he writes.

Firstly, how do you know we don't agree if both of our expressions are unclear? I don't think that Metzinger's hypothesis begins with "our" but perhaps digs deeper into the "our." So I don't think Metzinger would even pursue the terms you stand or depend on ...nor would he need to to make his point. But you seem to have a better grasp of the language enough to indicate the weakness of Metzinger's hypothesis...except that I think ignoring his observations may lead us astray.

You ask the question "how can I...." in Metzinger's system, but the "I" cannot be assumed in the questioning that is trying to "explain 'I'"

Metzinger dispenses with the "first-person perspective" and thus evades your question...and your own foundation for questioning....

What then?

 

[Michael Allen]

My first question is why you find the paper "amusing"? Or were you referring to something else, and if so what is/was it?

My second question is what Metzinger means in the underscored statement above? Is he implying, without stating, that neuro-diverse human beings correctly represent "this objectively given property of phenomenality"? And if so, why and how do they do so? Is there some source available in which Metzinger makes the case he is only implying in this paper? Since you are the only person here who follows and propounds Metzinger's hypotheses, we will have to look to you for clarifications.

First Question:

Reference Quote:
"""
Call this the “contraction principle”:

(CP) “Phenomenality” is a property of certain integrated, global brain states. The brains of neurotypical human beings misrepresent this objectively given property of phenomenality by contracting it into a transparent conscious self-model, which then forms the origin of a first-person perspective.
"""


Amusing because the "contraction principle" includes misrepresent[ation]...and the way this "contraction" leads to some kind of "transparent" interface of self-world-as-self (converting backwards to older terms)...forming a beginning of a perspective which leads the user to expressing CP...

It's a joke...

 

[Michael Allen]

My second question is what Metzinger means in the underscored statement above? Is he implying, without stating, that neuro-diverse human beings correctly represent "this objectively given property of phenomenality"? And if so, why and how do they do so? Is there some source available in which Metzinger makes the case he is only implying in this paper? Since you are the only person here who follows and propounds Metzinger's hypotheses, we will have to look to you for clarifications.

Neuro-diverse isn't going to help...your logic is flawed because we aren't dealing with a material equivalency...

Neuro-typical --> misrepresentation ...

A -> B does not mean ~A -> ~B -- (if you are using "neuro-diverse" as a strict negation of "neuro-typical")

 

[Michael Allen]

I ultimately agree with you but I think it’s more subtle than you acknowledge.

From the POV of the person teleported, they will feel like the same person. (People often don’t grok this). Both copies would insist they were the original.

They will share the same memories, personality, thinking patterns, etc. as the person they are a copy of. At least for the first few minutes after teleportation.

Within mere minutes, their different experiences will quickly accumulate, causing them to become unique (much like identical twins).

But something else to consider before dismissing this quickly: is a person at 5 years old the same person at 15 years old, etc.

The five year old body will be completely different than the 15 year old body. All new material. The particles in our bodies are constantly being replaced. (Perhaps some brain cells the same, I think we determined in the past.)

An argument can be made that personhood is better identified with the pattern embodied in the biological substrate, than the biological substrate itself.

The whole ship of Theseus thing.

Why does teleporation require "copying?"