And what if through having identical consciousnesses would grant you access to both bodies. I know this sounds science fictional, but after thinking about it, I wouldn’t be able to see why 2 identical personalities wouldn’t function under the same consciousness.

I guess the only way to test this would be to copy a lab rat, then hurt/feed/stimulate the original to see if the copy responded as well?

I have a headache.

I have certainly thought this through from the perspective of being the original after the time of copying. I think it is rather interesting, actually. You have a copy of yourself — it possesses all your memories of your own life, shares your love for your family, the years of study, etc. The only thing that makes your copy different from you if a few days or weeks of divergent experiences. Presumably, your copy still shares all your goals, dreams, and desires. So certainly, the situation where I am locked up while the copy lives my life is horrific from my perspective, but even going on and living my life as normal is rather horrific from the copy’s perspective. He can’t make money, as he can’t legally obtain identification. It would be difficult to go to his family for help, since his family is my family. I can’t help but feel tremendous sympathy for such a creature. In fact, are far as I can tell, he’s simply a possible version of myself, had something slightly different happened in the course of history.

I would like to point out that the conscious experience of one’s identity is not continuous in the first place. Every night you fall asleep, and I bet you can never quite remember doing so. And then every morning you wake up. What connects you to your past? Only the memories encoded mysteriously into the state of your brain.

And thus the examples with sleep and anesthesia. You willingly give up consciousness and thereby your identity on a daily basis. By virtue of this fact, a great many scenarios where the identity of the original and the copy are made ambiguous. Add to this the fact that the molecules in my brain are being recycled, and that my brain is constantly changing in structure.

I am offering a recipe for cheating death whereby one falls asleep and then wakes up in a younger body. The old body dies in its sleep, and is not aware of this. The new body wakes up with all the memories of the old body up until the old body fell asleep. I am saying that there is no essential difference between calling this cheating death and calling the brain transplant cheating death. Either way, you are put under anesthetic, operated upon, and then wake up in a new body.

If there is some other source of continuity for identity besides memory, I can’t see what it is. Thus, since we are agreeing that all the memories are copied, I believe that the younger body approach is actually cheating death — putting yourself in a younger body so as to live longer. If you think there is some other source for the continuity of identity, please explain.

But you’re not responding to scenarios in which you are the original and see the copy taking your life from you, getting the love of your family and living in your home and drinking all your beer. The only way you willingly perform the experiment to us is if your original has died, not alongside the copy, but while sleeping or anesthetized, during an operation/euthanization, and the copy can carry on with no idea. Dying is dying whether there’s a copy on the other side of night to live out your life for you, thinking it’s you, or not.

I think I do understand what you’re saying, and agree the form of identity is included in the mind and, in this exercise, isn’t excised from the brain copy, if it were possible to selectively eliminate or rebuild portions of what’s necessary to continue.

Please try to acknowledge the experiment as though you are alive simultaneously. The copy isn’t receiving signal from the original after that. Your thoughts are independent. If you are imprisoned, and a copy was made of your brain, implanted into another body, and sent home to live your life for you, I think you would say that you are still in prison and someone else is living your life. The copy can’t tell the difference, and can function and relate to others and be recognized as you. I think you are talking about one thing and ignoring another, is that fair? Once the original has gone to sleep and is euthanized, nothing else matters after that. That mind ceases awareness and knowledge and living this extended portion of life. It only matters to you if legacy is important to you, or your family would miss you, or you think you have more work to do and that it won’t get done without a replacement of yourself ready to take over, things along those lines. I think that might be more important to you than actually being there to see it happen. Because you won’t. After the copy, there’s no transmission of thoughts back to the original, you’ll still be dead. If you want to lay on the beach for the rest of your life and the next rest of your life, you will only be there until the end of this one, although your copy wouldn’t mind taking over when you die.

Thank you for taking a serious attempt to try to clarify what you are saying. However, I still disagree.

If that assumption is granted, then the assertion Kodie and I are making is that there is a fundamental difference between copying your brain’s contents into another brain, and transplanting your brain into another body.

But neither of you have been able to explain what that difference is.

Let me try to give a little perspective. Five years ago, I would be agreeing with you and Kodie. However, since taking a philosophy of the mind course, I’ve been thinking very hard about this stuff and come to some other conclusions.

My impression is that you and Kodie think that identity, who you are, is inextricably intertwined with consciousness. I don’t think it is. I personally think that consciousness is a system element — specifically a feedback loop — in the signal process whereby perceptions are transformed into actions. In the brain copy example, the identity of the individual is wholly recorded as part of the brain state. While the physical brain is different, consciousness itself is merely a part of the system arising from the brain’s activities, and so it interprets the identity as if it were possessed by the original person.

But you don’t have to take my claim seriously, I have no evidence for it (as you have none for yours). However, my interpretation is logically possible. In the absence of any evidence or strong arguments to the contrary, I think you and Kodie have to, at the very least, admit that my interpretation of the thought experiment is possible.

If you disagree, I will be happy to continue the conversation in email. Find a mailto by mousing over my name. However, be forewarned: I expect the terms being used to be rather rigorously defined, because philosophers and dilettantes get a lot of mileage out of the fuzzy definitions of consciousness, identity, the mind, and even death.

http://discovermagazine.com/2002/jun/featturtle

And on another note, for those of you who are atheists, wouldn’t knowing you were going to live forever deplete how fully you live? You say that thinking there is an eternity depletes the meaning of this life, but wouldn’t “conquering death” physically do the same?

“There are quantum particles, therefore God exists” is a pretty big leap.

Put simply, if you were to copy yourself to an identical body with an identical neural network, the person would have your memories, your feelings, your ideals… but they would simply be a copy. The holy grail would be tricking the brain into transferring the stream of consciousness: i.e. your original self would perceive going to sleep and waking up afterwards.