The main paradox of consciousness. Why does not it make sense to copy the brain or personality

Attempts to reproduce the animation instrument by means of an interesting paradox, giving a new look at life and death. Different from our usual ideas. Everything can be much more interesting. Let's look at the basic logical theses. To begin with, we will decompose the currently widespread concept of consciousness into its constituent parts - condition (brain), content (personality), and functional (perception). Perhaps the directions of transhumanism and technological immortality are wrong.

Thesis first. Brain

If you replace all the atoms or molecules of our brain, nothing will happen. Since they change throughout life as a result of metabolism. We depend on the structure of neural networks, and not on the matter, their components.

Replacing all molecules is equivalent to making new copies. The laws of nature that support the informational component of the brain should work equally in identical copies. The parade of Theseus Ship in this case does not make sense. Each copy will have a clone of your consciousness, but with your own fate. The paradox of Parphit's teleportation , describing the teleportation and the destruction of the original, suggests that the original will still experience the emotions of dying, and its clone will still be a different creature. True, it is not entirely clear how they will know which of them is the original sample, and who is the copy. If the original and copies do not know who they are, they will not be able to determine who among them is. If they are not moved in space, but left in the same room, they will wake up outside the teleportation module, in the neighboring hospital beds, they will get confused. And if there are several copies? And if not to multiply, and reduce copies? Take several identical copies merged into one, the number of effects of perception and personalities also reduced to one. And the perception in it will not be able to tell who it was from the copies that did not, and who remained.
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Thesis of the second. Personality

Our self image often looks like a self image. But theoretically you can give a neurosurgeon and erase memory, change feelings, habits, settings. Replant other parts of the body. What then will remain about you? Finally, we change over time, considering ourselves to be ourselves. From what moment to make a cast?

We are not mind, not feelings, not memory and not body. We are what will perceive the changes of this neurosurgeon after anesthesia. We are a function of perception. Pure tabula race , possibility of perception. A person consists of information of memory. We can replace memory during sleep, and we will become another person. The newly created copy can include memories of her life for thousands of years. It is possible for the millennial brain to create the illusion that it has just been created. Including it is possible for a consciousness that exists for a limited time, to give a feeling of immortality and infinite existence. Copies can be given to the memory that it is the original, and to inspire the original that it is a copy. And the perception will honestly consider himself to be what will show him the memory.

The third thesis. Perception

If you are disassembled into atoms, carefully transfer them and from them in the same order, assemble again. Will the assembled version be you? To assume that your perception has been uninterrupted in your body from the moment of birth is a delusion. Perception is a function, an effect, existing only in the present tense. When you fall asleep, it disappears. And every morning it is new. Every day, every moment new electrons produce a new effect. Exactly the same, but not the same. Consciousness and personality will be the same, but not the same. If you are viewed as a function of perception, and not of a body or a person, then there is no connection between you yesterday and you tomorrow. This connection provides only the format of the memory.

Let's complicate the logical experiment. If you are disassembled into atoms and created from other atoms - will this copy be you? Yes. And if from half of your atoms to create a copy? And if several identical copies are teleported to one body, which of the consciousnesses of which copy will disappear? Parfit paradox here does not matter. Waking up in the original and copies will be equivalent. Since the perception was absent during the sleep of the original, and also a new one appeared in the copy.

And if at the time of assembly to change the personality, memory and body? At 5%? 50% off? 100%? Gather another body altogether. Will there be a consciousness there? If you do not violate the principles necessary for the occurrence, it will arise. Will it be you? It depends on what is considered under the concept of YOU. You will be another person in another body. What is left of you?

Perception is not tied to personality. He does not care where to occur. It would be a suitable condition. There is no perception tag that reports continuity of personality. With the same success, you (as a perception or information complex) can arise the next time in any condition and body. What perceives - it exists. It is perception that is the principle of animation. Without perception, body and personality do not make sense.

Neural connections of the current brain will inform the new perception of who it is and how much it lives in this body. The peculiarity is that the memory is tied to the body in the form of its neural connections, and disappears with its destruction. Perception cannot have any other experience. Therefore, the perception rightly considers itself locked in its native body and cannot have any other experience.

Perception mechanism

The mechanism is based on distinction. If you do not feel the difference between colors and the illumination of the contours of objects - you do not have sight. If you do not perceive differences from one thought out thought from another - your thinking does not work. You do not feel the difference between sensations, emotions, feelings, the difference of images in memory, the difference between being and non-being - you do not exist at all. And to fix the difference and get the function of the observer is possible only in the present tense, as we wrote earlier .

Interesting conclusions

Both common beliefs - religious (that we continue to exist after death), and atheistic (that we disappear forever after death) - may be equally wrong. They are based on identifying oneself with an individual. If we propose that we are not a person, but a perception, the picture changes. The whole idea of ​​copying the brain and transhumanism is just a new technical attempt to save oneself. Previously, religion worked in this market. But no one explains what exactly to copy and save, since no one yet understands the work of consciousness. Moreover, even the concept of WE disappears here. So it is impossible to compare with reincarnation.

In addition, a technical attempt to gain perception, or animation, suggests the following conclusion. The environment in which it exists must support the format of this work. If a thought, emotion, feeling originates in our brain, then we are not the merits. We still do not even understand how they originate and how consciousness works. This creates the laws of the nature of our world. Which clearly know the position of the neural networks and the current process. The uniform format of these interactions supports processes where we have not moved in space and time. The world is not exactly looking at us - it produces all this. Believers call it God, atheists - impersonal to Nature, philosophers - panpsychism.

We did not invent it and control it. We are only a weak result of the activities of the world. Life can be eternal. True, not in the format you expected. We are the perception, the effect of refraction of electrical impulses in neural networks, wandering from body to body throughout evolution. Part of nature and eternal life. Which can not be destroyed. But then as slaughterhouses, and in general wildlife are recalled. Where hunger, fear and pain are the most common sensations. Where less than 10% of young stock live to adulthood. Even somehow, the care of every living being, as about itself, is extremely understandable. Nevertheless, all this gives great food for thought.

Then how can our world be considered the endless and dull expanses of the cold Cosmos? This is a very lively and rich system that contains all the options for properties, feelings, sensations. Which may arise in it. This is a kind of development and existence environment.

PS Unfortunately, there is still no intelligible and experimentally confirmed concept of consciousness. Therefore, such logical experiments are considered useful. For angry comments ready. But please build criticism not on emotions, but on logic. With arguments. It will be useful to all.