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2714836

Personal Identity Question Anonymous Tue Jun 12 05:48:46 2012 No.2714836 [Reply] [Original]

I would like to discuss a thought experiment. Ill do my best to phrase it properly, but please excuse any inconsistencies.

Imagine that one day as you go about your usual doings, you're kidnapped by a mad scientist.

You awake some time later to find yourself strapped down to a medical gurney with a myriad of brightly colored wires and IV drips running to and fro throughout the room. Apart from all of the strange machinery in the center, effectively splitting the room in half, you see an unconscious young woman strapped to her own gurney at the opposite wall.

The Mad Scientist enters and explains that he will be using you and Linda, gesturing towards the unconscious woman, to test his new machine. This machine, he says, transfers minds, meaning that it is capable of collecting all of a person's thoughts, memories, beliefs, goals, desires, &c, and replacing them with those of someone else. Jubilantly, the Mad Scientist explains that he intends to swap the two of your minds.

The Mad Scientist throws a few switches, presses a few buttons, and suddenly there is a blinding flash of light encompassing everything.

When the light subsides, where will you be?

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 05:50:45 2012 No.2714839 Define you. I sure as fuck can't.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 05:54:45 2012 No.2714844 >>2714839 I'll phrase the ending differently... When the light subsides, would you consider yourself to be your personality in Linda's body, or your body with Linda's personality?

>>

Anonymous Tue Jun 12 05:59:45 2012 No.2714849

>>2714836
Strapped to the gurney, as I was initially preceding the procedure. Just because my philosophical "mind" has transferred places, doesn't mean anything that is biologically or physiologically defined as my entity has changed.
Sure, if you can get physiological and spiritual and claim your "soul" has transferred body's. But science, the defining and constant factor of the universe, would have it that only patterns of electronic impulses between neurons have been changed. Too easy, ask another...

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:06:45 2012 No.2714859 >>2714844 False dichotomy. Probably neither. If I was pushed to pick one of your options, probably my personality in Linda's body.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:10:46 2012 No.2714863 >>2714859 I apologize if I've misrepresented the experiment. Please explain what you think I've left out.

>>

Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:10:46 2012 No.2714864

>>2714844
Personality. You should have added that the scientist fucks up, and 1/4 of lindas brain remains behind.

A better thought experiment is the "star trek teleport problem" - Your body gets disassembled, turned into data and reassembled at the atomic level in a different place, is that still you even though every atom in your body has been replaced? This also allows the creation of multiple "you" simultaneously, but all would possess exactly the same personality upon reassembly slowly becoming more different with time.

>>

Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:11:46 2012 No.2714866

wait.......will I have a vagina? fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPF
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>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:15:46 2012 No.2714877 >>2714863 I could consider myself to be a person that is neither myself nor Linda.

>>

Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:16:46 2012 No.2714882

>>2714844
As I was explaining before, personality is irrelevant. Personality is nothing more than a collective pattern of electric connections and responses between neurons. The girl's brain just has my pattern of neurons, like mine has hers. Furthermore, the assumption that the female would have my exact personality is ignorant, as the male brain rely's highly upon gender-specific hormones released throughout the body. Likely we would both be very different, fucked up people.
Science bitches, Science.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:16:46 2012 No.2714879 >>2714864 >You should have added that the scientist fucks up, and 1/4 of lindas brain remains blah blah blah That would be convoluted as fuck, dog.

>>

Jimi Rustla !48uzTMLY0Q Tue Jun 12 06:20:45 2012 No.2714886

OP the "mind" is just the composition of neurological pathways. The scientist would have to alter the structure of lindas brain to be identical to mine. If he did that she would not be me, regardless of the fact you have changed my neurological makeup to match hers.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:23:45 2012 No.2714889 File: 518 KB, 556x471, meme.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2714886 I've been trying to explain this for a while now. I don't think anyone cares or is intelligent enough to comprehend this concept.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:25:45 2012 No.2714893 >>2714889 I think that's what most people in the thread said. I said it in an awkward way, because I don't know really know how to word philosophical statements well. I've never studied it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:28:46 2012 No.2714898 File: 40 KB, 556x350, fffffffull of yourself.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>2714889

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:29:45 2012 No.2714899 >>2714893 That's the issue. This isn't actually a philosophical question, it's just physical.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:31:45 2012 No.2714901 >>2714898 Shit. I'm on /lit/ and I still feel surrounded by plebs. Where the hell do I go from here?

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:33:45 2012 No.2714903 >>2714901 Acquire as many books as possible. Live and read in the mountains for a few years. Come back then, I'll tell you what to do next.

>>	Anonymous Tue Jun 12 06:35:45 2012 No.2714904 >>2714901 First, you stop using the word 'pleb' Second, you read a fuckload and ignore, for the most part, what anyone here has to say.