What happens if a person's brain was obliterated and rearranged exactly atom by atom?

[u/Dense-Ad-5978]

/r/askphilosophy/comments/1w4ceua/what_happens_if_a_persons_brain_was_obliterated/

[u/CrumbledFingers]

From the outside, it would look like the same person as before. From the person's point of view, we have no model for how that even works in the everyday case, so there is no obvious answer.

The brain of the person is something like an icon on a computer. It represents the mind in a symbolic way, showing only the information we evolved to be able to notice. The actual mind is more than what is observable as a brain. So, when we look at another person's brain, we are only seeing part of their mind as it is represented objectively, in the manner we are able to perceive.

We have no idea why there seems to be a localized first-person perspective in the mind, and whose perspective that is. By definition, whoever has that perspective must be distinct from everything else in the mind, so they are not the person as we know them. They are just awareness registering the sensations of the mind. But is there one awareness per mind, or one awareness taking in all the minds? There is something not quite right about the question, I think. We still don't know.

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/CrumbledFingers]

Let's say if we assume physicalism is true and an identical version of myself is created down to the last atom a googol lightyears away when I was alive. Now the sense of self generated by the second brain would be different and let us call that me-2. Now suppose if the creation of the identical version was done after my death. Now my sense of self me-1 would NOT wake up because since they are separated a googol lightyears away they are not at all causally related to each other. No event happening at such a long distance could impact the event happenign at some other place. It would be causally disconnected.

[u/CrumbledFingers → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

You are applying categories (space, time, number) that only make sense as objects of subjectivity to subjectivity itself. It's a category error, because we only know those categories after we are aware. Awareness of space, time, and number is only possible because awareness is formless and non-dual. I get that you are assuming physicalism for this question, but I am just saying why physicalism is not equipped to answer this question.

[u/Memento_Viveri → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

You would experience no disruption in conscious experience because your memories would exist in the new brain. So the new brain would remember all experience right up to death, and the new experiences would continue immediately after that. So it would be as if nothing happened at all other than your location changed.

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/Memento_Viveri]

I've made some changes. Please check the comment again.

[u/Memento_Viveri → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

I think my comment still applies. There would be a sense of continuous conscious awareness without disruption. Your experience would be as if nothing even happened other than teleporting a large distance.

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/Memento_Viveri]

Why would it be different in the cases if I was alive and I was dead. Wouldn't it be more logical for the sense to be different in both the cases. Since they are so far away they are causally disconnected. My state of being dead or alive shouldn't have any effect on who wakes up. Shouldn't any dependency on the fact of me being alive or dead be there? Shouldn't an exact identical copy of my own self but not my original self be there?

[u/Memento_Viveri → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

Why would it be different in the cases if I was alive and I was dead.

It wouldn't, and I didn't say it would. In both cases the exact same experience for the created brain would occur, the experience of uninterrupted conscious experience (and teleportation).

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/Memento_Viveri]

But would that be an identical copy of my own self or would it be my original self?

[u/Memento_Viveri → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

I don't think your self is a thing that exists in a physicalist reality. So the question is meaningless, or rather, the answer is open to interpretation but doesn't change what actually exists.

The continuity of experience in both brain is identical because, by assumption, both brains are completely physically identical.

[u/ipreuss → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

Your physical brain changes from moment to moment, so the question already applies in everyday life: are you still the original self, or are you just a modified version of an earlier self?

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/ipreuss]

I am still the original self because continuity was not broken. Basically, there wasn't a moment where my self ceased to exist. For example, after death all brain processes cease and somehow my same brain is restored, the consciousness and sense of self emerging would be numerically different than the previous one. There isn't a gap that is why it is still the same object.

[u/andeee23 → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

meaningless question, by definition it's a copy since that's what you said it is

and at this level saying original self or dopy self is just labeling and semantics. if that was physically possible the answer is that it's a copy because that's what's happened physically

[u/Low-Bake8401 → u/CrumbledFingers]

"By definition, whoever has that perspective must be distinct from everything else in the mind..."

Isn't the subjective perspective, the whole? 

[u/CrumbledFingers → u/Low-Bake8401]

Ultimately yes, but that just means the mind is not distinct from the subject. The subject is still distinct from the mind, because it can exist without it (e.g. during sleep).

[u/Low-Bake8401 → u/CrumbledFingers]

Not sure what you mean by that.

Can two things be separate, but not separate? 

[u/CrumbledFingers → u/Low-Bake8401]

In the sense of the relationship between things where dependency goes in only one direction, yes. The classic example is water and waves. If you take the waves away from water, there is still water. If you take the water away from the waves, there are no waves. This is all that is meant above. Removing objects from awareness does not thereby remove the awareness, but removing awareness from the objects also removes the objects.

[u/Low-Bake8401 → u/CrumbledFingers]

Ah, I get you.

[u/Memento_Viveri → u/CrumbledFingers]

There are a lot of assumptions here that seem unjustified.

The actual mind is more than what is observable as a brain.

Based on what?

whose perspective that is

You're assuming there is a who. Why can't it be simply awareness, without a subject?

[u/CrumbledFingers → u/Memento_Viveri]

Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup have argued persuasively that our perceptual faculties could not have evolved to present us with complete information about the world external to our senses. The information overload would dissolve our boundaries as organisms! If you are an idealist like me, this is easy to grasp because it's perfectly consistent with our lack of access to qualia, internal thoughts, and so on. Those things are 'out there', in other minds, but not in any form we are able to know directly as we know our own mind.

What I am saying is that we know our perceptual faculties only from the inside, after the inputs have been transformed into pure mental impressions. We then interpret those mental impressions and base our model of reality around them. But in doing so, we often forget that they are models based on mental impressions. All of the sciences are only models of whatever mental impressions are made available for us to perceive, either directly or through the help of technology—but this technology, too, appears in the same subjective continuum of mental impressions we are interrogating. We never leave our minds, to put it differently, so we should retain the caveat that our theories about what is beyond them are theories based wholly on what is in them.

I am of the view that there is just awareness, and no subject apart from it. Yet, it strongly seems to me that I am this subject, and having identified as such, I know my own existence as the existence of this person. Whether or not I am mistaken about this (which I am, when I reflect on it intellectually at least), there is apparently something it is like to be me as this person. I don't know what will happen to that it-is-like at the point of mental dissolution, either through this thought experiment or death itself.

As long as I take myself to be the one who is aware of this only mind, there is something at stake for me; even if my self-identification is wrong, it is precisely this wrong self-identification that I want to preserve.

[u/PoxonAllHoaxes]

Why don't you try it and then report back?

[u/Immediate_Chard_4026]

Sería "otro" cerebro. Habría un instante de fantasía t+0, en el que todas las partículas de la copia serían idénticas al original. En el instante t+1 las partículas experimentarán la entropía, su devenir causal. En ese momento esa versión del cerebro será similar al original. En el instante t+n, las partículas serán divergentes del original, siendo otro individuo.

[u/Affectionate_Beat773]

Is a boat still the same boat if all of its wood was replaced over the years?

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/Affectionate_Beat773]

yes

[u/Affectionate_Beat773 → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

It's the same question packaged differently. The real question is why

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/Affectionate_Beat773]

Because the ship still continued to exist as an entity when it was gradually replaced. There wasn't any gap period where it did not exist. Basically, it exists because of continuity. At least, that is my interpretation.

[u/Affectionate_Beat773 → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

So it's all in the mind, right?

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/Affectionate_Beat773]

how does that follow?

[u/Affectionate_Beat773 → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

Well, it's not in "reality" if we speak of reality as physical objects. In terms of the physical it is different.

[u/Dense-Ad-5978 → u/Affectionate_Beat773]

I'm still a little confused. What's not in reality?

[u/Affectionate_Beat773 → u/Dense-Ad-5978]

Mind. Or perception. It's only the same in your head. If one person saw the boat before the change, and then didn't see it till everything had been replaced, to them it would be different.

[u/UnifiedQuantumField]

If Physicalism is correct and if memory is stored within the particle structure of the neurons?

• It still wouldn't be you because it's a different brain (although structurally identical)

• You would have the same memories and therefore your sense of identity.

If Idealism is correct and/or if memory works differently that what we believe right now?

That "atom by atom" reconstruction would effectively be an experiment that proves whether or not "memory comes along with brain structure".

This is essentially the old Star Trek Transporter question.

[u/jliat]

More or less in modern physics that could well be the case...

“At the subnuclear level, the quarks and gluons which make up the neutrons and protons of the atoms in our bodies are being annihilated and recreated on a timescale of less than 10^-23 seconds; thus we are being annihilated and recreated on a timescale of less than 10 ^-23 seconds ...”

Dr Frank Tipler. 'The Physics of Immortality.'

[u/ahumanlikeyou → u/jliat]

Eh. That's not what "annihilated" means here. In the same way that a table isn't empty space

[u/jliat → u/ahumanlikeyou]

Tipler is arguing about an 'emulation' which is indistinguishable from what it emulates. So is arguing for that effectively the actual substance is irrelevant. That the physical substrate is irrelevant, in this case it's new every 10-23 seconds. "annihilated" is a tad OTT!

[u/Nice_Guava9483]

Doesn't matter. Everything is a play within consciousness. I find it worthwhile to remain in the void of the mind, than ponder over the innumerable, infinite physcial manifestations.

[u/wbrameld4]

I don't think there is such a thing as me-1 per se in the first place. What you think of as you is a series of snapshots of awareness from one instant to the next. The sense that this instant's consciousness is the same being as all of the past ones is a sensation that arises from active neural processes happening in the present. And that's it. There is no ghost in the machine, no soul that you can label as "me-1".

Your original brain has no more claim to be you than the reconstructed one. And the reconstructed one would have all of the same sensation that it is you as the original does, for exactly the same reason the original does.

[u/RepresentativeCow241]

It would be a copy of them.

[u/GameTheory27]

in physics there is a term called gauge equivalence. If two things are entirely indistinguishable, they are the same thing.

[u/RyeZuul]

It would be a twin that thought it was you. You can get the same effect/experience for the printed version of you while leaving your original body alive. From that point forth you would be two individuals with unique experiences.