Experiencers and consciousness

[ATS20000]

Okay, say there was a machine that could scan someone's WHOLE brain with 100% accuracy and another machine existed that could create a new brain, atom to atom, by reading the scan (also with 100% accuracy).

Say the same applied to the persons body to hopefully avoid confusion (body is scanned, re-created atom by atom so there are now 2 bodies, also), what would happen if we put the new brain into the new body and "woke up" the brain?

Well, I'd assume that the new brain would have the same personality and memories as the original brain (but my change depending on differences in the new environment the new brain/body is put it, compared to the original brain).

However, the brain still wouldn't have the same "experiencer" (possibly the same as qualia), no one could tell from the outside that the "experiencer" was different, because the person would act exactly the same anyway, the new experiencer in the new brain wouldn't even acknowledge that their experiencer is different (because we know that the brain is responsible for all thought).

So, my question is, where is this experiencer located? The two brains are 100% atomicallly identical, but the experiencers are still different. Wouldn't that mean the experiencer is different from the brain? I think so.

If the original brain was killed AFTER the scan, but BEFORE the new copy was created and "woken up", the experiencer still wouldn't be the same in the new brain since the original brain is dead (the experiencers can't just "jump" from one brain to another brain, just because the original brain before the its awakening. But at the same time, there can't be 1 experiencer in 2 different brains (if this happened it would mean that the experiencer IS located in the brain, but having 1 experiencer in 2 brains wouldn't make sense anyway, because that means the 2 brains would somehow be wirelessly communicating with eachother.

So, my conclusion is that the new brain will have a new experiencer and the other experiencer would be forever lost once the old brain died (which would make doing what I said so you could enjoy life longer pointless, because it won't actually be you experiencing the new life, just a "new" experiencer, I'm assuming, will experience it, while you just miss out (your experiencer would be forever gone).

So, please tell me what you think on this subject since the experiencer has to be separate from the brain.

[StriatumPDM]

Since this subject is a rather philosophical one and we are far from being able to assess all the technical pitfalls of copying anything with 100 % accuracy, we can only approach it theoretically in terms of a thought experiment.

To begin with we will have to think about whether such a 100-% copy is feasible at all. An atom-by-atom copy with 100 % accuracy would mean that all atoms of the copy are in exactly the same relation to each other like the atoms of the original and, on top of this, the states of the copy's atoms must also be equal to the states of the original's atoms. From physics we will learn that this 100-% accuracy is impossible.

• (1) We would need a measurement instrument to verify that the copy's atoms have in fact the same relations to each other like the ones of the original. This apparatus would have to able to measure distances between atoms, and theoretically this is supposed to be possible.
• (2) We would need a measurement instrument to verify that the states of the copy's atoms are equal to those of the original's atoms. However, atoms are composed of particles which are in motion, and from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle we know that we cannot measure the particles' motion and position simultaneously. Thus, whenever we find out the impulse of a particle we don't know its position and vice versa. As a consequence, we cannot be sure whether the states of the copy's atome are equal to those of the original's atoms.
• (3) Apart from that, whenever we have finished our measurements on one bunch of atoms, time goes by in which changes of the relations and states may occur, which we're unable to consider while we perform measurements on the other bunch of atoms.

From (2) and (3) follows that no verification procedure with 100-% accuracy can ever exist.

Say we do an intellectual game and simply assume the existence of a 100-% copy of a body (including the brain). Even then we must refer to the fact mentioned in (3) that time goes by and changes occur, which are definitely different for each body. The reason is the different positions of the bodies in space, which entails that they are differentially influenced by fluctuations of temperature, gravitational and electromagnetic fields and so forth. Thus, the dynamics of all cells in general and of the neurons in particular will be different for the original compared to the copy, even though initially (at the initial time point where the 100-%-equality is verified) they had been equal.

By the way I do not exactly understand what you mean by experiencer. It sounds as if you pursue a dualistic view where there is something like a soul (maybe your experiencer?) and a body. If you do, then the answer is: yes, there are two distinct experiencers, each for one of the instances/ realizations of the body (the original and the copy). Otherwise, you should explain what you mean by the term experiencer.

[ATS20000]

I'm not sure how much it matters whether the copy is absolutely 100% or not.

I don't really know much about dualism, but I guess you could say I am talking about it in that kind of way. Let's just say I meant "soul" instead of experiencer, I wouldn't mean soul in the way that it could think, it would simply be an experiencer. If someone had no experiencer/soul, then it would be fine to hurt them in whatever way you wanted. There would be nothing wrong with burning them alive or doing whatever to them because there is simply no experience involved. Sure, the brain will process all the pain and the person will react just like a normal person would to the pain, they'd scream or tell you to stop or whatever but there is no experiencer.

I'm pretty sure it's called a Philosophical zombie (that's what I read on Wikipedia, anyway).

Now I'm going to talk about the rest of this in what you described an intellectual game where we assume that all the atoms are exactly the same.

You said that as time goes by, there are changes in the atoms. I think there can still be changes in the atoms and still be the same experiencer (if the experiencer happens to be physical, which I'm trying to prove that it isn't). I think that the experiencer would still be the same in spite of atoms changing because I think that if atoms changing really mattered, after time goes by, your current experiencer (yes, the one you have right now) would change. In other words, your current experiencer would only experience for as long as it takes for the state of the atoms in your brain to change (then after the change in atoms, there would be another experiencer).

I highly doubt that every time the state of atoms in my brain change that my experiencer changes although I still don't know if I'd even be able to acknowledge if my experiencer had stayed the same or not. I get the idea that I'd be able to acknowledge if my experiencer is still the same as it originally was (though I'm still thinking a lot about this, because that means a non-physical thing is affecting my thought, since what you are thinking can be monitored to a certain degree with todays technology, which seems pretty strange to be true), but I'm pretty sure that if my experiencer DID change as time went by (because change of the state of the atoms), I wouldn't be able to acknowledge this (I am still unsure whether I would not be able to acknowledge this or not, due to my brain overloading when I think about it).

But, all this stuff about acknowledging whether your experiencer has changed or not, wouldn't even matter if someone was actually asking the person this question (since the person would probably answer yes (that they are experiencing) every time they are asked (remember me saying that they can probably only acknowledge if their experiencer is the SAME, that means that if the experiencer did change, the answer is automatically going to be yes anyway, since the answer can never be no [the person cannot acknowledge that they are NOT experiencing the same experiencer as before, they can only acknowledge that they ARE].

Anyway, half this stuff that I have just said may not make any sense (my brain is EXTREMELY overwhelmed and I have tried to explain the second part as best as I can [I was okay with the beginning part where I was explaining what I meant by experiencer to you by describing feeling pain], but the rest of this is hard to present and I am unsure of a lot of it anyway so I apologize if it's confusing and doesn't make sense). A lot of the second part (which is two paragraphs, not one, by the way) involves a non-physical thing (the experiencer) affecting the thought patterns of a physical thing (the brain), so I may have contradicted myself a lot of the times, I'm not sure.

I have to sleep now, bye.

[ferrythomas]

is hydro phobia is the part of this disorder?