Anyone else having 6th Day flashbacks?

If it sounds the same, looks the same, has identical physical properties, and is used in the same way where is the difference? Has the song on track 2 actually changed in any way, is it still the same music?

I do not have the same cells I did when I was younger, in fact my body does not function in the same way as it used to. Am I still me?

If I am still me, then my body doesn't really matter.

They exist in different places in space.

~J

Sorry, slow edit.

Really, how has the music changed?

The CD is irrelevant. CDs are presumably not conscious to begin with, so its identity is merely a convenient handle for others, not a matter of life and death.

This whole debate is why mankind came up with the concept of the "soul" (and all its variants, including "mind"). As sentient beings, we realize -- or more correctly, have to believe in order to maintain our sanity -- that we are unique individuals. If an exact duplicate of ourselves were made, that duplicate still would not be us even though it would be to everyone else. We are the only the only ones who have to believe we're us. (Pronouns are fun.)

As far as I can rationalize to myself, my "self" is my brain. If I had an exact duplicate of myself created (or even if not -- I'd personally want to go with a sexier, stronger, and younger body) and I had my brain transplanted into it, that new body would be me even though "I'm" laying dead on that table next to it. But even if my brain was duplicated in all ways, right down to all the synaptic pathways and memory engrams or whatever you want to throw in there, it still wouldn't be "me." Even though, as mentioned, it would be.

Being sentient sucks.

You know every time someone says the word impossible i am reminded that God has a wonderful, if demented, sense of humor.

As opposed to throwing out quantum theory as fact?

Indeed. In nearly any other field of work, a theory by the scientific definition would be called a fact.

Not that Newtonian physics are remotely correct except at low speeds, of course

~J

I read this thread with, I must admit, amazement. The only explanation I can come up with for some of the arguments on here is that none of the proposers are in the slightest bit religious.

If I am murdered and replaced by a clone with my memories, I am dead. Simple as that. What's you have instead is somebody with my face and memories, who may or may not continue to behave as I do. Did. Whatever. My soul, the essence of everything that is me, has moved on. This is why I never bought this business of downloading brains into computers etc. You aren't in there, old son. It's just a clever program that thinks it's you.

Said thought processes, brain waves, etc. have terminated, though. That's all you are, and when they terminate, you're gone even if someone recreates them exactly in a different location in time and space.

Now, once we get into the question of instantaneously destroying and recreating an individual in the same time/space location, I would say that it would be impossible to tell without being the individual beforehand, and then after the experiment it would be impossible to verify whether the original continued or had ceased.

~J

Still, what about distributed thought? If you distribute your mental processes amongst several blank clones while you are still alive wouldn't your distributed conciousness effectivly be able to survive the death of any one body? It would be traumatic to the personality, certainly, akin to severe brain trauma but the mind would continue unintirupted none the less.

I'm not sure how old you are, but it wasn't that long ago that clinically dead meant no heartbeat.

Also, something thinking they are the original someone, as we discussed back when it first came up, is no evidence whatsoever.

~J

Just to be a nitpicker.
All Carbon atoms are not identical. There are different isotopes. And if you accept it as a difference, then different temperature, means different energy state and therefore different speed.

But it probably has no use whatsoever in this discussion, so I´ll just shut up now.

Out of curiosity, why hasn't anyone bothered to try and define what "you" is? Since it was probably missed, I'll repeat some earlier questions:

What if you just have an arm cut off -- are you still "you" or someone else? What if it gets replaced with a prosthetic? Is that you? What if you did that with 75% of your body, are you still "you?" What if you have your brain transplanted into a new body? Are you "you," or is that dead body on the slab next to you "you?" What if you somehow had the ability to regenerate like a flatworm, someone split you straight down the middle, and you formed two new bodies. Which of those two are "you?"

Which ones of thoses are "you" and which aren't?

I don’t know. That being said, I’m finding three conflicting definitions. First, “Clinical death is usually defined as the medical state in which it is impossible to revive a person with any technology at medicine's disposal, in essence the complete and irreversible cessation of all body functions.” By this definition, it is impossible that your friend could be alive if she was indeed ever clinically dead. A second definition is the cessation of heartbeat and respiration, an event which proves nothing about the existence of self. The third is brain death, which now that I look up the definition of is also by definition irreversible.

So it doesn’t matter. Either they were using a weak definition of clinical death, or your friend was not clinically dead.

~J