Saturday, September 11, 2010

Souls, Pt. 1

"Water, 35 litres. Carbon, 20kg. Ammonia, 4 litres. Lime, 1.5kg. Phosphorus, 800g. Salt, 250 g. Salt Peter, 100g. Sulphur, 80g. Fluorine, 7.5g. Iron, 5g. Silicon 3g. And trace amounts of fifteen other elements. Those are the elements to make an average adult human body. You can buy these elemental ingredients at the market with the pocket money of a child."—Fullmetal Alchemist

I've been thinking a lot about souls lately. I lean towards thinking there is no non-physical soul, but I don't think I would call my bluff by consenting to be disintegrated and rebuilt from exactly the same matter in exactly the same configuration. What am I worried about losing?

I don't think memory or personality would be in question. The mechanisms of memory are still a little mysterious, but nothing about storing and recalling memories suggests anything metaphysical to me. I also don't think there's any reason to suspect that we'd intrinsically know the difference between a "real" memory and a "false" memory, as you might intuitively expect at first. As for personality, I think pharmaceuticals and basic neurology show pretty clearly that most, if not all, personality comes from physical brain states. And your personality wouldn't even have to be identical, because people go through mood changes all the time, and personality changes as you get older, and you still identify yourself as the same person.

So with identical memories and the same basic personality, there's no reason to expect that this copy would feel like an imposter, or be in any way emotionally detached from their "original" self. But would there be something fundamentally, drastically different in the copy? Would they be a "philosophical zombie" going through the motions of being "truly human", but lacking any kind of subjective experience or consciousness of their own?

I'd probably say "no, there would be nothing lacking", but I'm uncomfortable ruling the possibility out entirely (hence, I wouldn't consent to be disintegrated and rebuilt).

I'm still not sure where that leaves me, but there's plenty more confusion to come at a later date!

1 comment:

Eustace Bright said...

Hmmmmm.... I'm imagining.....

You re-assemble yourself multiple times, and don't let any of them know how they came into being; don't let them meet you or the other copies, and each will assume that they have been around since conception, and that they are the sole "you". Then introduce yourself but cast doubt about who was the original "you." Let a fight develop -- a fight to the death. "Let God decide."