18 replies to this topic

[A941]

A funny  ) Question:

How do we hold the continuity of our consciousness while we were sleeping?

Is our current Hardware of no further interest?
[?]

[Thomas]

We don't. It's an illusion. Your self sees some memories, which could be also false or not present. Doesn't matter.

There is nothing like continuity of self. The felling of self is like the felling of green - same everywhere, where the hardware supports it.

- Thomas

[A941]

But in this case "i" wouldnt wake up at the next morning.

If consciousness would disappear every night, then there wouldnt be continuity cause I would get the bad experience of death and a new created (created by the brian)  consciousness would awake on the same hardware and with the same memory.

[SouL RippeR]

How do you even know you're awake?  [unsure]
How do you know that what you consider "life" is not just a series of dreams that you are having when your other "I" went to sleep and this is your life? [huh]
There is an excellent movie about this subject called "Waking Life", I highly recomend it.   [!]

[A941]

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How do you even know you're awake?

Its not a The-Matrix-is-real discussion!
Its about the continuity of our consciousness. [wacko]

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How do you know that what you consider "life" is not just a series of dreams that you are having when your other "I" went to sleep and this is your life?

There is no evidence for this, thats like talking about the existence of invisible pink unicorns lol or the color of gods underwear i think we should stay serious.

[SouL RippeR]

Ok, sorry I couldn't help it. [roll]
But if we re to discuss about something then we should start by telling what we understand by concience right? :D
Because "concience" is vast word with many meanings depending on your focus.

[A941]

Ok, try a definition!

[Lazarus Long]

Here we go again.  

We certainly do keep ariving at the same impasse.  Don't we¿  It reminds me of the legal matter I am trying to resolve here in Mexico at the moment.  It is one that reminds me everytime I enter the beaurocracy here how much this state is run by Kafka's disciples and achitectually designed by Escher.

In the case of a definition of conscience it might help if we had a good definition of "Intelligence" we could agree on first, or whether the definition of "Consciousness" depends upon being "Self Aware"  or just generally "Aware".  

OMG, now it sounds like the Special and General Definitions of Relativity.

[SouL RippeR]

I would say "Self Aware"!
Because what diferentiates us from animals is that Self Awareness.

[MichaelAnissimov]

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How do we hold the continuity of our consciousness while we were sleeping?
...
If consciousness would disappear every night, then there wouldnt be continuity cause I would get the bad experience of death and a new created (created by the brian) consciousness would awake on the same hardware and with the same memory.

Our continuity of consciousness is broken momentarily while we sleep, it's the period of time when we don't remember anything.  We're conscious in a very abstract way during REM sleep.  Our stream of consciousness, with pretty much the same memories, resumes full operation the next morning.  

I think you may be conflating the continuity of consciousness issue in uploading with continuity of consciousness in general.  Humans, by design, have gaps in their continuity of consciousness called sleep.  But the continuity is temporal rather than structural; we've evolved to "recover" from sleep with pretty much the same brain as we had before.  Or one could say that sleep only evolved because it only supervenes very weakly on our cognitive coherence during the day and its' fitness benefits outweighed the penalties.

Some people worry about uploading because they believe their "continuity of consciousness" will be shattered upon instantiation in an alternative substrate; this flows from various beliefs regarding functional equivalence and brains, and is a troublesome philosophical issue.  But what people are arguing about is different than the philosophical issues thrust upon us by the notion of sleep.  This hypothesized "snipping" of continuity of consciousness during an upload is supposed to give the newly created "copy" moral indignation as to what happened to her; folks sometimes see uploading as "violating" them.  You can feel violated by sleep too if you want, (I sort of do), but continuity of consciousness is only suspended, not snipped.  The very human definition of identity always involves beings that sleep for about a third of their day.  If your frame of reference is a *transhuman* definition of identity though, then I can sympathize with your indignation.

[A941]

I think it would be better to replace the substance of the brain while the brain is working so the c. wouldnt be broken.

Or do we need a new deffinition of consciousness?

...did we ever had an old...? [wacko]


Michael, do you have the MSN Messenger and a Microphone?

[MichaelAnissimov]

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Michael, do you have the MSN Messenger and a Microphone?

Nope, neither.

[fueki]

I have if you need.

[fruitimmortal]

Harold Waldwin Percivals definition - of Consciouness = is the presence in all things - by which each thing is conscious in the degree in which it is conscious as what or of what it is or does.  As a word it is the adjective " conscious " developed into a noun by the suffix " ness " . It is a word unique in language; it has no synonyms, and its meaning extends beyound human comprehension. Consciousness is beginningless, and endless; it is indivisible , without parts, qualities, states, attributes or limitations. Yet, everything, from the least to the greatest, in and beyound time and space is dependent on it, to be and to do. Its presence in every unit of nature and beyound nature enables all things and beings to be conscious as what or of what they are, and are to do, to be aware and conscious of all other things and beings, and to progress in continuing higher degrees of being conscious toward the only ultimate Reality---Consciousness.

[Lazarus Long]

On the difference between Death and Sleep:
Consider another analogy from your computers.

It is functionally no different than the difference between the use of Suspend versus turning the machine OFF.  Reincarnation /resurrection then is life/death cycling analogous the rebooting that preserves the utility of a particular individual material/memetic operating system while applying a continuity of growing awareness over an objective as distinct from simply a subjective reality.

In the first case there is (when the program works correctly )  a continuity of functional awareness and currently running or operating programs, in the latter there is a total shut with concurrent destruction of RAM as well as the LOSS of all currently operation programs.  In the case of humans consider this loss to reflect a loss of identity (self).

In thinking about this question again and reflecting on the character of the brain it suggests that we are more like the machine than we are crediting and there may be a complex relationship of memory functions operating in our brain that has tended to be grossly oversimplified.  I suggest we not only possess a Random Access Memory, but a ROM (Read Only Memory) that reflects a more fundamental aspect of gender/ethnic/racial character and even more complex Operating program memory that correlates to our genetics and perhaps even a kind of memory that is working on a vastly more subtle and complex memetic level that we are only beginning to discern.

By the way another analogy that we need to examine when talking about memetics and the Mass Mind and that is we have yet to develop sufficient tools to objectively detect it but this is changing.  

In science when we want to define and object, let us say your foot, we want to first look directly at your foot, then we quantify and qualify the “object” through direct analytical measure.  Well that is good if we have such a "tangible object"  with which to work but in the case of say Dark Matter, or in the case of Gaia Conscience and the Mass Mind all we have to analyze is the Foot Print .  The foot is still beyond the scope of most individual awareness though we are comfortable in defining it pragmatically as a type of theological function of consciousness but I suggest it is not impossibly so distant that as we become relatively more complex and aware in our scope that it will remain so intangible for us to discern and I suggest that we can see a FOOT PRINT in the memetic analysis of human social behavior and the self prophetic social character of our theological and political doctrines.

.

[tbeal]

how do you know that you were the same person you were last seond even because all you have is the memory of the last secon to rely on. and you may have inhirited this memory form a previous concsiounous that could only exist in that instanoues brain state

[Lazarus Long]

Because I remember a continuity of consciousness; that could be theoretically mislead, but the perception such continuity is what defines the continuum of self. Your assumption doesn't make it an inherentance it means the "I"  was that former self and once the integration of such memory is complete then the continuity of self definition would be preserved.

[extofimpediments]

Wake up and go to sleep my  friend,

[extofimpediments]

Lazarus Long said:

The continuity of consciousness is the reason for duality and differences in appearances because it just separates the real nature of manifestation from another continuity of conciousness. The individuality of our mind creates many dimensional worlds.