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[serp777]

I'm wondering why people have such strong convictions to their assumptions about consciousness with regard to religion/spirituality

 

Here is a recent post that is relevant

 

Posted Yesterday, 11:43 PM

cryonicsculture, on 08 Jun 2014 - 9:59 PM, said:

Ok, I think I can sum up your question as:

 

1. "If an exact quantum level copy of myself is made, how is one different from the other?"

2. "If they aren't the same because one didn't exist prior, why would a cryonicist be the same person or any different than the quantum copy after being thawed?"

 

That is a good question, and we generally answer it with the parallel of a heart surgery or a surgery where the patient is ametabolic and for all intensive purposes dead. That or we use the scenario of someone being saved by CPR after their heart is stopped. 

 

I can't say I can answer that one without doing an observational study. Either both are just as much the original as the original or one is the original and one is a copy. But I wouldn't say that both are copies because one was never made from something else.

 

With exact quantum copies, the only difference is the point of reference and history of travel through the 4 dimensions. Perhaps one is you because it originated as an embryo and the other is just a copy because it didn't learn to be what it is, but rather is what it is and nothing more. 

 

I'll give it some more thought and maybe post further later. 

 

I think it's the most reasonable position to say that the two copies aren't different from each other. They are the exact same consciousness, but neither consciousness has access to each other's thoughts obviously. This resolves the archaic thinking of "where would the original consciousness actually be if nobody knew which person was the clone?" There simply is no original consciousness; let me explain-

 

The most logical answer is that consciousness is not one continuous entity anyways. Each frame of "consciousness" that occurs at each instant is different from the previous consciousness, but has all the previous memories of the consciousness before it. For example, how would you know if you were created 5 seconds ago with the memories of your previous lifetime? You wouldn't, because there is no way to distinguish memories from those that might be false and created outside your existence. So your experience of consciousness is merely an illusion created to convey continuity, which would help members of the species recognize causality of events. Understanding causality is important for the survival of the species. This solves every kind of consciousness issue you could think of, such as atomic transportation, because it shows that no one is ever the same person/consciousness anyways after an instant of recognizable time. People simply assume that consciousness is this kind of static abstract thing. My argument would suggest that it is an entirely physical phenomenon and composed of a timeline of different consciousnesses.

 

Although my statement is also inherently an assumption about consciousness, it reflects a position that is at least as likely to normal conceptions that religious people often have about consciousness--E.G. that it is constant and static/unique. I reject all of these assumptions unless some scientific evidence or philosophical rationale could be provided. My assumptions are just as valid unless new evidence arises.

[addx]

I agree.

People assume their awareness has the abilities that it demonstrates within ones own imagination.

Anything imagined is quietly seen/witnessed/perceived by the awareness which provides a sense of it to the conscious. The conscious doesn't really question the source of the sense, it just accepts it and weighs it in decision making. The conscious is supplied a constant stream of such sense (sense of emotional and utilitarian value of experience as an object in a context) and it opts to use it or not for current decision making.

Lower mammals make decisions without this stream from vmPFC, higher mammals have this extra stream which enables them to stop vicious cycles of lower mammals or in other words stop blindly replaying self-destructing patterns in an effort to achieve something. This normally causes people to "replay" childhood patterns in an emotionally blind(from denial) way and constantly self-defeat themselves. Most of all it enables them to chose and play roles. This is what psychiatry calls "internalisation". Meaning you have successfully integrated an object-context into you and can play this object (a good child, or a policeman, whatever). Emotionaly blind people are often triggered into roles more than they choose or allow them.
Higher mammals can so develop multi-roles and can adjust approach to different group members. A higher mammal can be easily be dominant towards one member and submissive to the other and change roles like that. The success and ability of the roles and appropriate contexts are supplied by this sense of existence (as an object-role in a context). The emotional/utilitarian value of the experience is logged to ego inventory and provides better decision making. All this allows induction of a "society"(civilization) rather than a "group" - within vmPFC bearing species (primates).

There's no need to lock up "consciousness" into a magic box.

It can be dissected into several senses like the vmPFC above and the older "social senses" (internal models) and the immediate internal and external senses. There are also a few levels of decision making that evolved with animal clades, most obvious being amygdala <-> PFC and later the axis also receives vmPFC mechanism described above for even more control, but not so much more control as in different control. Each decision making level takes a different set of senses into account and uses different logic to calculate and there's also a logic of how they relate.