Quote from: kmfkewm on December 29, 2012, 11:47 amQuote from: SelfSovereignty on December 28, 2012, 11:48 amQuote from: kmfkewm on December 28, 2012, 11:06 amQuote from: SelfSovereignty on December 28, 2012, 10:18 amI'm amazed that anyone who's experienced how powerfully a simple chemical can influence their own awareness could think for a second that we continue when our brains have ceased to function. This view boils down to 'I am the neural network that is my brain'. I wonder how do you explain that identical twins are not the same being? They share the same genetics, their brains will be essentially identical until nurture molds them differently. There are minor differences between twins, for example they have different fingerprints due to their unique movements inside of the womb I believe, but in any case they are essentially the same thing from a physical perspective. Over time they will develop into different people as nature and nurture both share a role in determining who we are, but the original neural networks of both twins will be nearly identical. To me this indicates that our self, at its very core, is more than our brain. Certainly our ego is tied entirely to our brain. Our memories, opinions, etc...they rely entirely on the brain. But if your brain is identical to your twins brain, and you are your brain, it seems as if you are your twin. And we know that twins are separate beings, so I have trouble to believe that this is truly the case.An even better example would be more in the realm of science fiction, but imagine that a perfect copy of you is created. Down to the smallest detail, at the point in time when this copy of you is created, it is entirely identical to you. Do you think that you and this copy of you are the same person? There are two beings that will interact with the world, two beings that will see through their own eyes, think their own thoughts. Certainly you will be extremely similar, at first you will be exactly similar and then over time you will likely drift apart due to environmental differences in your experiences....but it is apparent that you will be two different people and have two different selves despite sharing the same structure of brain, the same set of memories, etc.Your thinking appears -- and please, pardon me if I'm wrong -- to be predicated on an assumption that you provide no explanation of: that there's some kind of long-distance connection between the twins' brains. Of course they aren't the same person, because their cells aren't connected to each other.Think about something: your brain doesn't function perfectly at all times. Yet you continue to think you're "you," as do I. Infact I don't even notice, other than pondering my current thoughts and deciding that I'm more or less "coherent," or "intelligent," than usual. I assume this is due entirely to having done it thousands or millions of times and having the memories to compare to. But that doesn't mean that the loss of a single cell, or temporarily poorly functioning collections of them, makes me a different person. I don't even notice. Now how can I not notice? Because I'm the sum of all the interconnected parts of my brain, and if I lose one, I lose some piece of my consciousness but can hardly tell the difference except by comparison.Honestly, I'm not sure why you'd think that twins with identical brains would share a consciousness when they aren't physically connected?I think you completely misunderstood what I said. Your original claim is that your self is entirely synonymous with your brain, and my argument was that if your self is really synonymous with your brain then you and a duplicate of you will be a single conscious being. As we can easily determine that you and your identical twin are different conscious entities, and that if a perfect copy of you is made at any given instant that it will be its own conscious entity, I think it casts some doubt on the claim that your self is entirely dependent on your brain. Sure your ego is, your memories, etc...but I think there is something else that is independent of the brain. Simply because I do not think that a perfect copy of me will really be me. If I die after the perfect copy of myself is created, I will not be seeing through the eyes of my copy. I will not be tasting through the tongue of my copy. But the brain will be the same brain, so I must at some level exist independently of my brain. I'm not sure what to say to you, in all honesty. That's exactly what I thought you were suggesting initially. Pardon me for just trying to turn it back around here, but I think perhaps it's you who's missing what I'm getting at -- now I stopped and considered what you're saying, but I still feel strongly that it's the other way around, friend. I'm not trying to be aggressive or anything here, just what I think.If your neurons lose their connections... then you lose them as a part of your consciousness. Perhaps you're not understanding just how "hand-wavey" the one possibility I'm putting forth is: the sum of our neural connections may, for reasons totally unknown to me (well, basically totally unknown anyway), at some critical point cease to be a sum of the connections and begin to become more than their sum. Complexity theory sort of stuff on a massive scale -- along those lines.If your neurons aren't touching (twins of course don't share neuronal connections)... then according to what I'm suggesting, of course you don't share a consciousness. Twins wouldn't any more so than you and I. It's literally an identical situation in my opinion -- the similarity of their neural configuration is perhaps noteworthy because it makes them so very similar in our understanding as fellow humans, but actually it doesn't have any effect whatsoever on their independent consciousnesses (the plural sounds awfully silly, lol). They're two different beings just like you and I, just as my position would predict.Do you see what I'm getting at? I'm not sure where else I might be explaining myself poorly, but I'll try and get the idea across further if you'd like -- they're all fun little concepts to me, so long as I'm not stuck sober at the time :)