Identity
My identity - who I am - seems a fairly well defined idea until I think about it more deeply.
This article uses some theoretical scenarios which make the idea seem somewhat problematic.
Many consider that a person's memory and personality (and therefore their identity) are encoded in the neuronal connections and synapse characteristics of their brain. The main thesis of the novel Empyrean is that humans will eventually develop the technology to finely slice the brain, scanning these connections and characteristics as they go. From the information obtained, they would be able to construct a functionally identical copy of the brain from silicon.
So someone undergoing the conversion ceases to exist in biological form (as a bob) and begins to exist in silicon form (as a trog). The bob's personality and memories are transferred into the trog, and the trog would thus feel that they are still the same person that they were as a bob.
The trog brain is fed sensory input simulating a virtual environment from an interface computer and sends motor output to the computer. The computer processes the output, calculates the intended movement of the trog and its new vantage point in its environment, and adjusts the sensory input accordingly. The trog thus lives in a virtual world in which all senses are integrated to give an experience which is indistinguishable from experience in the physical world.
An industry develops in designing virtual environments and experiences in which the trogs can live. And the trogs do a lot of the designing. The designed experiences can be whatever the trogs want and are limited only by their imagination and creativity.
The interface computers of multiple trogs can be connected to the same environment server, thus allowing multiple trogs to interact with each other in an environment. So trogs can have social and intimate lives in the same way that bobs can.
They can also communicate through a video system with biological people in the real world.
What's different is that the trogs choose their experiences and don't have to be subjected to bad ones: they choose their own appearance, there is no pain (unless they want it), no sickness, no getting old and no death.
In the Empyrean story, the first people to undergo the conversion were people who were terminally ill or whose bodies were seriously defective, e.g. from quadriplegia or motor neurone disease. Once it is seen that the trogs seem to be just like their biological predecessors, that they can remember and talk about their past life as bobs and their current lives as trogs, people start to see conversion as a good thing, even if they are not disabled or terminally ill. And the number of conversions starts to grow, as does production of trog environments and experiences.
Those who undergo the conversion are of the belief that the experience will be basically going to sleep as a bob and waking up as a trog. However, there are many people who consider that the bob has been killed and that the trog is a new person, not a continuation of the old person. These people, of course, will generally not undergo the conversion.
One argument that the bob's life does continue in trog form is this thought experiment. Imagine replacing one neuron with silicon and continuing to live. As neurons are dying all the time and we can suffer some degree of brain injury (e.g. from trauma or stroke) without ceasing to be the person we are, changing the one neuron shouldn't make any difference. Then consider changing the next neuron and the next and so on. No single neuron replacement should change the person's identity - who they are. Shirley Mason should remain Shirley Mason throughout. Once the last neuron has been replaced, she will still be Shirley Mason. Her life, memory and consciousness should continue uninterrupted, just as ours does from day to day.
One argument to the contrary is this: Suppose, hypothetically, that we established that there are an infinite number of parallel universes. This would mean that, somewhere, there would be one with a person identical to me in an environment identical to mine. This is the same argument that an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters would eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare without a single typo. In fact, this would happen an infinite number of times.
Assuming that the existence of such parallel universes is established and accepted, suppose a person were told they were going to be killed, but that they shouldn't worry because there is an identical copy of them in a parallel universe and their life will continue there. Almost no one would be ok with this.
So, there is no obvious, logically supportable argument either way as to whether the trog is a continuation of the bob's life or whether to bob dies and a new person is produced. In the story, there are people who believe both ways. So conversions continue and, because they don't die, trogs accumulate. Bobs on the other hand do die and so are eventually outnumbered by trogs. The human race takes on a new form.
However, despite the growing preponderance of trogs, there is still no compelling answer to the question of continuation of life. Most people have an opinion one way or the other, but no one can argue their position in a way that it convinces people who think the other way.
Perhaps this is because the question doesn't have a yes-or-no answer.
A similar question is this: When I wake up tomorrow, will I still be the person I was today or will that person be gone and a new person come into existance, who just happens to have the same memories, looks, possessions and social connections. One night doesn't make a lot of difference, but a few decades does. I'm a very different person from the person who bore my name at age 13 and even more so that the person who bore my name at the age of six months.
Am I the same person I was at six months? Both 'yes' and 'no' seem to be perfectly good answers to that question. It comes down to what I mean by 'the same person'. Identity seems not to be the simple clear concept that we tend to take it as when we don't delve too deeply into it.
The synapse data for any trog can be stored outside of the trog. This means that another trog can be produced using the same data. If a copy is made of me, is that copy me? Or someone else?
If, before copying me, I was told that the copy would be destroyed a day after producing it, should I be ok with that? If I'm told after the copy is produced, that it woud be destroyed, that probably wouldn't be of too much consequence to me. But suppose the copy was told it was about to be terminated. Would the fact that it knew the original would continue be sufficient to make its death not an issue of concern? I suspect not.
If the original me and the new me were both allowed to live and go different ways, which one would be me? Would there still be a me? Would there be two mes?
I puzzle over these things, but I don't have answers. And, as far as I can tell, no one else has a supoortable opinion either. As such, this article, Identity, is more to raise questions that to answer them. I'm not even sure that these questions have answers or that identity is a definable concept.
I would love to engage in discussion with anyone who has an interest in discussing such things. Click the Contact link either here or on the home page.