Submitted by BernardJOrtcutt t3_11qaiuh in philosophy
SingleYogini t1_jcsxptn wrote
Interested in you tearing apart my thinking so I can mature my thinking:
Consciousness emerges from physical states. For instance, the arrangement of atoms in a human brain.
The continuous sense of identity a given consciousness feels relates that arrangement of atoms. For instance, I feel like the same person as I was an hour ago, even though the brain that existed an hour ago no longer exists and instead my current one does
The multiverse is vast and may contain multiple physical states that replicate the same or equivalent physical states that produce a given consciousness. For instance, a functional human brain and body may appear due to a quantum fluctuation for a moment in space (‘boltzmann brain’)
The existence of at least one corresponding arrangement of atoms is required for a unitary sense of identity (whether or not space brains or souls exist, at least our brains matter)
Therefore, we may experience a subjective immortality upon the death of our ‘’current’’ body
The current body and brain we have experiences is able to effect change on the world and experiences a sense of non-deterministic free will. Whether or not this is true, it presents a perceived opportunity to reduce the suffering available to the universe that may or may not exist to ‘future’ subjective identities we may have
___fofo___ t1_jcu5z55 wrote
>Therefore, we may experience a subjective immortality upon the death of our ‘’current’’ body
Can you explain how you got this conclusion?
[deleted] t1_jd23zm2 wrote
[removed]
kilkil t1_jdh5f67 wrote
I'd like you to describe this "subjective immortality" experience a bit more, or at least how you imagine it. Is it just like, I die, and then my point of view shifts to another "me", elsewhere in the universe?
If I've understood your thought experiment correctly, then I'm convinced you haven't preserved continuity of consciousness — in fact, it has been explicitly interrupted. As a counter-example, imagine creating a perfect clone of yourself. Your subjective experience won't suddenly be you looking through two sets of eyes; you'll have your consciousness, and the clone will have theirs. If you choose to kill yourself, you won't suddenly "take over" the clone's consciousness; it'll keep having its consciousness, while your brain will have permanently (?) stopped being conscious. CGP Grey has a nice video on the "Star Trek teleporter problem" where he goes over pretty much this exact topic, particularly as it relates to the Ship of Theseus problem.
In my understanding, the key missing factor is hiding in your second paragraph — the continuous sense of identity relates to that arrangement of atoms, as it persists continuously through time.
Gamusino2021 t1_jdg4609 wrote
and not only multiverse, if time happens to be infinite in this universe, all possible atom arrangements will happen and infinite amount of times, and that might produce our councioussness too
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