(January 30, 2016 at 4:57 am)Pizza Wrote: Dualists want to reduces personal identity down to immaterial thinking thing but I don't buy it. If you ask me to define what it means to be me, I'd end up "pointing" to more than thoughts, but my face, my voice, the way I walk, my actions, my quirks, and my humanity. If you cut away all the physical, with Descartes and friends arguments for dualism, what is left? Thinking thing... Where's the beef?
Suppose we had the technology to take the 'immaterial thinking thing' part of you (I don't think it's 'immaterial' at all, but there we are) and put it into a machine that bore a starling resemblance to a pizza oven. All your emotions, thoughts, inner conflicts, inner dialogue, memories, etc are now encased in a thousand-kilo machine made of steel, plastic and ceramic.
Would you cease to be you?
Boru
‘But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods or no gods. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.’ - Thomas Jefferson
