RE: Does a "True Self" Exist?
July 2, 2015 at 5:31 pm
(This post was last modified: July 2, 2015 at 5:39 pm by bennyboy.)
Sure there's a self. It's true that humans seem to be mostly the same-- if you melted me down to my constituent parts, I would be (for the most part) the same as you. And if you further broke me down to QM particles, there would be no difference among us except the number of particles.
However, in a person, these parts are brought together in relation to each other, and these relationships among parts are very different. This is a little mystical, at least to me, because new properties (like consciousness) emerge out of collections of relationships so complex that we cannot fathom them as human beings: we must distill them, simplify them to principles, and therefore lose those details-- details like what it's like to experience one's own mind and feelings. We cannot now (and I suspect ever) really explain what it is about the brain, for example, that allows matter to begin experiencing qualia.
For example, it may be that we soon make an artificial intelligence that can pass, at least online, as a human 100% of the time: it will learn, interact, develop preferences, exhibit emotional behaviors, etc. But, and this is the catch, while the mechanism of that AI (various memory and CPU chips, internet cable, software programmed in a very deliberate way) can be completely known, nobody will know exactly what complex relationships evolve as the AI evolves and becomes a "person." And by distilling that information down to a human-comprehensible form, I'm pretty sure the picture will be lost.
So I don't think we're a "bunch of atoms," any more than a digital picture is just a bunch of electrical impulses in a computer. There is some underyling information which piggybacks on the material structures, and that is the real essence of things. So Windows is real, and while it requires SOME mechanism, it is not that mechanism. The real Windows is in the information, the meaning (not its ability to exist though) transcends that mechanism.
However, in a person, these parts are brought together in relation to each other, and these relationships among parts are very different. This is a little mystical, at least to me, because new properties (like consciousness) emerge out of collections of relationships so complex that we cannot fathom them as human beings: we must distill them, simplify them to principles, and therefore lose those details-- details like what it's like to experience one's own mind and feelings. We cannot now (and I suspect ever) really explain what it is about the brain, for example, that allows matter to begin experiencing qualia.
For example, it may be that we soon make an artificial intelligence that can pass, at least online, as a human 100% of the time: it will learn, interact, develop preferences, exhibit emotional behaviors, etc. But, and this is the catch, while the mechanism of that AI (various memory and CPU chips, internet cable, software programmed in a very deliberate way) can be completely known, nobody will know exactly what complex relationships evolve as the AI evolves and becomes a "person." And by distilling that information down to a human-comprehensible form, I'm pretty sure the picture will be lost.
So I don't think we're a "bunch of atoms," any more than a digital picture is just a bunch of electrical impulses in a computer. There is some underyling information which piggybacks on the material structures, and that is the real essence of things. So Windows is real, and while it requires SOME mechanism, it is not that mechanism. The real Windows is in the information, the meaning (not its ability to exist though) transcends that mechanism.
