Peter van Inwagen - Virtual Immortality

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Virtual immortality is the theory that when the fullness of our mental selves can be uploaded with first-person perfection to non-biological media, then when our mortal bodies die our mental selves will live on. But the complexity of the science is vast. And what about the nature of consciousness?



Peter van Inwagen is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.


Closer to Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.
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I don't know why people aren't subscribing to this channel.

soubhikmukherjee
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Even I'm an atheist van inwager is my favorite philosopher.
I'll suggest reading his book "existence: essay in ontology "

theaitravelerofficial
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Peter Van is looping the same line over and over. I like the Roberts line of thoughts and his logic.

rizwanrafeek
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Loved this episode, you were invested, and it's comprehensible

patmat.
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It’s a modal impossibility :) . An absolutely beautiful memorial

johnwest
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What would you leave behind? You can leave your body behind. Would you leave behind your sense to breath? Your sense of hunger? Your sense of freedom? The boundary of what "I" is and those sensations would cause some tough psychological decisions.

Erik
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I think the existence of self identity is an Indelible and integrated awareness that exists as a singularity both part of and apart from the physical self, inseparably until physical death. The apart from self at physical death either remains United and transgresses death to an unknown stage of development or it simply looses its symbiotic attachment only to succumb to entropy and be recycled. Duplicates are just recorded information that are divergent in every copy

MrDooDitty
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Robert runs into this issue all the time, where an interviewee thinks about a problem from a third person standpoint, ignoring the significance of first person experience. This was the most extreme example. Peter was locked in a loop. He did not get his head around how crucial first person experience is.

AlmostEthical
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I see a flaw in van Inwagen's argument as follows. He says that a virtual person will not be the same as the biological person because it will be basically mental patterns, including memories, copied from one hardwear - biological - to another hardwear, which is computer based. However, all the cells and neurons in the human body and brain are replaced with new ones in the human body about every seven years. That means that the physical hardwear of the human body is replaced/re-built every several years, and the mental patterns are continuously copied and transferred from the discarded to the updated biological hardwear of the human body and brain. In the process, some memories might be aberrated, ways of thinking may be changed by slightly re-wired network of neurons.
Nevertheless, we view ourselves as continuous mental entites all the years as our biological hardwear is in the process of updating, replacing and re-building.

ik
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We have this sense of persistent identity from very early in our life until we die, but how do we know that's not an illusion? Maybe (just maybe) our sense of self does not persist long at all. It quickly fades and is replaced by another self that inherits all of our memories, creating the illusion. With that in mind, it would not really be a problem to replicate our mind. Each copy would think it's the real us, and would see the others as copies.

chmd
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Until or even IF consciousness / the self can be nailed down, we cant even start to think about transferring it to another "container"

MikeG-jsjt
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I don't understand Peter's argument and have the same question as Robert: if consciousness is purely biological then, just lke we can put a processor of a computer into another computer, likewisr we should be able to transfer our consciousness to another body. Also, Peter's analogy of painting is a wrong one: you can cut-paste a painting into another painting to create a new painting - I don't see why the resulting painting can't be considered to contain the old one.

saniahsan
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This guy is saying you cant transfer the "I" to something else, when he has no idea (like the rest of us) what that "I" is.

MikeG-jsjt
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Make a perfect copy and it's just the exact same thing. Achieve a simulation that's exactly like real life and it just becomes real life again. Become lucid in a dream and it's just waking up. The positive emotions will always overcome the negative emotions.

anthonymorford
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There are memories only of the past. Those memory patterns exist and could in theory be duplicated. However, at the moment of duplication and forever going forward, each copy will be a new “self”. Even with a common past, the present and futures are new and discreet for each copy. I struggle with what the problem is.

lostmankc
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You could copy memories. Even make new ones. But, I don't think you could transfer a whole functional personality.

thomasridley
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1. Separate the technological problems from the issue of what it means to be.
2. Reducto Absurdiem:
Consider the flat-worm. Cut in two, each half regenerates. Which is the original living being? Where did the second's "life" come from? Perhaps even a biological consciousness can be reproduced by sufficient technical ability.
3. The molecular substance of our biological bodies is continually being replaced throughout our lives. An old person is literally not at all made of the same stuff as (s)he was as a child. What if we gradually replace parts of a brain with technology that perfectly substitutes, and perfectly integrates? The singular stream of consciousness will have been maintained, and yet eventually, completely migrated into a non-biological host. Does the non-biological host contain the true original still living consciousness? Or did that person die? If they died, at what percentage of brain replacement would they be considered dead vs. still alive?
4. Can of worms. Once you've become a digital consciousness, where copying is easy, and true permanent death might be as hard as erasing a picture from the internet, you may no longer own or have control over your "life". That seems a precarious existence.

jdecar
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The only problem I can see standing in the way is how do you copy and upload an epiphenomenon?

richhall
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It's quite a chanllenge to understand all concepts when you are a English learner like me.

gutemberguefelix
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I don’t see a problem-a logical one- with the transfer of a self. The way I see it is that a self is not continuous so that when you transfer your memories, ideas, etc. then the new embodied self is you momentarily and it would change from you as it interacts with the world and grows in a different way. It cannot stay the same as you are because the two entities cannot occupy the same space time coordinates. I today is different from I tomorrow or yesterday because I have (not) new memories and could subsequently change.

mahmoodfozan