GlyphGryph posted:

I care about persons. I don't care about organisms. You keep insisting I should care about the second and not the first, but you continue to refuse to tell me why.

Berk Berkly posted:

So no, if a shotgun blasts your head off but instantaneously reconstitutes you in the same instant, you are not dead.

GlyphGryph posted:

You've managed to contradict yourself in the same post, that's a pretty new record.

(If a person is a category of organism, how can a person come into being without an organism coming into being? This is exactly the sort of incoherent nonsense that makes you impossible to follow.)

... or do you consider zygotes and the brain dead to be persons, or something equally insane?

Peta posted:

You don't care about newborns? Dogs? Dolphins? Elephants? Plant life (real stretch here, folks, I know)? If you don't care about any of these things then your morality is disturbingly impoverished. If you are going to promote a definition of personhood, or of a strain of personhood equivalent to full human personhood, that incorporates any of the things I just listed, then I'm gonna laugh in your face. Yes, persons are more valuable than dogs. But they aren't more valuable because they somehow aren't organisms. They're simply organisms have evolved such that they fall within the innermost circle of our moral community.

Peta posted:

When you reach the point in an argument where the other guy posits that a fatal shotgun blast to the head is not fatal you really feel like you can start to relax a bit.


Wow. Your brain is really something special.

I will try to break this down for you.

Frog: egg => larva => tadpole => adult. One organism.

Human: zygote => embryo => fetus => (baby =>) child => (adolescent =>) adult. One organism. I've put in bold what seems to qualify as a person (as far as I'm concerned, and only for argument's sake; I don't care what your definition is). Personhood is a stage in the life of some organisms. Persons are organisms existing in that stage.

This isn't hard.

Shbobdb posted:

How do you feel about abortion, masturbation and menstruation? Are those murder?

Peta posted:

Wow. Your brain is really something special.

I will try to break this down for you.

Frog: egg => larva => tadpole => adult. One organism.

Human: zygote => embryo => fetus => (baby =>) child => (adolescent =>) adult. One organism. I've put in bold what seems to qualify as a person (as far as I'm concerned, and only for argument's sake; I don't care what your definition is). Personhood is a stage in the life of some organisms. Persons are organisms existing in that stage.

This isn't hard.

Shbobdb posted:

How do you feel about abortion, masturbation and menstruation? Are those murder?

Peta posted:

When you reach the point in an argument where the other guy posits that a fatal shotgun blast to the head is not fatal you really feel like you can start to relax a bit.

GlyphGryph posted:

So you are redacting your previous claim. A person is no longer a category of organism. It is no longer identical to the organism. A person is now a "stage in the life" of an organism, something that can come (and presumably go) despite the continued existence of that organism. Is this correct?

GlyphGryph posted:

That's fair.


I believe that I was once in my entirety a part of my mothers body, and that at least part of my was once a part of my father's body. I think we have a shared history, for sure, although in the least-distinct case scenario it's a strictly biological one. At some point, well before I became a person, I developed my own mind and our shared histories diverged enough that I became an individual. So... somewhat?

quote:

I think we definitely have a shared history, but there was a rather obvious period of divergence, and after that divergence most of that history in myself was lost. I didn't really hold on to many (any?) of the important elements that determine identity of persons that she has, so I wouldn't say we were the same person, but we were once the same organism (back before I was a person at all), yes.

Does that seem like a flawed way to view the situation?

quote:

I've said before that shared history isn't enough for same-person-hood, that other attributes matter, and that if I developed some sort of extreme mental disorder I wouldn't be the same person.

quote:

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here? I feel like we're back to not understanding each other's positions, though I'll try to answer as best I can. I am not the bottle of scotch for a fuckton of pretty obvious reasons, but if it lead to my concept I would certainly consider it part of my history of being? I probably wouldn't consider it part of my personal history though - I, as a past person, didn't exist when it happened and for a while afterwards.

quote:

Yes, of course. Although any such transition would probably result in them no longer being 2B either.

quote:

Okay, assuming by "same person" here we're referring to person 1. If I lost all my memories right now, I wouldn't be the same person. The person I am now would be dead. So yeah, if 2B (or 2A) loses all their memories, they would no longer be person. If 1 had a mindwipe instead of going through the teleporter, they would be super dead. There would be a person on the other side of the mindwipe, and they might have a bit of shared history with 1 due to the shared body, but definitely not the same person.

quote:

Okay, I'm with you...

What? I guess we're going with "partial wipe" then? Let's not worry about "resurfacing" and just have them there from the beginning then...

It would be a pretty miserable amalgamate with multiple shared histories of personhood. It sounds miserable. There's a lot more stuff in the brain than memories, so that stuff would probably determine who it would be more, but yeah I think you're getting significant portions of two past-persons in the same body here. I can't imagine the result would have enough similarity in other attributes to be rightly considered a complete continuation of anyone though. You'd end up with something new made up of a good chunk of one person and another person mashed together, though I think it would be fair to consider this person a mental descendent of it's constituents.

Peta posted:

Nope.

Berk Berkly posted:

You are being obtuse, if not deliberately trolling. The WHOLE topic we are discussing involves the question of the ACTUAL fatality of dissembling something and reconstituting it. A magical shotgun analogy is not even the weirdest mechanism I've heard when people argue on this subject.

But you aren't really arguing sincerely are you my friend? I'm not positing the FATAL shotgun blast is not fatal, I'm arguing what constitutes it being fatal is negated by the magical instantaneous reconstitution, and your relaxing is just you pretending you don't have to actually engage with the actual argument by shrugging your shoulders.

Peta posted:

There's no "self" beyond your animal properties. I'm sorry that this makes you mad.

Berk Berkly posted:

*The sound of Peta stepping on the gas toward probate/ban #39*


Alright, so now that we've establish Peta is wasting everyone's time, anyone actually sincerely discussing this topic anymore?

Peta posted:

You can step in the same river twice and every Blue Ray of The Force Awakens contains a different movie.

Control Volume posted:

What if a teleporter gun replaces all of the atoms in your brain with different atoms of the same elements, are you dead? Can you get out of your obligations to meet the in-laws?

Shbobdb posted:

Peta posted:

"Squares are not rectangles."
- You

Berk Berkly posted:

Alright, so now that we've establish Peta is wasting everyone's time, anyone actually sincerely discussing this topic anymore?

Who What Now posted:

Somewhat how? The way I'm looking at things you either are or are not you. I don't understand how something can be "somewhat" you.

quote:

It does seem flawed to me, because it seems very imprecise.

quote:

Are some attributes more important than the others?

quote:

At least we agree that drastic changes to your thought process produce a different person.

quote:

You pretty much got it, I think. I was asking that if your history was part of "you" how far back it went and what exactly included, I.E. did it only include people or also things.

quote:

Would it? Let me clarify/change the situation up a little and say that this loss of memory happens 30 years after duplication. So 2B still has 30 years of memories still, but none prior to his creation, thus losing his memetic connection to 2A. Are they now still the same person, or different people? Has losing memories of so long ago really changed 2B so drastically?

quote:

Again, as with above, what about only a partial memory loss? How much memory needs to be lost before you are no longer you but a different person?

quote:

So adding another person's memories results in you no longer being you? Then why doesn't developing differing memories result in you no longer being you?

Control Volume posted:

But you died, I thought your clone brain was supposed deal with that bullshit. This fuckign sucks

Peta posted:

Death
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Dead", "Died", "Deceased" and "Dying" redirect here. For the Alice in Chains song, see Died (song). For the coloring process, see Dyeing. For the American heavy metal bands, see Deceased (band) and Death (metal band). For the rock band, see Death (protopunk band). For other uses, see Dead (disambiguation) and Death (disambiguation).

Death is the termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include biological aging (senescence), predation, malnutrition, disease, suicide, homicide, starvation, dehydration, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury.[1] Bodies of living organisms begin to decompose shortly after death. Death has commonly been considered a sad or unpleasant occasion, due to the termination of social and familial bonds with the deceased or affection for the being that has died. Other concerns include fear of death, necrophobia, anxiety, sorrow, grief, emotional pain, depression, sympathy, compassion, solitude, or saudade.

quote:

The problem is made even more apparent through the possibility of creating a potentially infinite number of initially identical copies of the original person, which would of course all exist simultaneously as distinct beings with their own emotions and thoughts. The most parsimonious view of this phenomenon is that the two (or more) minds would share memories of their past but from the point of duplication would simply be distinct minds.

Toward the goal of resolving the copy-vs-move debate, some have argued for a third way of conceptualizing the process, which is described by such terms as split[36] and divergence. The distinguishing feature of this third terminological option is that while moving implies that a single instance relocates in space and while copying invokes problematic connotations (a copy is often denigrated in status relative to its original), the notion of a split better illustrates that some kinds of entities might become two separate instances, but without the imbalanced associations assigned to originals and copies, and that such equality may apply to minds.

wateroverfire posted:

I mean, in the most literal sense every Blu Ray of The Force Awakens does contain a different movie. They're both instances of "The Force Awakens" but your Blu Ray disc is discrete from my Blu Ray disc. If someone destroyed yours with a hammer you probably wouldn't be content that somewhere, a Blue Ray disc with "The Force Awakens" on it survives and thus your disc is not really gone.

GlyphGryph posted:

If they smashed my copy with a hammer, cleaned up the mess, but discretely replaced it with an identical copy, I would be confused as to why they did it but I wouldn't be upset.

If it got destroyed in a vaporizer so my friend could watch it at his house thanks to the teleporter, and then it got destroyed in his vaporizer so he could teleport it back, I would be perfectly content considering it the same movie.

Control Volume posted:

Your brain is replaced with someone else's brain, and their brain is replaced with yours. As the average brain weighs 3 lbs, your brain and his brain would be replacing 99% and 98% of body mass, respectively, or it could be viewed as your old body having a replacement brain. In this scenario, would you rather your movie role be played by John Travolta or Nicholas Cage?

Kit Walker posted:

It's pretty hosed up that you view people the same way you view DVDs.

GlyphGryph posted:

"Wars are governments."
- You

I think I'm just going to ignore you from now on. You clearly want to believe something and are struggling to come up with whatever nonsense rationalizations you can to justify it, and there are plenty of people arguing a similar position in a genuinely coherent way.

Berk Berkly posted:

Their never making Face Off 2 man, let it go.

GlyphGryph posted:

It's pretty hosed up that you view people the same way that wateroverfire views DVDs.

GlyphGryph posted:

I think me and Who What Now are having a good conversation even if it's mostly just him asking me questions.

GlyphGryph posted:

I'm not sure what the difficulty is here. Do you disagree with partial identity as a matter of principle, or is it specific to people for some reason? If you take a bit of my donut, what's left is most of my donut. You ate some of my donut. Do you disagree that the donut is "most" of my donut rather than all? If I mashed those remnants with some other baked goods into a larger donut, would you have a problem saying "part of my donut is now part of this new thing that really couldn't be described as my donut anymore"?

If you can follow the identity of the donut through this scenario, why is it so difficult to grasp in reference to people?

quote:

Reality can be pretty imprecise. Have you ever heard of "ring species"? Man, that poo poo is a pain for biologists. Imprecision is sort of an integral component of artificial boundaries and categorization. Even the edge of literal physical matter is imprecise, since atoms aren't perfect hard lines.

The fact that those things are imprecise doesn't make statements like "this is a fox" or "this bird descended from a dinosaur" or "this is the edge of a table" or "this is the seam between the two metals" wrong.

quote:

Yes, although I imagine that would vary a lot by person and what they value. Like when determining when personhood begins, I imagine there's valid cases to be made for a range of places to draw the exact line.

quote:

Yes, it's nice to have some common ground.

Okay, so I guess what I said was my history is a "part" of me and that event is "part" of my history, but that I don't think it's a part of history we're considering super relevant in terms of defining whether or not "I" am "me". Although unless we get into the time travel stuff it doesn't seem like a productive conversation.

quote:

Even without the memory loss 2A and 2B would be different people. I could try to guess what you were asking, but I am not sure if what I think it would be is relevant - I don't think the answer differs whether the memory loss happens to 2A or 2B, which seems to be what you're thrusting at? Hopefully that answers whatever you were really asking, if it doesn't it at least allows you to rephrase the questions without "a"s or "b"s and just in terms of "person 1" and "person 2".

quote:

I think memories are an important part of who I am, but not the only part. Also, different memories are more valuable than others. If I forget my favorite food, I'm probably fine. If I forget me wife and my child and my parents and my siblings? If I forget what I want and why I want it? At that point I think we're over the line. We're in a ring species situation though - there's no hard line here. But the answer still doesn't change whether the result happens to person 2A or 2B.

quote:

Eventually it might? Having of conflicting memories of the past seems like a lot more of a problem than having additional memories that are in turn built on those memories. It feels like you're asking "is it ever possible to be someone other than who you are right now?" I don't think I have an answer you'd find satisfying here, so let me turn it around and figure out what you think.

If you wiped a persons memories and personality and had them start over (maybe destroying most of their brain and then regrowing it with stem cells) in a new place with new people, nearly tabula rasa, would they be a new person after a few decades? (Since we agree that drastic changes in thought processes produce a new person, I assume the answer to this one is yes)

What if you then managed to restore their previous memories (it turned out you froze the chunks of brain you removed, and you can graft them on! or some other bullshit) on top of the new memories, and reintroduced them to their own family? Are they the person they were originally? The person they were since the wipe? Or some amalgamation of those two people?

I'd argue that treating them/thinking of them exclusively as either person at that point wouldn't be quite right, but neither would it be right to think of them as someone entirely different either.

Control Volume posted:

In the world of digital mind replication, is the once joking phrase "You wouldn't steal a baby" now false in a reflection of a terrifying reality?

Kit Walker posted:

Not interchangeable? Yeah geez what a terrible way to view people.

You should tell your wife or girlfriend that you'd be fine if she got murdered and replaced with an identical duplicate. Lemme know how that goes for you.

Control Volume posted:

What the hell is wrong with your brain that you're taking a silly thought experiment this seriously, duder

Have some loving levity