Four theories of immortality 20

Four theories of immortality

Another way of looking at immortality is through theories about the philosophy of mind. The four general theories about the mind are the soul theory, the body theory, the psychology theory, and the structure and functioning theory also called the science of superimmortality. The soul theory of immortality is the theory that there is some supernatural aspects of a person. One of these aspects is called a soul which can exist independently from a body. The soul is supposed to survive the death of the body and either exist and have a consciousness independent from the body after that, or it can be rejoined to another body sometime after death. You can have any number of bodies throughout time but at most only one soul and one body at any particular time. This will be called supernatural immortality. Most religious thinkers believe in this form of immortality. But they also frequently connect the concept of a souls with other supernatural concepts like gods, heaven, and hell. When immortality is connected to one or more gods it is called religious immortality The body theory of immortality is that you are tied to your body and for you to have immortality you need to keep the body alive indefinitely with at most relatively short periods of the body being unconscious or dead as in the cases of cryogenic body storage after death. This theory predicts that you will only have one body and when that body is permanently destroyed that is the permanent death of you and your conscious self. Because, no matter how well science can keep a body alive or restore it after death, the body will eventually not produce a consciousness that you experience any more. This is called the mortalist position which is that the permanent death of your body is the permanent end to your conscious life. The psychology theory of immortality predicts that you are a consciousness and personality forming a psychological entity that can exist independent of a specific body but still needs a body to create or produce it. The difference between the body theory and psychology theory of immortality can be shown with this example: Given two bodies of two different people with two different psychologies if you switch the personalities so that body 1 now has the consciousness of body 2 and visa versa. The body theory predicts that even though the personality and consciousness is different in your body, you being the body, are now experiencing this other consciousness. On the other hand the psychology theory predicts you go with the change in personality so you now exist or are produced in this other body. Immortality, in this theory is based on somehow keeping your personality or consciousness alive with a different new body as the older original body dies. The psychology theory of immortality proposes that there will still be only one conscious you at a time. Even though it seems that your consciousness is independent of a body from this view point, it is not obvious how to transfer your singular one personality and consciousness into another body before the death of the body that is currently producing your consciousness. This theory is just a version of the mortalist's position because your consciousness or personality will eventually be destroyed with the eventual destruction of the last body that is producing your personality. The fourth theory is the structure and functioning theory of consciousness and the mind. This theory assumes that consciousness is produced by the structure and functioning of the body and specifically the brain. What is producing the consciousness that you are experiencing right now is the specific way the brain is structured and then functions right now. The brain was functioning differently at each moment before now and produced a different consciousness that you experienced at each moment before now. At each moment later in time from now this brain will be functioning differently than it is now so you will experience something different at each future moment than you are now experiencing. You are only tied to this body because it is producing a structure and functioning of matter now that produces a consciousness that you can experience. This theory predicts that most of the ways the brain in your body can be structured and then function will not produce a consciousness that you experience. But, there are many different ways the brain can be structured and then function that will produce a consciousness that you will experience. For example, if this (your) body produced a structure and functioning that it produced at a time in the past it would repeat producing that consciousness and you would again experience that consciousness just like you did at that point in your past life. Any skills and memories that you had gained in that intervening period would be gone because the brain would not have been changed in such a way as to create or produce these skills and memories. At each moment in your past life there will be a specific different sequence of structure and functioning that produced your consciousness. If this (your) body produces now, the structure and functioning that it will otherwise have produced a year from now it will produce a consciousness now, that you will experience now, that is identical to what you will or would have experienced a year from now. For you now, you would think it was a year from now. You would have the memories of that year without ever having actually experienced them. If the structure and functioning of your body was changed enough to be identical to the structure and functioning of George Washington's live body on his fiftieth birthday at exactly 5 pm, even though it will still be your body, you will not be experiencing the consciousness produced by this newly modified, but still (your), body. Who will be experiencing the consciousness produced by this (your) body? The behavior produced by your body under this circumstance will be identical to the behavior that George Washington's actual body would have produced at 5 pm on his 50th birthday. That is if the environment was identical enough to the way it was actually like on his 50th birthday at five pm. What he would subjectively experience again is a continuation of what he was experiencing at right before five pm and then on past five pm. But what George would actually experience with a totally different environment, the environment that your body was in at the time of the switch would produce a consciousness in George of at least confusion and maybe even psychological trauma. The body theory would say that this is not the original George Washington but a different person that acts like George would have acted. The soul theory would say that this is not the original George because it does not have the same soul as the original George Washington had. The psychological theory of immortality could believe that it was George because of the identity of Georges personality and psychology. But, because there is no continuousness of consciousness from the original George to the present George, it would not be the original George. The psychological theory of immortality has to be modified to exclude cases like this because it would then allow there to be any number of actual George Washingtons to exist through out space and time. The structure and functioning theory of consciousness predicts that if Georges body was transferred through time, by lets say a time machine, to the present place and time that your body is at, from his perspective starting at five pm on his fiftieth birthday this would be him actually experiencing life here and now. The other three theories would usually predict that even though time travel appears not to be possible, and there would be a discontinuity in time, but not body matter, where George Washington did not exist, if this time travel experiment did exist the original George Washington would still be alive and experiencing this new modern environment now. A number of time travel experiments could be imagined with only a percentage of Georges body being transported through time. For instance, if an exact functioning duplicate of Georges body was transported to the present time the structure and functioning theory would say this is a version of the original George Washington and the consciousness that is produced by this duplicate body would be producing a consciousness that the original George is actually experiencing. This would be life after death for George Washington. But the three other theories would predict that this is not a body that is producing a consciousness that the original George Washington is experiencing. There is a spectrum of experiments where larger and larger amounts of the George's original body is transported through time to the present moment in time. Since the three theories predict that there can only be one George existing at a time, the original body must not produce a consciousness that George will experience in the past after 5 pm on his fifty birthday if the transported George consciously exists at the present time.

We can ask the question: “At what times before the George Washington existed was it a necessity that the structure and functioning that actually produced George would produce this conscious version of George?”

It would be conscious non existence for you. Change the structure and functioning of your body back to the way it would have been if this event had not happened and you will be conscious again with no awareness of any conscious none existence. There would be no residual memories of George or of consciously being George.

It appears that this theory is so bizarre that few if anyone has ever seriously considered this theory as being true. What may be most disturbing and counter intuitive to many people is that structure and functioning is duplicatable means that there can be any number of different bodies producing the same or versions of the same structure and functioning at the same time. This means that you can be more than a singularly produced individual consciousness at one time. This to many will seem too weird because they intuitively believe that they are a one of a kind, unique individual, that is self existing in one physical or supernatural place (heaven, hell, etc.) at a time. To think otherwise would be totally illogical, irrational, and against our most tightly held beliefs about what we actually are. There is no way that I can be in two or more places at once. What I am is what I experience now. These other versions of me are in different places so they have different perspectives on reality and consequently different consciousness that are not mine. I am not currently experiencing these different consciousnesses so they can not be me. They are not experiencing what I am experiencing either so I can not be them. This is proof that this theory is impossible! If this is not proof enough, this theory can not be true simply by the definition of the self, of a person, of a soul, or personal identity over time. All of these terms mean a person is a singular thing by definition. It is like saying there are or can be married bachelors. True by definition; if you are married you are not a bachelor, and if your are a bachelor you are not married. But maybe “you” can mean all of the different consciousness producing bodies throughout space and time that produce a consciousness that you experience. The term yourselves is not a contradiction, illogical, nonsensical or irrational if there can be many different conscious versions of that you; versions of you that you actually consciously experience. You in the english language has two usages. The first is a singular “you” usage. As in the sentence: “You are a girl.” And the second usage is a plural as in the statement “You all”. How can we get around the problem of I am only what I currently experience. If we actually accept this statement, then if we were to travel into the past and saw yourself in the past you would have to conclude that this previous version of you was not you either because you are not experiencing what this younger version of you is currently consciously experiencing. If you then traveled into the future to see the future you at that time you would say this can not be me either because I am not consciously experiencing what they are experiencing. If you are only what you experience at this moment then you have no conscious future or past. If this is the actual case then you only exist for a conscious moment and there is no chance of immortality or even a conscious life. Are we consciously just what we have or will consciously experience in this one life or could we have experienced many other things if conditions would have been different? If we take another case of someone or something traveling into the past and changing our past environment so that our body in the past actually did something that made their conscious life different would we still have experienced this difference? For example, lets say your parents were removed from your life while you were still a baby. Consequently, you were raised by different people other than your parents. Maybe you lived in a different house in a different city in a different country. You could have learned a different first language, and had guardians with different religious beliefs. These event would have produced different memories, skills, abilities, etc., At each point of this potential life, your brain would have been functioning differently than it actually did, changing to some degree its structure. As a result the same kind of situations that you actually did experience likely would produce different behaviors in this modified potential life. It is easy to imagine many different potential lives that you could have had.

To maintain the concept of the self as a singular unique individual, one has to develop a theory of continuity or continuousness that applies to either a singular soul, body, or psychology depending on the theory. The structure and functioning theory could demand a theory of continuity or consciousness if it was trying to maintain some form of singularity of the self through space and time. But instead, what this theory wants to achieve is producing ways of determining all of the structures and functioning of matter over time, that will or potentially produce a consciousness that you, I, or someone else will experience. I want to know what all of the structures and functioning of matter that will produce a consciousness that I experience. Being a little less selfish, I want to know all of the structures and functioning of matter that will produce a consciousness that all the people and other conscious being that I care about, will experience. And believing in a society that can help achieve this goal I think it is good to determine under what conditions that all people can know what conditions will producfe consciousnesses that they can experience. Stated in a different way, under what conditions will consciousnesses be produced that I and others that I care about and all conscious being in general will experience? Do we have to have continuousness and or continuity to produce structures and functioning bodies that we have, are, or will experience? Why should we start with the assumption of singularity of self. Being self evident may seem like a good reason for accepting this starting premise but is it actually true? How can we know if there can only be one of you at a time?

How do you test if these other theories actually have a real way of testing if you experience a consciousness or not? How do you test who is experiencing a consciousness if not the original? How can souls be told apart from each other? How can souls be studied? How can souls be found in a physical place and time to be studied? How can souls be controlled in any way so they can be studied and experimented on?

At best in the three theories you can only guess if a body continues to produce the same ixperiencitness. It is an assumption with the soul theory that there is such a thing as a soul, that the things called souls continue to produce a consciousness that the original experiences after the death of the body, that these souls rejoin again with only one body, that each person only has one soul, and that souls do not die. How do you tell if the same body produces a consciousness that is experienced by the original? There are numerous things that can occur to a body over time body How can we tell if the resulting person is the same person as the original person. If the same body changes so much the resulting personality is totally different is this the same person as the original.

If we accept personality as a criterion of identity then it seems there can be many bodies producing the same person because they produce the same personality. If one has to believe in the singularity of self then how do you tell the identical personalities apart? You some how have to connect it to a physical body or continuity or continuousness of consciousness how can you tell if there is continuousness of consciousness without a body how much change can occur in the consciousness before it is no longer the same consciousness?

If the standard view point is that we are singular self then the skeptical position is that we should ask for proof of this belief what is the prof that there can not be more than one you at a time when there can be identical structure and functioning or identical enough to produce identical behavior over a period of time

There is no consensus of science that each of us are singular.

To make a theory produce singularity you have to add rules, conditions etc. Whatever conditions produce a person there has to be a rule that this cannot happen again. For the structural and functional theory a specific structure and functioning is what creates a conscious that you experience. It is rational to thing that duplicating this structure and functioning in another body would make another conscious you. For this not to be the case some rule or condition has to be applied to make this not the case. Such as the statement it is not the same body so it can not be you. But what if you are the consciousness the body produces? Then want rule will make the consciousness produced by one body never identical to the consciousness produced by another body. There is not just the case of identity at a moment in time but an every changing consciousness over the life time of the person. So there can be no point where the two consciousness are identical for the entire lives of the individual bodies. There is a real problem when every identical or near identical structure and functioning body produce identical behavior and thus strong evidence that they have the same consciousness and yet they never can have identical consciousnesses for even a conscious moment.

The analogy smartphone of the brain splitting and recombination of parts: The experiment is that of the splitting of a brain and then combining its halves to the halves with another identical structured and functioning brain. How many consciousness were produced before the process and how many consciousness were produced after the process and what happens to the ixperiencitness during and after this process. This analogy take two identically functioning smart phones and divides then in half and recombines the other halves from the other smart phone The resulting smartphones are producing two identical behaviors if the two smartphones diverge in the structure and functioning this is greater evidence that they are producing two behaviors

The two different smart phones can diverge greatly and then converge again having in the process very different past histories the halves can be recombined at this point of identical structure and functioning and they will again produce identical behaviors

This process can be applied to the bodies of two different people showing that they can have different past histories and still produce the same behavior thus the same consciousness Near identical consciousness can also have different histories and still produce the same consciousness es with this process This experiment gives greater evidence that it is the structure and functioning of the body that is important not the matter, not the past history in term of placement in space or time, or structure and functioning or the consciousness that was experienced, nor the body that is important

The epiawarepath is like the sheet music of a song it is about the song but is not the song.

Does a particular behavior guarantee that a body is actually producing a specific consciousness? No. So how can we be sure that a particular physapath produces a specific consciousness and ixperiencitness. We can start with the case that a robot is made with a computer program that produces a specific behavior when applied to the robot. We suspect that the robot is not conscious because the computer program that produces the behavior is not conscious as far as we know. It might be possible to make a conscious electronic device and then connect it to a human robot and have the conscious electronic being produce a behavior in a specific way that is nothing like the actual consciousness it is producing. Is there any set of environmental conditions when applied to the robot that will give increasing information about the consciousness actually being produced by the conscious electronic being? If the structure and functioning of the electronic was repeated then at each changing of the environmental conditions more and more information about the beings can be determined eventually ever Every possible sequence can be produced because the being is finite so the information it gathers that it modifies its structure and functioning will eventually repeat. thus There are, though very large amount, only a finite set of awarepaths can be produced from a finite set of physapaths. Why are there a finite amount of non repeating physapaths? There are only a finite amount of different ways that a finite sized body or brain can be structured and then function. Not all of these ways will produce consciousness. The set of consciousness producing structures and functioning brain is a subset of all the different ways a brain can be structures and then function. This set includes the result of all structures and functioning given any enviropath and the randomness produced by the qmpath as well.

Why does it matter if we can not determine the true consciousness produced by a body when we can not have access to the structure and functioning of the body? In what ways does it matter? Do you need this to prove the principles of superimmortality? No.