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submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by zedgeist@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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[-] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

unverifiable possibility that the physical organism which gets reconstituted on the other side is merely an empty vessel programmed to unconsciously imitate your habits and mannerisms

Oh yeah, I’ve tried anesthesia before.

[-] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 day ago

Is that a theory about anesthesia? I haven't heard about that.

I'm referring to ideas about teleportation and time travel, in which the physical organism dissolves and is reconstituted, and appears to be alive and conscious on the other side, but the actual conscious entity died upon dissolution and was not resurrected upon reconstitution.

[-] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

Yes, it’s a very similar idea with anesthesia. It uses the same regard for self as being something more than just a meat bag in motion. Anesthesia is understood as a reversible suppression of consciousness, memory, sensation, and awareness. If consciousness completely disappears, how do we know the subjective “you” that wakes up is identical to the one that went under?

[-] wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 day ago

Now that's got me spooked out about how could I know if I'm even the same person moment-to-moment, or what if every blink of the eye or beat of the hard represents a granular moment in time in which a unique conscious entity that has never arisen before nor ever will again flows in and out of existence, like the flame of a candle which continuously renews itself even as the heat and light of one moments dissipates out into empty space the next; with all the memories of the conscious entities that inhabited the space behind my eyes before it, yet with no true ontological continuity between them?

[-] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 day ago

It is spooky but less so if you subscribe to a more procedural version of consciousness. The phenomenon of phenomenology may mislead us about what the self is.