Re: Emotional Forces?

platopes wrote:
From whence thought and emotion?

You're looking at this the wrong way, and should be addressing it as a
physics question, instead. The relevant question is: does the mind have
an existence separate from the matter that embodies it?

The mind is the state of the physical structure comprising the body and
brain (yes, the body has to be included!) The state of a physical
system can (theoretically) be transported from one set of fundmanetal
particles to another. The particles making up the system, itself, do
not have any significance as objects any more than an unsorted set of
blanks would in a database (i.e., particles have no individual
identity: it is an empirical fact that there is only one way to put 2
particles of the same type, one each, into 2 boxes, not two ways!)

So, if you teletransport the state of a physical system from one
assemblage of particles to another, and that system happens to be a
body, does the mind go with it or not?

Ultimately that comes down to the question of what comprises individual
identity (and, more generally, whether it's justifiable to treat
individuals as separate identities at root level or not). For one, seen
in the full glory of the 4-dimensions of space and time, with all parts
of your body laid out in full ("part" meaning, all 3-dimensional
snapshots, past present and future comprising each moment of your
being), the body has the same of a long linear strand, each
cross-section taking the rough form of a 3-dimensional body, the early
cross sections looking like babies, the later ones like aged people.
But the strand is not a separate structure. Stepping further back, you
see that it's part of an interconnected web that contains also the
strands comprising the bodies of everything else that's alive on this
Earth (and possibly elsewhere).

There is no individual identity of physical bodies in spacetime.

You can then proceed to ask the question, like Davies (of Unruh-Davies
fame) did, what would be the difference between the two situations:
(1) N separate beings, each in a separate body, having separate
minds
(2) A single mind that jumps about between bodies and, like the
scanner on a TV set, fills up all the minds, one at a time.

In case (2), the mind, at each instant, would experience itself as
having only been in the body it happened to be in at that moment, and
would have memories of having had a continual existence in that body
and nowhere else.

There'd be no observable difference between (1) and (2) -- therefore,
there is no basis in any distinction "one" vs. "many".

At the level of pure physics, there is no individual identity of minds,
either.

A state that is transported from one body to another will end up
forming the same assemblage of atoms and molecules and links out of
which the physical structure of memory and identity arise. The
individual that steps out of the transporter will have the experience
of being a continuation of the individual that stepped into the
transporter.

Given that there is no ultimately identity of minds, the conclusion is
then that it's the "same" individual (taking into account the begging
of the question of "same", when there is no identity to call "same" the
"same" of).

If this had been classical physics, the state comprising the mind would
be a classical state. A state in classical physics can be duplicated.
This tends to undercut the assessment of "same".

But this world is ruled by quantum physics, which classical physics is
merely an approximation of; and the centrally distinguishing property
of a quantum state is that it can NOT be duplicated! Any
teletransportation is destructive of the original.

This bolsters the conclusion of "same": what comes out of the
teletransporter is that same as what went in.

Ultimately, that means the mind exists as an autonomous structure,
rather than merely an assemblage of particles. That is, it's a "state",
and the concept of "state" transcends the concept of its underlying
constuency, regardless of what state of what system you're talking
about.

.

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