From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!csd.unb.ca!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!bonnie.concordia.ca!ccu.umanitoba.ca!zirdum Tue Apr  7 23:23:52 EDT 1992
Article 4888 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Antun Zirdum)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Chinese Room (or Number Five's Alive)
Message-ID: <1992Apr3.085933.27159@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
Date: 3 Apr 92 08:59:33 GMT
References: <1992Mar29.185454.21236@psych.toronto.edu> <493@tdatirv.UUCP> <1992Mar31.215817.1@cc.helsinki.fi>
Organization: University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Lines: 37

In article <1992Mar31.215817.1@cc.helsinki.fi> eperkio@cc.helsinki.fi writes:
>In article <493@tdatirv.UUCP>, sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes:
>> 
>> To kill it you would need to destroy the disks and burn the back-ups.
>
>When a human loses consciousness, the brain keeps working, and some
>continuity exists.  When a machine is turned off, any continuity within
>is disrupted; taking the hardware apart and sending the software to Mars
>and back would make no difference - in a sense the machine has died, and
>putting it back together and turning it on would be more akin to creating
>it again than "waking it up".
>
Never heard of coma? When a brain is not 'functioning' for
up to several years. I do not think that you would claim
that these people have died.

>A further problem rises, if you regard the back-ups 'continued existence'.
>Consider taking a human brain from the body, copying every cell, every
>intra-cellular connection, etc. until you had a perfect back-up copy of
>it.  Then mash the original and resurrect the body using the copy.  No one
>would notice the difference, but the original mind would be dead.
>
>If I was the original, I'd be very upset, if someone was going to do this
>to me.

Boy, will you be upset when people invent the transporter! ;-)
(Beam me up Scotty) Frankly, that you might be upset has no
bearing on the argument that THE mind continues to exist, sure
it might exist in more places, but it is not destroyed (as in death!)
Frankly, if we are talking about minds - the original would not
be dead as long as there exist EXACT copies.

-- 
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*   AZ    -- zirdum@ccu.umanitoba.ca                            *
*     " The first hundred years are the hardest! " - W. Mizner  *
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