An afterlife of our own making
Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 9:00 pm
I'm going to be quite frank. I want very badly to believe there is an afterlife. A lifespan of 70 years seems altogether too short. There is so much to be learned, discovered, explored, accomplished. The fact that immortality is so desirable, though, leads me to believe that any religious concept of afterlife is likely to be a product of the human imagination, designed to assuage our fears of death. It is only natural that such a concept should evolve. After all, in the course of the evolution of human society, the societies that are most successful are those whose warriors throw themselves into the task of conquest and expansion with reckless abandon, without regard for their own well-being. This is accomplished partly through the promise of afterlife. There may well be a God, but is there an afterlife? I am unfortunately quite skeptical.
In thinking about how we have created for ourselves imaginary immortalities, it occurred to me to wonder whether we might eventually make for ourselves real immortality. If society focused its efforts on advancing the field of medical science, what might we accomplish? What promises does the future of science hold? The hardest thing about this is that if the human mind exists as a product of the functions of the brain, then there is no easy way to download or to reproduce it except by creating a brain that is precisely identical (including, probably, any damage or physical deficiencies that exist in the original). And even if one could create an identical consciousness in a younger, healthier brain, it is not as though one could download one's consciousness into the new brain. One might create a replica of oneself this way, but it would be and would develop into a consciousness separate from one's own. In other words, I might be able to create a younger (or perhaps artificial) entity that thinks exactly the way I do, but it wouldn't be me. I would still have to die eventually. If you've seen the Prestige, you kind of know what I'm talking about. The magician in the movie is able-- with this machine-- to make duplicate copies of himself. He makes a comment about never knowing whether he would be the one in the tank (each time he uses it he drowns the "extra" copy of himself in a tank of water) or the one that gets transported as part of the magic trick. Maybe the truth is that he is both-- but the second after the duplication occurs, they cease to be the same person. That additional second's experience separates them from each other-- rather like how you can never step into the same river twice. And ultimately, one of them has to die.
Here's a philosophy of mind question for you. If you could create a mechanical circuit that would behave exactly the way your brain does, with the same memories, etc.-- that is, if you could duplicate your brain-- and at the same moment you duplicated it, you blew your brains out, would the new mechanical brain be "you?"
Strange musings for a Tuesday morning, I know.
Perhaps the easiest way to achieve immortality would be for medical science to advance to the point where we can repair all damage that occurs to the human body. Maybe we could grow new body parts, new organs, new tissues. The hardest part, of course, would be to repair the brain. It is such a fragile and complicated construct that it is difficult to imagine how we might repair it when it begins to deteriorate.
Any other ways you can think of that humans might artificially achieve immortality?
-CK
In thinking about how we have created for ourselves imaginary immortalities, it occurred to me to wonder whether we might eventually make for ourselves real immortality. If society focused its efforts on advancing the field of medical science, what might we accomplish? What promises does the future of science hold? The hardest thing about this is that if the human mind exists as a product of the functions of the brain, then there is no easy way to download or to reproduce it except by creating a brain that is precisely identical (including, probably, any damage or physical deficiencies that exist in the original). And even if one could create an identical consciousness in a younger, healthier brain, it is not as though one could download one's consciousness into the new brain. One might create a replica of oneself this way, but it would be and would develop into a consciousness separate from one's own. In other words, I might be able to create a younger (or perhaps artificial) entity that thinks exactly the way I do, but it wouldn't be me. I would still have to die eventually. If you've seen the Prestige, you kind of know what I'm talking about. The magician in the movie is able-- with this machine-- to make duplicate copies of himself. He makes a comment about never knowing whether he would be the one in the tank (each time he uses it he drowns the "extra" copy of himself in a tank of water) or the one that gets transported as part of the magic trick. Maybe the truth is that he is both-- but the second after the duplication occurs, they cease to be the same person. That additional second's experience separates them from each other-- rather like how you can never step into the same river twice. And ultimately, one of them has to die.
Here's a philosophy of mind question for you. If you could create a mechanical circuit that would behave exactly the way your brain does, with the same memories, etc.-- that is, if you could duplicate your brain-- and at the same moment you duplicated it, you blew your brains out, would the new mechanical brain be "you?"
Strange musings for a Tuesday morning, I know.
Perhaps the easiest way to achieve immortality would be for medical science to advance to the point where we can repair all damage that occurs to the human body. Maybe we could grow new body parts, new organs, new tissues. The hardest part, of course, would be to repair the brain. It is such a fragile and complicated construct that it is difficult to imagine how we might repair it when it begins to deteriorate.
Any other ways you can think of that humans might artificially achieve immortality?
-CK
