Suppose the technology to back up or replicate the human brain existed. Now suppose you made a copy of your brain, and turned it on. The brain in the computer would believe it was you. It would believe that it had been the living breathing you then it was scanned and copied into this hypothetical technology. When it awakened it was as if it had simply jumped from your body and woken up in the machine. In a sense it is just as much you as your biological self is.
Now suppose the same situation, except that the moment your brain is copied to the machine, your biological self dies. The copy in the machine is the same as the previous example but this time it is the only existing manifestation. To the brain in the machine (you), you were living in a biological body and then the next second you awoke in an artificial form. One continuous entity.
Now you are dying. There is no machine. Your heart stops beating. You loose consciousness. You are technically dead. But by some stroke of luck you are resuscitated. The you that wakes up in that body. Is it the same one that was there taking its dying breath?
Could it be possible that you are dying every second of every day? Not in the biological sense. But in the sense that the information in your brain, the personality that you have, your stream of consciousness does not survive indefinitely in you body.
I have to finish:
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12 years ago
