Thread: Natural Reincarnation?

We could destroy the person and make a copy with the same matter. An argument could then be made that in that case the person would have the "same" consciousness, but what's the explanation behind that? Where did that unique consciousness go between the time the person was the destroyed and time he/she was re-created?

Originally Posted by Scatterbrain

We could destroy the person and make a copy with the same matter. An argument could then be made that in that case the person would have the "same" consciousness, but what's the explanation behind that? Where did that unique consciousness go between the time the person was the destroyed and time he/she was re-created?

Nowhere. It ceased to exist. But when the person was being rebuild, it popped into existence again. Isn't it true that consciousness ceases to exist for a while when someone is KO'ed? To him it seems like he didn't miss a single second. Can't those two situations be equal?

Yes, it would also be equivalent to going to sleep. But that kind of thing doesn't make sense from the point of view that there's such a thing as "a" consciousness:

Why would the person after being rebuilt (or KOd or whatever) be still the "same" consciousness? It's not like the atoms are marked with your consciousness' serial number or anything, there's nothing special about them. (we could invert the question and ask why would it be a "new" one; that possibility can also be shown to be paradoxical)

But you can't provide a justification for that, you're just relying on intuition rather than logic.

According to your reasoning, if we kept making copies of someone indifenetly we'd be creating an infinite amount of new individual "consciousnesses". That makes no sense, you can't create something out of nothing.

Now you're the one relying on intution. There's no rigour to your argument at all.

Our brains have been slowly created over time and our consciousnesses were 'created from nothing' with them. How is the sudden creation of a brain any different?

The resultant being would act exactly like a conscious person. It seems very naive to assert that they wouldn't be conscious when they are enacting a neural system exactly the same as one of a conscious person.

I did not say they wouldn't be conscious. I meant that most likely consciousness is an universal property and there's no such thing as "a" consciousness.