The Process Continuity Fallacy

Which is the product of a set of propositions that claim that: Once a process begins and goes through a period of time and then stops, then is restarted it is not the same process but only the process type. This idea proposes that once stopped, a process looses some sort of private identity that cannot be had ever again!

The

P r o c e s s

C o n t i n u i t y

F a l l a c y

Process:

A; natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead towards a particular result.
B; a series of actions or operations conducting to an end, esp: a continuous operation or treatment esp, in manufacturing.

How does a process work? Interacting parts or units when functioning at the same time cause something else to happen (emerge).

Functionalism
A process requires minimal units to function. As long as different types of units meet the criteria of the process units they will allow the process to work. For example a chess game; the peices can be made out of any material or made in any shape as long as each represents a particular peice; pawn, rook, queen, etc. . ., the game will be played efficiently.

Electronics has gone through a few changes from vacume tubes, to transistors, to microchips, each which perform a simular required action to produce the phenomenon, (television or computing).

Thousands of years ago ships had the rotten planks replaced to repair leaks etc... If all the planks over time where changed, with each docking, would it still be the same ship? If you reconstructed a ship out of only the rotten planks which one of these ships would be the -original-?

Our brains are made of units and it may be possible to replace them with simular units. We could gradually change these nerve cells but why? Could not the same self be created and live without some cell replacement gradualistic scheme?

If a musical instrument could be considered as a peice of hardware and the particular peice of music the sofware, then where actually is the song? It is only present to our ears when it is put in motion. It is not an object, the musical instrument is the object, and the song-a process.

Where does the song go when the music stops? The answer is contained in those mysterious -objects- called the spaces between the frames, otherwise known as nothingness.

If I play a song once and then play it again are these the same song or different versions of the same song? Then what is the original song? Is it a version also and what would constitute the real song?

If all playings of all songs are considered versions and not one of them -the song- many problems with these kinds of philisophical dilemas would dissapear. If I have five guitars and play the same song on each, one after the other, can you concede that they are all at least versions? But versions of what? Versions of each playing of the song, of course!!!

Suppose that I play a piece of music on a piano from sheet music. Next play the same peice on another instrument, a guitar, for instance. Not only would the questions of versions be raised but also whether the real song, if there is such a thing, has to be played from the instrument that it originated from, but then it would just be a version.

If the brain is the hardware and the self a process run on it, software, then it may be possible to exist again in another body in the future.

If you look at a traditional photograph with a magnifying glass you will see that it is made up of different collored dots with degrees of shading.

Think of how a movie projector works. Many pictures go by a shutter and shine light through these pictures which results in an image on the screen. One after the other 20 some times a second. This fools the eyes into beleiving that their is motion going on up there. Could our consideration of our self's possesion of this brain and body be a simular misconception?

A television screen is like wise made of these dots with a succession of pictures flickering past at 20 some frames a second.

Now imagine a picture of an object moveing across the screen, it is one set of pixels (dots) moving through another pattern of pixels. All the components are relative so that the entity is at any time made of different sets of components.

Many people are gaining confidence in cryonics and the ability to one day unfreeze people and then help them come alive again. Does the confidence come from the simple fact that it will be the same body that the person died in. Is there another assumption hidden in here somewhere? Does our self depend upon having -this- particular body. You know, like the song and the instrument.

Simply put we are either a process or an object or maybe a mixture of both. If we are a process then that process will take place wherever the components are arranged like they were in the last version of that process. If we are an object then even an exact duplicate would be a clone that thinks it's the person.

Which version is the real version? Are we the real self or a version of a self like the one we are experiencing at this moment? Are we each more or less already a clone that has these particular memories and physical proportions? If all that is required for you to be you right now is a clone, (body and brain), and the nerve cells arranged in a way that reflects the connections that are present now in your brain, then what is to stop you from existing again as you are now? You may be a clone now that appears to have this identity and these memories.

So the clone in the future may just be a clone that is deluded into thinking that it is you with your memories. This is what could be happening to you right now; you could just be a clone that thinks that it is this person called you with it's lifetime of memories intact and accessable.

Process Location
Fallacy

I see a computer that has human consciousness.
I imagine the downloading of my soul into it.
I watch my soul get downloaded into it.
I still die but it lives on.
It has my memories and even thinks that it is me.
If my nerve were connected to all of it's nerves and we mind meld are not we still 2 different identities?
I am to complex of a pattern to ever be duplicated if this exact pattern exists in me now.
Besides am I to identify my -self- with this pattern?

Lighten up man you may be suffering from the illusion that you are trapped only in this self. You have been only this self and for to long. If that self is the only one you know, only because our technologies have not advanced enough yet too duplicate it, how can you say that this is the only possible self? Can it be likewise shown how it is that this is the only place that the particular I can happen? Other than the fact that this is the only self you have experienced, you entire life, is that alone enough to predict that you, the one you are now in that body, could not appear somewhere else? It is possible that we could build these technologies, given enough time. We may be able to make your self, that seems to you, as so trapped in this particular body, happen again. Would the clone think that it is the only version of this self? Many organs can be transplanted into our bodies and we can survive in a healthy manner. Soon we will learn to transplant parts of the brain. What happens when we discover the scattered portions of the brain which produce the self; will we be able to transplant everything in the body except for these self producing nuerons? At this time it appears that each of us is locked into these particular heads. How long will this go on and how much will we be able to manipulate this phenomenon that has decided that this is the only place where this (it) can occur?

How did this self come to be?
How did you become attached to it?
Where was this self before you were born?
If the brain, body, and social circumstances brought your self into existence, why can't this process be duplicated?
If you can answer these questions then you may know of how possible it would be for you to exist again with the help of better technologies.
Again; to speak about the possibility that you can exist again speaks, also, of the possibility that you are even existing now.

Soul

Concentrate

If you look over at a computer that has just recieved your download, and it is convinced that it is you, and you believe that its not, because you will die and it won't then; You may have to consider the additional possibility that many of your selves can exist at the same time, each locked into their own consciousness realm. Does this mean that this one that you are now experiencing cannot be duplicated (locked into another self not copied, transfered from and after death) or does it mean that you are simply observing another one of you over there?

The above stated propositions and contentions seem to leave this conversation in a stalemate. We may be able to create the most perfect exact copy of anyone who has ever lived, this clone would even have all the original's memories and would be convinced that it is the original in allways, BUT that it will not be the same person as the original, (only one that thinks this is the case).

The brain may be resurrecting you now many times a second. The I that is so dear to this argument might be created hundreds of times an hour and it would be as impposible to tell which of these is the real self; if there is such a thing. If it turns out to be true that our self is created over and over again with every single act of perception then it may be very well possible to transport or merge this great I with the other I.

Whatever process creates this sensation of regularuty, that I am the same person that I was last night or a few minutees ago, may be hidding the fact that we may be millions of selves, or however many frames of consciousness take place in a person's lifetime.

Could it be that this sense that I am the only I here be a part of the continual formation of the self? Maybe this sense of individuality is many selves that are required for this sense to take place and many selves think that they are one.

The particular matter, the particular organization, the particular patterns of activity....etc..., is it required that these issue have a bearing upon how likely it is that I could be happening not only in many different bodies but that, in each, many different selves liniarlly. How would this change the cliche; the one and only one?

The contention of course being that each complex process is one and alone. There could be no way for one process to be another. But wait could there be an upper limit to how many such types of process there could be? If there is a finite set of these dynamic systems then either; each person would use that one type and it would not be available for other people, or the number is so high that the above could be true but humans could never use up the types of complex systems that could emerge from brain activities.

OR Neither of the above; our particular selves could be like possible hands that can emerge from a deck of cards, say a game of poker. During many games one person could get the exact hand with the same cards if that combination were hit upon. No design there just possible shuffles and possible hands and, of course the rules of the game, (steps in the program).

So the self that some think can't be transferred, even after a person had been cremated many years ago, to another identical being rests upon something magical like outside of us. It is strange how nature could create such a unique thing for it may not have been profitable for her. It certainly is a profitable culturgen (meme) for making us think these strange thoughts about what or who really owns the soul.

...........it's in the cards............one of the possible hands that can emerge..............the shuffle....... the rules..........the deal.........this sacred I is a hand.......just another hand in the game of atoms.............your cards are the table of elements.......higher units like 2 of a kind or a flush are levels of implementation (higher order components).......cells deal new hands when they reproduce...........chain of beings or complex entities all having the same building blocks....................

If there is an upper limit to the number of processes that could take place within the universe, and these "I's" are a subset of of this limited number of processes, then it is very likely that the entire human race will not only be resurected but the "I's" will be those "I's" that were the seemingly original "I's".

Is there a finite set of these "I's" that can emerge? Even if there is a limited number of processes are the identical ones still different from each other? Every time that a process takes place is it somehow different than another time that this identical process took place?

JIGSAW PUZZLE

Think again of the deck of cards and all of the hands that can emerge when the rules of the game are set. Now think of a jigsaw puzzle. When all of the peices -varying components- are thrown down, on a table, the entire picture would rarely emerge. In its place would arise a jumbled mess. Many complex systems could be this way with a part in a whole and a whole in the part -a bit of the larger picture in the little peice-. Consider what is involved in putting a jigsaw puzzle together from scratch. In this thought experiment suppose also that you did not get to see what this puzzle would be a picture of, when completely assembled. So you have this cluttered pile of peices on the table, begin assembling complexity please. At first there seems little difference between this game and the card game of 52 pick up. The jigsaw puzzle is a reductionist nightmare. All you have are the peices that dont seem to be in any way connected except for the similarity of the jagged edges. In a similar fasion as chemists trying to peice together a human body from the rules of atomic structure and bonding covalences. As you begin putting some of these peices together that share any similarity you find a few that when clicked together have lines and colors on their peices that fit together and blend perfectly. You get a few islands of peices that are conglomerated together but, although they look like one object dont reveal a larger picture of what the entire puzzle will be when put together all of the way. Could these little islands be similar to the invisible parts of rhetoric where paragraphs pop out of jumbles of letters and phrases. Once you find some of these little islands of peices that fir together you begin to make out an object, say a tree. A tree in what kind of scene. Now you are looking for something bigger. Your mind begins looking for other natural shapes that this tree could be surrounded by. Through trial and error you peice together the entire nature scene that you LEARNED TO LOOK FOR.

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