ThatOneGuy June 1, 2012 Share June 1, 2012 Fine. ┬─┬ノ( º _ ºノ) Goddamnit BlackBane. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Orange juice helps with concentration headaches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phi June 1, 2012 Share June 1, 2012 If you're going to claim you're the brain, you're also going to have you're the biological body and that if that were replaced, such as your heart, you would no longer be yourself. So people who get heart transplants are no longer themselves? No, you are the brain. It's not a fun thing to accept, but it's true. The brain holds your consciousness, your likes, your dislikes, your personality, your memories, your mannerisms, and everything else. It is what hears, says, feels, smells, and tastes. Everything else is just connected to the brain, and gives it the information it needs to decide what it perceives. When you see an apple, the neurons in your brain fire in such a pattern that it realizes that it saw an apple. If you take the brain out of the body, the body no longer observes the world. This is why doctors agree that when the brain stops working, you are dead. Not the heart, but the brain. While I don't usually force my opinions, I do feel as if I must fight that this is true. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest June 1, 2012 Share June 1, 2012 Guest. Hey Guest. Don't argue with Yotsuba. Just don't. Please. Are you trying to invoke an analogue of Godwin's law here? So people who get heart transplants are no longer themselves? No, you are the brain. It's not a fun thing to accept, but it's true. The brain holds your consciousness, your likes, your dislikes, your personality, your memories, your mannerisms, and everything else. It is what hears, says, feels, smells, and tastes. Everything else is just connected to the brain, and gives it the information it needs to decide what it perceives. When you see an apple, the neurons in your brain fire in such a pattern that it realizes that it saw an apple. If you take the brain out of the body, the body no longer observes the world. This is why doctors agree that when the brain stops working, you are dead. Not the heart, but the brain. While I don't usually force my opinions, I do feel as if I must fight that this is true. You didn't notice the subtle different I'm trying to show here. You are not the brain, you are the patterns in your brain. The subtle point is substrate independence and functional invariance. You are not even all the patterns in your brain, you could suffer plenty of damage and still have sufficient subjective continuity and still consider you 'yourself'. This is not as clear cut as you think it is. Bad analogy: You are not your brain any more than my computer's operating system is the CPU and RAM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avalanche June 1, 2012 Share June 1, 2012 Are you trying to invoke an analogue of Godwin's law here? Nope. I just don't think you should argue with Yotsuba. You can argue with Phi all you want though. frt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phi June 1, 2012 Share June 1, 2012 You didn't notice the subtle different I'm trying to show here. You are not the brain, you are the patterns in your brain. The subtle point is substrate independence and functional invariance. You are not even all the patterns in your brain, you could suffer plenty of damage and still have sufficient subjective continuity and still consider you 'yourself'. This is not as clear cut as you think it is. Bad analogy: You are not your brain any more than my computer's operating system is the CPU and RAM. If you're going to be subtle about it, then there is no purpose. You may as well say that I am not the same person I was when I first replied because some of my cells died and were replaced, as well as the fact that I have formed new memories. You may as well say "that isn't red, it's crimson." Or, better yet, you may as well say that YOU are not you, you are just what you decide to do. The "pattern" of your behaviour. Sure, you can take a blow to the optical lobe and still have the same personality, but you could end up being blind. If your brain changes, you change, whether it is personality or just what you can observe. There is no other part of the body that even the smallest change could alter your world that much without just killing you. If, for example, you pricked your heart with a pin and bled out, the first thing that would cause you to die is that your brain won't get enough blood or oxygen and shut off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glitchthe3rd June 1, 2012 Share June 1, 2012 What is a tulpa? Nothing but a miserable pile of secrets! But seriously, I'd argue they're at the very least people in the moral sense. Not so much in the genetic sense, seeing as how they don't have bodies. "Science isn't about why, science is about why not?" -Cave Johnson Tulpae: Luna, Elise, Naomi My progress report Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest June 1, 2012 Share June 1, 2012 If you're going to be subtle about it, then there is no purpose. You may as well say that I am not the same person I was when I first replied because some of my cells died and were replaced, as well as the fact that I have formed new memories. You may as well say "that isn't red, it's crimson." Or, better yet, you may as well say that YOU are not you, you are just what you decide to do. The "pattern" of your behaviour. Sure, you can take a blow to the optical lobe and still have the same personality, but you could end up being blind. If your brain changes, you change, whether it is personality or just what you can observe. There is no other part of the body that even the smallest change could alter your world that much without just killing you. If, for example, you pricked your heart with a pin and bled out, the first thing that would cause you to die is that your brain won't get enough blood or oxygen and shut off. Yes, you are a different person, but you have experienced subjective continuity from the time you posted your before last and last posts. The real tricky issue are the subjective probabilities: what we will experience next? Once a philosophy of mind is defined, if it is correct, we can know (under said assumption and given sufficient scientific evidence) if a tulpa (or we) are conscious or not. I'm probably getting too far off-topic here, but from my current favored theory, tulpae are likely conscious, as long as certain other assumptions we have about them are true (sufficient similarities with so called "multiples"). If those assumptions are true or not remains to be seen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phi June 1, 2012 Share June 1, 2012 Yes, you are a different person, but you have experienced subjective continuity from the time you posted your before last and last posts. The real tricky issue are the subjective probabilities: what we will experience next? Once a philosophy of mind is defined, if it is correct, we can know (under said assumption and given sufficient scientific evidence) if a tulpa (or we) are conscious or not. I'm probably getting too far off-topic here, but from my current favored theory, tulpae are likely conscious, as long as certain other assumptions we have about them are true (sufficient similarities with so called "multiples"). If those assumptions are true or not remains to be seen. Well then, it was nice debating this with you (really), but I don't want to voice my opinion directly about whether tulpa are conscious or not, so I'm stopping here. Thanks for having this conversation, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dancing-with-dragons October 6, 2013 Share October 6, 2013 Or are they simply a part of you? Are they their own person, or are they just a "split personality", like Gollum in LOTR? Sorry if it's been discussed before, I couldn't find results in the search. Thanks! Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh! Adoni, Elohim, Tse-va-hot! Help breathe life into a new forum - http://paranorm.boards.net/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kiahdaj October 6, 2013 Share October 6, 2013 Of course this has been discussed before. This is like the age-old question. "What is a tulpa?". The answer is: no one here knows. The End. "If this can be avoided, it should. If it can't, then it would be better if it could be. If it happened and you're thinking back to it, try and think back further. Try not to avoid it with your mind. If any of this is possible, it may be helpful. If not, it won't be." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.