energy in your hair

N

nomadologist

Guest
So for all intents and purposes, everyone dies every seven years and is replaced by a clone?

The thing is, this is half a myth--some systems regenerate in two years, some three, some six months. The skeletal system regenerates every seven years. So by the time the longest-regenerating systems have fully-regenerated, other organs are "surviving" from the older you. It's not a process where all of your cells simultaneously regenerate over a seven year period.

Does this make sense?
 

swears

preppy-kei
Yes, but I'm only really interested in how the brain is affected. Since I don't believe in a "soul", the idea that I will have a whole new brain in however many years means that the parts of my brain that are thinking right now (my "consciousness") won't exist at that point. They'll be gradually replaced by a copy over time.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Hmm, I always thought poorer diet + higher stress would account for a lot of the higher blood pressure.... don't know bastante ciencias to know if that would explain it all though.

That is always what I thought, and I'm 100% sure it has something to do with it. But this is a theory put forth by a lot of medical types recently and in some ways as a general theory of semi-linear human evolution it makes a lot of sense that cataclysm affects which sort of negative traits get passed down that otherwise might not--e.g. autoimmune diseases. Why do we have these?? It seems feasible that they were passed down because at some point, these were beneficial to our ancestors at a time of crises for whatever reason...
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Yes, but I'm only really interested in how the brain is affected. Since I don't believe in a "soul", the idea that I will have a whole new brain in however many years means that the parts of my brain that are thinking right now (my "consciousness") won't exist at that point. They'll be gradually replaced by a copy over time.

Yup makes it seem like the phenomenologists were either way off or really onto something.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
I'm not explaining this very well. Let's say somebody makes a cell-by-cell copy of your brain, with the same memories, the same ideas, etc...

That person isn't you is it? You don't experience things the copy is experiencing.

Being replaced by a clone of yourself is still "dying".

of course this and other new-ish scientific findings have completely shattered the 19th century yet still prevalent notions of the self, subjectivity, uniqueness, a static universe, etc.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Philip K. Dick (and no doubt others) has written about these issues of self and continuity in several stories involving things like teleportation and downloading personalities into chips.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Yeah, but this is just something that has always happened with all living creatures...

Neurologist/philosopher to thread, plz.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Philip K. Dick (and no doubt others) has written about these issues of self and continuity in several stories involving things like teleportation and downloading personalities into chips.

bemes
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"of course this and other new-ish scientific findings have completely shattered the 19th century yet still prevalent notions of the self"
Hardly, the question of whether something can be the same thing despite all of its parts changing is thousands or years old. Theseus' Ship from Plutarch

“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”
Those who hold to the "19th century notion of the self" are surely just those who say that the ship was indeed the same (by the way, I'm not saying that it is, I'm just saying I'm not sure that it isn't). I seem to remember a famous case in the seventies(?) about a vintage motorbike in a museum that had all its parts replaced and there was a legal challenge as to whether or not it was the original bike.

Likewise the philosopher's axe or Heraclitus' River or, er, Trigger's Broom.

"A similar example was also seen in Only Fools and Horses, where Trigger (a central character) won an award for using the same broom to sweep the streets for twenty years, even though he’d replaced the head 17 times and the handle 14 times."
 

zhao

there are no accidents
yes sure these ideas have been around for a long time. even older than Heraclitus - loads of his ideas came from India, etc. but despite all that the materialist universe has been the dominant view for recent centuries...

the question of whether it is the same person/broom/motorcycle or not is missing the point, and falling into the binary trap of the 19th century thinking i was talking about.

the question should be: what do we mean when we say something stays the same? when something has changed? what do we mean by uniqueness? self? identity?

the point is that everything is fluid and interconnected. even on a physical level. and that separation is an illusion. a bad dream from which we have yet to rise.

i could hear the sneers and sarcasm from you unbelieving fuckers :p before i even finished typing the above. maybe these ideas have become cliche, but that doesn't detract from their value
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
the point is that everything is fluid and interconnected. even on a physical level. and that separation is an illusion. a bad dream from which we have yet to rise.
Of course the question arises in relation to human beings because we have this subjective sense of continuity, most of the time.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"the question of whether it is the same person/broom/motorcycle or not is missing the point, and falling into the binary trap of the 19th century thinking i was talking about.

the question should be: what do we mean when we say something stays the same? when something has changed? what do we mean by uniqueness? self? identity?"
Ah ok, fair enough. All I was saying was that the fact that all the cells in something may change in seven years does not in itself shatter the idea of self... there may well be better arguments though.
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Ah ok, fair enough. All I was saying was that the fact that all the cells in something may change in seven years does not in itself shatter the idea of self... there may well be better arguments though.
Self as pattern, field. The solid matter manifestation being just a part or a construct of something more fundamental.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Self as pattern, field. The solid matter manifestation being just a part or a construct of something more fundamental."
So... you're agreeing with me right? The self as a pattern can (and does) exist despite the changing of the cells? Seems fairly plausible to me.

"the point is that everything is fluid and interconnected. even on a physical level. and that separation is an illusion. a bad dream from which we have yet to rise."
Surely that should be especially (or only?) on a physical level. Why does that mean that separation is an illusion? Not disagreeing mind, just want to know how it follows.
 

swears

preppy-kei
The self as a pattern can (and does) exist despite the changing of the cells? Seems fairly plausible to me.


.

But I can't see how this works. Where is the self outside of those cells? If the cells thinking this right now are replaced, will I still exist when they're gone?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
If you think cell replacement is a metaphysical minefield, it's a walk in the park next to quantum teleportation.
 
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