this is a good question, everyone respond please...?

Question

a company is working on the technology to download the information from a human brain. ....after this they could repair the damaged brain and then download the information back or they could download the information into a cloned brain.

obviously if the information from your brain was downloaded and then put into a clone of you that person would not have YOUR conciousness. it would be and think just like you but there woudl be two conciousnesses. so the idea of living forever based on this doesnt really work because YOU are actually dying and its only a copy of you that is living. right?

now if that info is downloaded, your current brain is repaired, and then it is downloaded back into your own brain.... is that you? or is it another conciousness seperate from who YOU are?

because the goal here is to prolong YOUR conciousness not just memories. your memories arent youre life, youre conciousness is. and so by downloading the info on your brain and then repairing it wouldnt

you simply be killing yourself and inserting a new conciousness into your body?

and if this ever were done how could we know that the new downloaded brain was YOUR conciousness and not your clones?

what does all of this technology imply about souls? .....any and every thought youve got let me hear.

level 2, good job.

the person who said this sounds stupid. ...you know what i think? i think YOU sound stupid.

lonely_luv there is nothing ficticious about my question. why did you even waste my time posting if that was the answer you were going to give. ....im am giving you slugs the oppertunity to think about something interesting and you are wasting it away.

keenu, well im glad you have got all this figured out. ...yes genious master, that makes perfet sense. we could all learn from your never ending wisdom.

keenu, well im glad you have got all this figured out. ...yes genious master, that makes perfet sense. we could all learn from your never ending wisdom.

there were some good answers here, thank you. ....and a lot of answers from assholes.


...yeah, they ARE working on this and it may very well be possible within the next 10-20 years. ...maybe not. ...but thats missing the point of the question.

OKAY I DONT WANT TO SOUND TOO NEGATIVE. ...there have been several thoughtful answers. i apolagize for being kind of rude. some of you have been coming up with great thoughts though.

...what i am concerned about is YOUR life. do you understand what im saying? what makes YOUR conciousness? and if you erase your brain and put someone elses brain in there then effectively YOU (your conciousness dies). ...so although your body goes on...you, the person who you know as you, dies. ....so what happens if you even take a clone of you and put it into you. ..does that killl you? lol... i give up... if you havent got it by now you never will. ...im not very good at explaining this

psyengine, i know youve been eagerly awaiting this:

first off, you are wrong, this is not fiction
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/05/23/brain.download/index.html

second, your stupid argument that conciousness and memories are the same. the greatest scientific and philisophic minds in history have not been able to pin down conciousness as easily and definitvily as you just have. ...here is one example of why you are wrong. try and follow...

conciousness as defined in www.dictionary.com:
1. the state of being conscious; awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc

okay does a mouse have self awareness? if you put a mirror in front of bee does the bee recognize the reflection as himself? ....no. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror-recognition_test_for_self-awareness

okay, so a bee isnt technicly concious and aware and thinking and making decisions. but a bee CAN remember where to get polen from.

concisness includes self awareness an thought

bees do not have concioussness or thoughts.
therefore bees are not conciouss.

remembering where to go indicates memory
bees know where to go to get pollen
therefore bees have memories

your argument (conciousness and memories are one) is wrong because:

bees have memories
bees do not have conciousness
therefore conciousness and memories are not one.

finally, im much more concerned with sharing y thoughts with open minded people than wasting my time double checking my grammer for some closed minded argumentative stupid person who thinks he knows something but doesnt.... like yourself.

Answer 1

Drinkin the bong water again? just kiddin. To much for me to comprehend

Answer 2

I'm wondering if you read "The First Immortal" by Mark Halprin, actually... In the Schwarzenegger movie "The Sixth Day," it was clear that cloning humans and giving them the DNA donor's memories wasn't immortalism, but actually making Xerox copies of humans, which I distinctly abhor. (It ain't me!) However, in the Robert Heinlein book "Time Enough For Love," it was noted that if recorded memories were inserted into the former owner's brain, he/she would in fact be the same person, as the memories were recorded artifacts of the original. Being a psychological reductionist, I believe that to be an effective way to maintain the individual identity of the person involved in the procedure.

I like to believe, however, that memories do, in fact, constitute the identity of an individual. As long as the consciousness has not left that individual, or is held in abeyance (don't ask me how, 'cause I haven't a clue as to how that could happen outside of today's technology), there should be no problem, I would think. Still, what you are discussing is theoretical in nature, and there is no solid proof (yet) on this subject.

As to the soul; I don't know. I really don't. That goes into metaphysical discussions which I typically avoid, as I do not have all the facts necessary to form an educated opinion on this. However, I do believe that anything is possible. Hell, the fact that we can exchange information in this fashion was inconceivable 20 years ago, was it not?

Answer 3

'lonely_luv there is nothing fictitious about my question. why did you even waste my time posting if that was the answer you were going to give. ....im am giving you slugs the opportunity to think about something interesting and you are wasting it away.'

I think this question may get deleted based on the 'chatty' nature of what's going on here, but.... Yes, your contrived context is totally fictitious and self contradictory...'because the goal here is to prolong YOUR consciousness not just memories' and 'after this they could repair the damaged brain and then download the information ' And what did you think the word 'information' is to represent if not memories The brain its self changes as memories are added, i.e. they are the same thing. What you take as memory are cyclic instructions that exist in the life of and for the brain it self. If you believe self consciousness and consciousness for that self are two different organs, that is your misjudgment.

The Will is positive, the Judgment is negative.

P.S. trying the Check Spelling service here and save us the grief. As faulty as it may be, it far better than looking at the same old errors over and over again.

Answer 4

If we are ever able to get to the level of increasing telepathy between two different entities, then consciousness could easlily be sustained. We've proven that memories can be stored as raw data, but what people really want is to continue experiencing their self as if it never had a stopping point.

The best way to accomplish the notion of sustaining consciousness would be to have a temporary telepathic connection between the two entities until the download process is complete. That would involve great detail in analyzing every detail of consciousness as an abstract in the same manner we deliniate neurons and every function of the brain and it's many processes. We would have to think in terms of "time" instead of material brain matter, because consciousness is temporal.

Answer 5

It's a separate consciousness and rather than keeping you alive it will probably just cause major emoitional issues to people you knew and scare everyone. The new you also probably wouldn't have the same experiences as you. All this would achieve is creating another being exactly like you but with no actual connection, like that myth about there being seven people just like you in the world, and prove how meaningless our lives are. Also, your memories are the point of promoting your consciousness and are what it is made up of. On a side note, this is definitely not happening in the next decade or two.

Now then, if you mean to say that free will exists for us and not robots, your question answers itself.

Answer 6

Think of the brain as a hard-drive, sorta. The information would be what you had learned, your knowledge. You wouldn't be transferring the actual consciousness nor the soul/spirit. It's like with clones. They are still different entities but their dna is the same or almost the same and they will be predisposed to be and think and act like the original but will still be a seperate and unique consciousness. LIke twins, very connected, possibly even part of the same oversoul but still different. It wouldn't affect anything more than a pair of twins does now. I don't believe that you can actually copy a consciousness. The brain and body are only vehicles (although actual parts of the consciousness) for the soul/spirit to live in/be while alive in physical reality. Make any sense for you?

Answer 7

That's too scary to even think about. Are you serious? I had no idea our technology was so advanced as to replicate and record the activity of a human brain. Sarcastically, of course.

It is not so much of the information that is downloaded, but how the brain uses it and understands it and builds on it. For example, everyone knows it's not polite to sneeze without covering your mouth. Some people cover, some don't. Two brains may know the same information but process them differently.

Answer 8

I think that the defining issue is how the brain processes the information it stores and receives. If the repaired brain in any way processes information differently, then the consciousness and essence has been changed. This would not be the same person.

Answer 9

This is so easy.

If you want to repair yourself, just do it piecemeal.
Whether or not the brain is a store of perfectly downloadable information is another story...
But if I grant you that it is, you would not fear the death of your consciousness if we slowly replaced sectors of your brain with a "copy"-- it would not destroy you. And with each new implant, if your 'original' brain-information (or brain matter) were stored and reassembled elsewhere, in a clone body, then you would not identify with that person. Even though the "original information" is located outside yourself, you would not fear death or pain if that other person was tortured.

Answer 10

Wow. That's a brain-full of info in one question.

Why wouldn't the cloned brain be you?
Wouldn't your consciousness be download with the rest of the info?
If this is you (and I think it is), why bother to repair the damaged brain? Why not just use the cloned brain?

Answer 11

We are only a collection of our experiences. If the downloaded consciousness is only stored, ie no experience, then regardless of where it is reloaded to, you are still you.But take the same consciousness and reload it into multiple hosts, then you have copies each becoming more unique with each passing second as new experiences are stored from different points of view. Of course, they would all argue each is the one and only original.