Magnus and whoever
After deleting some three billion emails from the MD
i've decided to try my luck here. So here I am full of
hope and determined to contribute. I havent sent a
"bio" for the site but no doublt I'll get round to it
eventually.
In the meantime
Magnus wrote:
>I simply don't think it's enough to only copy the patterns of the four
>levels. A person is more than that, but what? I guess the easy way out
>is to call it DQ, but I'm not very satisfied with that either. What I'm
>getting at is of course our "Quantum selves" as proposed by Danah Zohar
>in "The Quantum Self" which we discussed quite a while ago. Regardless
>of whether the quantum world should be considered a lower level or not,
>it seems that quantum physics has made clear that we cannot make exact
>copies of anything. *But*, we can transfer all information from one
>quanta to another, the "killing" of the original would be implicit.
The quantum self indeed, the self that cannot be copied.
To quote ms zohar
" The quantum world view transcends the dichotomy
between the individual and relationship by showing
us that people can only be the individuals they are
within a context. i am my relationships - my
relationships to the subselves within my own self (my
past and my future), my relationships to othres, and
my relationships to the world at large.
I am I, uniquely myself, because i am an utterly unique
pattern of relationships, and yet I cannot separate
this I who I am from those relationships. For the quantum
self, neither individuality nor relationship is primary
because both arise simultaneously and with equal
weight from the quantum substrate."
A relationship requires at least two things. If you copy
only the individual and not the context then you have
lost the self. And as I understand it the real question underlying what
happens in a transporter is where precisely does the self
lie. If it is not in the biological level, then where. And actually
I think we know the answer too, it lies in the consciousness,
trouble is we don't really know what that is so the answer's not
terribly useful. I'm certainly not getting in any transporter unless
you can convince me that my consciousness will also
be transported intact and if you don't actually know what
consciousness is then how can I possibly believe that you
know how to transport it.
I hope I'm not getting off the subject here. Like I said, I think the
real question is where does the self lie and the answer is
the not-too-difficult 'it lies in my awareness'. I'm not sure that Pirsig
has really given a good explanation of consciousness though.
All he offers is that everything is conscious, seems like a bit of
a cop-out to me.
Bruce
-----------------------------------------------
FREE! The World's Best Email Address @email.com
Reserve your name now at http://www.email.com
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 13:08:35 GMT