If you lost both of your arms and legs, had your heart and lung transplanted and your spleen removed, you would be[. . .]still you
This sounds like assuming the conclusion, though the heart, lungs, and spleen aren’t the examples I’d go with. The original claim was about “a complete replacement of the body-below-the-neck”, and the first two places I think of when considering that are the spine and the gut. Even if neither of those places store intellectual cognition, they seem to hold lots of learned information in a way that would be difficult to replace. So, it seems reasonable to say there is some sort of identity, some ‘me’, in there, even if it’s not the kind people usually mean.
Plus, what matters most for identity is pretty subjective. If you spend a lot of time training your arms and legs, having them taken away would seem more of an identity crisis, more like taking away a you-ness. Certainly the Two Arms and a Head guy thought so.
The original claim was about “a complete replacement of the body-below-the-neck”
Well, that’s beyond current technology, so I compared with the best thing that we can think of—a partial removal/replacement of the body compared to a partial removal of a similar fraction of brain mass. Though I would also say that the fact that we talk about replacement of the body below the neck and not above the neck, despite the disparity in mass, already pretty much settles the question, because we all actually know full well which part has the lion’s share in being “you”.
If you spend a lot of time training your arms and legs, having them taken away would seem more of an identity crisis, more like taking away a you-ness.
For that matter, if I preserved my bodily integrity but suddenly was divorced by my wife, lost my job, was deprived of all my financial assets and was shipped to a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, I’d probably have an identity crisis too. Does this suggest an even broader theory of embodiment in which my wife, my workplace, my bank account and my country are all parts of my body?
The weak form of the embodiment claim is “the brain/mind is affected by its surrounding contour conditions, first among them the chemical environment and nervous signals provided by the body”. To which I say, no shit Sherlock, but also that proves nothing for example re: uploads, except that the input that must be sent to the simulated brain must be pretty sophisticated. But all of the interesting forms of this claim—interesting for the purposes of this specific discussion, at least—need to be a bit stronger. Also because the human brain is adapted to having a certain kind of body, but an AI need not be, and there’s no particular reason why that, specifically, should make it less worthy of moral concern. If a man is born without eyes he adapts to life without eyes. He’s not lesser for it. Stephen Hawking was crippled and unable to even speak, yet still managed to do work as one of the top physicists of the 20th century. We have reams of evidence that for all the importance the body has, it is a small fraction of the total—comparable in magnitude to the importance of non-bodily external conditions. That to me makes most talk about embodiment pretty vacuous.
For that matter, if I preserved my bodily integrity but suddenly was divorced by my wife, lost my job, was deprived of all my financial assets and was shipped to a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, I’d probably have an identity crisis too.
I think the Vatican would file that under ‘relationality’, which OP has alongside embodiment as opposed with the modal rationalist worldview. Family/job/possessions/environment aren’t part of your body, but they are part of your identity. The point being that the “lion’s share” of the self is not contained above the neck, including both other parts of the body and aspects entirely separated from it. As is expressed when people say, “when my beloved died, a part of me died with them”, or, “I poured my heart and soul into my work”, and things like that.
But, after thinking about it some more, maybe this is a less important/relevant objection than: wait, if we’re comparing humans to AIs, why are we stopping at the neck? Why not include in embodiment the brainstem, cerebellum, endocrine system, occipital and parietal lobes… anything dedicated to motor control, balance, most sensory inputs, basic unconscious bodily functions, hormones, or more-or-less anything besides abstract cognition and language? If these were all destroyed and I somehow didn’t die, I might still be able to produce text (at least in my head, though I’d surely be a vegetable to the outside world), but it absolutely seems like a huge and irreplaceable chunk of myself has been lost. And current AIs do not have analogues to any of these, excepting (very poor) visual processing on a few of them.
As you say, large parts of the human brain are only active in the context of being attached to a certain kind of body. What the Church is comparing here are not really embodied-humans vs. brains-in-jars, but embodied-humans vs. a-relatively-small-fraction-of-the-brain-in-a-jar. This seems more interesting to me. I’m not sure you can abstract away all of those things, all the muscle memories and twitch reflexes and coordination skills and sensory responses and inputs from various glands, and still have a complete human brain at the end. Even Stephen Hawking had to get very good at twitching his cheek.
Also, I don’t know if you did this on purpose, but:
Relativity and quantum mechanics may both be mind-bending and baffle the understanding, but no less than when a world-famous mathematical and scientific genius who can do little more than twitch his cheek and move his eyes; who cannot feed, dress, wash, or care for himself in the most rudimentary way; who would, if abandoned next to a stockpile of food and water, starve and eventually die of dehydration where he was left, positioned as he was left, tells us that there are “not that many” things he cannot do.
...the opinion that Hawking was, in fact, lesser for his condition, is right at the start of the thing I linked. I don’t agree with all of what’s said in 2arms1head, and I certainly don’t think Hawking was any less worthy of moral concern for his ALS, but I sympathize with the notion that paralysis of the body destroys an important piece of the self.
To me this feels mostly as sophistry. The point of what constitutes the “self” is not the same as what makes the self happy or satisfied or feel like it has a purpose. A brain is an information-processing system that takes information from outside and decides on behaviour from it. Me feeling sad because I lost my job isn’t some loss of the self, it’s my brain doing exactly its job, because now my survival is at risk so I feel stressed and compelled to act. The way I “lose myself” if someone I love dies is very very different in meaning from the way I “lose myself” if I get lobotomized and literal whole chunks of my memory or personality are gone. “What can be taken away without affecting me at all” is not a question that is very useful to question the nature of the self. The question is, what can be taken away without affecting me other than via the informational content of the fact that it has been taken away. And that includes my job, my loved ones, and mostly my arms and legs. A computer also can not do much of use without a keyboard, a screen, and a power source, but no one would question that what determines the core performance and capabilities of that computer is the CPU.
Also that quote on Hawking is basically a cheap dunk. Clearly Hawking was talking about cognitive abilities. Again, anyone can be temporarily reduced to that state by e.g. being drugged or tied, blindfolded and gagged, and yet no one would argue that means they “selfness” is reduced in any way during the experience.
This sounds like assuming the conclusion, though the heart, lungs, and spleen aren’t the examples I’d go with. The original claim was about “a complete replacement of the body-below-the-neck”, and the first two places I think of when considering that are the spine and the gut. Even if neither of those places store intellectual cognition, they seem to hold lots of learned information in a way that would be difficult to replace. So, it seems reasonable to say there is some sort of identity, some ‘me’, in there, even if it’s not the kind people usually mean.
Plus, what matters most for identity is pretty subjective. If you spend a lot of time training your arms and legs, having them taken away would seem more of an identity crisis, more like taking away a you-ness. Certainly the Two Arms and a Head guy thought so.
Well, that’s beyond current technology, so I compared with the best thing that we can think of—a partial removal/replacement of the body compared to a partial removal of a similar fraction of brain mass. Though I would also say that the fact that we talk about replacement of the body below the neck and not above the neck, despite the disparity in mass, already pretty much settles the question, because we all actually know full well which part has the lion’s share in being “you”.
For that matter, if I preserved my bodily integrity but suddenly was divorced by my wife, lost my job, was deprived of all my financial assets and was shipped to a foreign country where I don’t speak the language, I’d probably have an identity crisis too. Does this suggest an even broader theory of embodiment in which my wife, my workplace, my bank account and my country are all parts of my body?
The weak form of the embodiment claim is “the brain/mind is affected by its surrounding contour conditions, first among them the chemical environment and nervous signals provided by the body”. To which I say, no shit Sherlock, but also that proves nothing for example re: uploads, except that the input that must be sent to the simulated brain must be pretty sophisticated. But all of the interesting forms of this claim—interesting for the purposes of this specific discussion, at least—need to be a bit stronger. Also because the human brain is adapted to having a certain kind of body, but an AI need not be, and there’s no particular reason why that, specifically, should make it less worthy of moral concern. If a man is born without eyes he adapts to life without eyes. He’s not lesser for it. Stephen Hawking was crippled and unable to even speak, yet still managed to do work as one of the top physicists of the 20th century. We have reams of evidence that for all the importance the body has, it is a small fraction of the total—comparable in magnitude to the importance of non-bodily external conditions. That to me makes most talk about embodiment pretty vacuous.
I think the Vatican would file that under ‘relationality’, which OP has alongside embodiment as opposed with the modal rationalist worldview. Family/job/possessions/environment aren’t part of your body, but they are part of your identity. The point being that the “lion’s share” of the self is not contained above the neck, including both other parts of the body and aspects entirely separated from it. As is expressed when people say, “when my beloved died, a part of me died with them”, or, “I poured my heart and soul into my work”, and things like that.
But, after thinking about it some more, maybe this is a less important/relevant objection than: wait, if we’re comparing humans to AIs, why are we stopping at the neck? Why not include in embodiment the brainstem, cerebellum, endocrine system, occipital and parietal lobes… anything dedicated to motor control, balance, most sensory inputs, basic unconscious bodily functions, hormones, or more-or-less anything besides abstract cognition and language? If these were all destroyed and I somehow didn’t die, I might still be able to produce text (at least in my head, though I’d surely be a vegetable to the outside world), but it absolutely seems like a huge and irreplaceable chunk of myself has been lost. And current AIs do not have analogues to any of these, excepting (very poor) visual processing on a few of them.
As you say, large parts of the human brain are only active in the context of being attached to a certain kind of body. What the Church is comparing here are not really embodied-humans vs. brains-in-jars, but embodied-humans vs. a-relatively-small-fraction-of-the-brain-in-a-jar. This seems more interesting to me. I’m not sure you can abstract away all of those things, all the muscle memories and twitch reflexes and coordination skills and sensory responses and inputs from various glands, and still have a complete human brain at the end. Even Stephen Hawking had to get very good at twitching his cheek.
Also, I don’t know if you did this on purpose, but:
...the opinion that Hawking was, in fact, lesser for his condition, is right at the start of the thing I linked. I don’t agree with all of what’s said in 2arms1head, and I certainly don’t think Hawking was any less worthy of moral concern for his ALS, but I sympathize with the notion that paralysis of the body destroys an important piece of the self.
To me this feels mostly as sophistry. The point of what constitutes the “self” is not the same as what makes the self happy or satisfied or feel like it has a purpose. A brain is an information-processing system that takes information from outside and decides on behaviour from it. Me feeling sad because I lost my job isn’t some loss of the self, it’s my brain doing exactly its job, because now my survival is at risk so I feel stressed and compelled to act. The way I “lose myself” if someone I love dies is very very different in meaning from the way I “lose myself” if I get lobotomized and literal whole chunks of my memory or personality are gone. “What can be taken away without affecting me at all” is not a question that is very useful to question the nature of the self. The question is, what can be taken away without affecting me other than via the informational content of the fact that it has been taken away. And that includes my job, my loved ones, and mostly my arms and legs. A computer also can not do much of use without a keyboard, a screen, and a power source, but no one would question that what determines the core performance and capabilities of that computer is the CPU.
Also that quote on Hawking is basically a cheap dunk. Clearly Hawking was talking about cognitive abilities. Again, anyone can be temporarily reduced to that state by e.g. being drugged or tied, blindfolded and gagged, and yet no one would argue that means they “selfness” is reduced in any way during the experience.