Here's a thought!

Our bodies are mortal. And they are like flowers: they grow, blossom at their best and then begin their slow degradations, deaths.

Our mind is what seems to be the essence of _us_.

Now suppose someone finds a way to copy our minds into some tech so they could survive our bodies' deaths. Making us sort of immortal. Sounds cool, eh?

But that would make a copy of your mind. You would still be stuck in your mortal body while your copy would be immortal. Would you be happier to die knowing that it's YOU who is dying and not your copy, rather than dying w/o leaving a copy of you behind? Is a copy of you still YOU?

It could be YOU for others. But is it YOU for you?

Kill the body after transfer is complete. I'm assuming it should be possible to do so in a way that consciousness in body wouldn't notice that it is being killed.

It is similar principle to teleportation in some hard science fiction that is basically building copy of you and destroying source of the copy (or decomposing it for materials to reuse).

EDIT: Assuming your body does not get killed like that and you die of old age (or accident) then it wouldn't matter to me that there is copy somewhere. It would be still me dying.

I can recommend a book series, Otherland by Tad Williams.

OBS!! Spoiler below....

Is an eight book serie that explores that problem as the background plot, specifically, how do you make the copy you.

This is basically what happened to Rimmer in Red Drawf.

Also similar to the heads in Futurama

Yes, I believe I would be still ME, as long as another ME isn't also in existence as future ME's would only contain the memories I created.

@arraysstartat1 Would you willingly choose this procedure knowing that you will be killed after the transfer is complete? It's a lights-out for you

I'd prefer not dying at all, no matter the source or the copies

I've thought about this and living in a machine wouldn't be much different from living in a different time. It's the fifth dimension of living.

there will be a way to copy consciousness at first, but at some point there will also be a way to preserve you brain, even rejuvenize it, even hook it up to a machine through some adaptor.

it's true, i heard that in the history channel

Since the essence of a human being includes the physical body as well as the mental and spiritual aspects (I find the reasoning behind other views to be quite flawed) the answer is simple: any "copy" can't be you. I think that copying a person's brain/mind/etc. is impossible for similar reasons, anyway. I'll be happy to reevaluate if anyone manages to prove me wrong, but I don't expect that to ever happen.

@powerfulparadox

If you get in a traffic accidentand lose your left arm. Are you no longer you, compared to what you were before the accident? Since you are saying that body and mind are both must for 'the essence'...

And what if you lose control down the neck?

And what if you clip your nails? I mean your body has changed -- it has shorted nails now! Are you a different person now?

@TheCommoner282 You are looking from an outsider's perspective.

If someone makes a clone of you and the clone goes to your mom and says "hi", she will believe it is you. It's because she is an outsider.

Now if your clone comes to you and says "hi". Are you both the same?

Say your clone learnedsome foreign language last year. Is your clone still you?

@Jilano It's you. The guy, who is reading this very message. The same guy you saw in a mirror today. The guy who decided "Hey, it would be cool to make a copy of myself today!"

@netikras Essence and the expression of that essence are different things. Thus, you are still "you" if you lose an arm, but you are not the best "you" that you could be, because you are now incapable of full expression of your essence.

Change is part of who we are, obviously. The physical being part of your essence does not demand that the physical does not change. Essence is something of the "best possible" you, and that potential is then actualized or not depending on the circumstances of and choices made in your life.

@powerfulparadox so if I'm not the 'best possible me' then I have no essence?

I don't see how additional dimention - 'goodness of me' - is relevant here

I was trying to express the difference between complete potential: "full essence" and actualized potential: "expression of essence in reality" while also dealing with the example you gave of a missing limb (actualized potential no longer matches complete potential because of a defect/injury/etc.). I apologise if that was confusing. Philosophy is hard enough. I don't want to make it harder by being unclear.

Also, if it might help, think of the necessity of the physical as part of our essence this way: why are ghosts and fictional characters not just considered "human?" I think it has a lot to do with their lack of physical existence. Unlike a lot of basic philosophical discussion, I argue that essence includes physical existence (or lack thereof) rather than physical existence being a mere instance of an essence.

@netikras You are hung up on essence being separate from the form of existence. They are (almost) the same thing. Essence is what you "ought to" or "can" be, existence is what you are. At your best, the two are the same, but injury, defect, and bad choices (among other things) can make your existence less than your essence would allow you to be. The difference does not affect your essence, because your essence is basically the "ideal you."

Hopefully I've found a way to say it more clearly. I said it another way above, and hopefully one of them is clear enough for you.

Also, in case it's still confusing, essence includes existence partly because it's difficult to "be" anything, much less what you ought to be, without existing.

@powerfulparadox I think you have. And I disagree with you :)

treating 'essence' as 'the best form' is just backwards imo. Essense should be all about the core, abour what is essential to be able to be called X. The bare minimum that still qualifies as X. Where X is YOU in this case. And presence is everything achieved, accumulated and glued on top of the essence.I do not believe that presence can be any less of the essence, with the only exception of death - absence of the essence

our viewpoints are perfectly opposite :)

Correction: the bare minimum that still qualifies as X, where if you lose everything else but X and replace that 'everything else' with something different, you would definitely have X just with some different additional accessories

You are free to disagree, of course. I do think you're still assuming that I'm including all details under essence when I'm not. Incidental details such as height, weight, color of body parts, etc. are not part of the essence, but a physical expression of them is.

As to reducing things to the bare minimum for qualification for the term "essence," I think that comes dangerously close to the kind of thinking that led most of modern philosophy into serious errors. That said, I would ask the question, "can you call an entity without a physical body (as humans have always had, not any body in general) that thinks similarly to a human being human?" For me the answer is clearly no. It might have features that mimic an aspect of humanity, but it still doesn't have enough "humanness" to count. Your criteria might not be bad, but how you apply them might be insufficient. Just a thought.

Thanks for the engagement, by the way. I enjoy a good philosophical discussion.

@powerfulparadox thank you, I miss those :)

I’ll just sum up of what I know till now and drop it here.

There are theories that it’s impossible like global consciousness project on Princeton University or connectome project that tries to prove there is no such thing.

I also red in some book probably “The power or habit” that scientists can predict your decisions some time before you make it using modern tools.

I won’t mention cryogenic projects and companies.

Based on all audiobooks I listened to this point I think connectome is the best we can do and let’s hope there is only here and now.

So panta rei fuckers.

I like to imagine that something like this will be available as an archive of humanity.
At the end, or during your life you upload your memory and thought process into computer. Its not meant to move your conscience into a machine. But rather to have a replica of your memories and experience for others to interact with, gain wisdom or perspective from.
It would be nice to ask things from the relatives that have passed...