Tim Dronfield (Students Choice) - Cognition and mind Transference

 December 9 2020


Cognition and mind Transference

    The concept of consciousness is an interesting one, and the existence of a soul is unprovable. What happens after we die? Does our soul move on into another form of life in Reincarnation? Or does our existence end at the halting of brain function?

    There are a number of very interesting TV shows and concepts of science fiction that relate to this and have interesting implications. In the Netflix show "Altered Carbon" the human mind can be put into objects known as cortical stacks. Basically they have digital copies of the humans brain that can be transferred from one body to another through these "stacks". But, does the "I" the consciousness that perceives its self as thinking pass on? You can be aware of your ability to think and the fact that you exist and its amazing, but what about before you were born? What if these people aren't actually passing their consciousness on but simply the information the mind carries. If another person lived your exact life and had your exact memories they would effectively be you. And if this new entity with your life experiences remembers everything they would assume they were successfully put into a new body. They wouldn't know what happened to the consciousness of the previous body because that entity is gone. That mind that perceived itself doesn't exist to say if it is still able to perceive itself in the new body.

    The show download on Amazon Prime is also another interesting example of this. In this show it is possible to have your mind uploaded to a digital world before you die. You live in a computer generated system as a digital entity. Now this digital entity has all the memories and live experiences of the person they were, but are they still them? Are they still the same consciousness or is it simply the memories and knowledge of the person that once was that lives on.

    The only proof that your alive is the ability to think and know that you exist "I think therefore I am". So if all the information in your mind is transferred, would you still be the same conscious mind able to perceive its own existence? Or would you be a new being and a new conscious mind that is simply a copy of the one that it came from.

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