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Death of me

From Aware Theory

What is the concept of the "death of me"? If your body changes so that it produces the structure and functioning of a different person thus this other person personality, self reference, name, memories, etc, and does not think that it is you any longer in any way, is this the death of you? If then the structure and functioning becomes identical to the way it was at some point when your body produced you, would this be a restoration of you? If this process does not restore you to this body then who is this person that calls himself you, and has your personality, all of your memories, has no memory of ever being this previous person, nor even of not existing for a period of time?

This process could repeated over and over again with one to any number of distinct different person being created by your body in between when a "you" again are created. This will not be a replica of you because the same matter could be recycled over and over again. There can be continuousness of body and consciousness with the change in structure and functioning of the body being directed by external sources.

If you say this restored version of you is not you then it appears that something has been lost in the process of divergent change and then convergent restoration of the structure and functioning of the body. The physical aspects of the body are still the same after the restoration so is there something that is supernatural that is lost at death and not regained in the restoration of structure and functioning?

Superimmortality predicts that the brain produces consciousness. This is supported by neuroscience. When this brain dies (when it no longer has the correct structure and functioning) it no longer produces consciousness. If any number of the correct structures and functionings of matter are created or recreated then this matter that the brain was made of will produce consciousness again. But will it produce "Me" again? If there is nothing supernatural that is lost in death then there is nothing supernatural that needs to be regained at restoration. Restoring the structures and functioning that your body produced at some point in your life will produce a body that produces the behavior, memories, personality, knowledge, skills, emotions, feeling, etc., that your body previously produced at that point in your life if the environmental conditions effecting the body are the same. But if the environmental conditions are different then the structure and functioning of this restored body will diverge thus producing a different awarepath. But since it is you to begin with, this divergent "you" will continue to produce a consciousness that you will experience. For example, let say your current body is externally directed to produce a structure and functioning that produces hitlers consciousness with his behavior memories personality etc., when he was exactly 45 years old for lets say five months. Now lets say the structure and functioning of this body is restored to the way it was before the structure and functioning was divergently changed to being like hitler's. If the structure and functioning was now like it was then before the hitler divergence, all your original characteristics like memories, behavior, knowledge, skills, would be like they were. There would be no memories of being hitler. There would be no memories of things changing or time passing. If the environment was exactly the same then there would be the creation of a consciousness that was a normal continuation of life. But if the environment was different enough for you to notice a difference a diverging awarepath would be produced but you would still experience that new divergent consciousness until it diverged too much as it did in the hitler diverging case.



See also: Information-theoretic death Types of restoration