Hi Guys,
been waiting for you to do this topic given John's background. Too bad I didn't have more time to look into all your articles John. I did however become reasonably familiar with the personal identity debate and related thought experiments and came to the conclusion both the personhood and biological continuity camps are going in the wrong direction. We are neither ontologically speaking persons nor biological/animals; rather are a type of complex adaptive system. An argument against Transhumanism helped point this out.
Maybe you could use the below as a listener talking point. Not sure I can skype in during the show but I could try.
If we think that what fundamentally differentiates us from cognitively similar non person animals is a small set of cognitively sophisticated capacities then it isn't too hard to imagine that even more significantly advanced cognitive capacities could differentiate us in a similar way to the way that 'lower' animals differ from us ontologically if we use the personhood account. If we think the individual still exists as this uber mind then we cannot be persons as the person ontology ended when we became this uber mind. In the similar way a non person animal if 'uplifted' to personhood status cannot ontologically have been just a non person animal cogntively.
A related argument also means we or similar animals aren't biological beings even if we are uplifted cognitively . One could imagine that a human uplift is done in a complete synthetic cyborg like manner ending our biological status. If through autobiographical and memory chains we intuitively think this uber cyborg entity is the same individual it follows ontologically speaking it was never a biological or person based ontology.
Then what projects the individual ontology into the future? My conclusion was that what is maintained is a status as a type of sophisticated complex adaptive system through chains of organizational continuity. This allows movement up and down the cognitive continuum plus conversion back and forth between biological and synthetic modes.
Maybe that is too much to fit in as a listener message -& BTW I do deal with brain and hemisphere transfer- but I did hope to get Johns reaction to it.
Cheers
Simon

My brother has a website. He has been an inspiration to me ever since I realized that we think alike, yet so differently, on so many topics. He is mostly poet; I write things more closely aligned with philosophy---at least, I IMAGINE my thoughts and expressions to be such. On his homepage, LVP says regarding self:
"Can we conceive of what we are while BEING what we are?..." (emphasis added) The question might, at first, seem enigmatic, yet being, on a day-to-day basis, is complicated. Confusing. Utterly frustrating. Our "selves", while developmental, are also malleable, and, therefore influenced by ubiquitous happenstance.
You may look at my brother's website, if you wish. It is found at: http://www.larryvanpelt.ca/lvpblog/

The fact is we all experience a subjective self, an experiencing self- this is an aspect of reality- no matter how elusive it is to measure or define.
The ghost in the machine connundrum simply reveals a difficulty, not a failure of the existence of this subjective reality.

Descartes and Kant say "I think", that "I" have a self. I scarcely hear anyone saying "I know that YOU have a self". Do we know that all other creatures have a "self"? Animals as well as people? How do we know all apparent humans have a real self?
My thought is, I never objectively know as a fact the "self" of any other creature or being. I think we all conclude we see other "selfs" by instinct that sees others act like us consistently, without the glitches that would reveal an Inner Robot.
WIll I recognize when a machine acquires a "self"? Maybe we can only answer that in the event that in the future we actually do see those wondrous machines?

Morris Berman, in Coming To Our senses, makes the point: "The reason that the self is not amenable to scientific verification is that it does not exist as a discrete entity, but is in fact a process; it can never be a clinical object, never be localized in space or time."
Should this trouble us?
Isidor Chein tells an anecdote:
"The tale goes back when psychology courses at the City College of New York were taught under the aegis of the Department of Philosophy, and psychologists and philosophers shared a tiny, overcrowded office. One day, a student entered the office and approached the nearest person who, as luck would have it, happened to be Morris Raphael Cohen. When the latter looked up, the student said, "Sir, I have a problem."
"Professor Cohen, whose mode of address was as gruff as his heart was kind, barked, "Yes, what is it?"
"Said the student, "I sometimes get the feeling that I don't exist."
"""Who," snapped Professor Cohen, "sometimes gets the feeling that you don't exist?"
""Why, I ...," said the student; then, with a very sheepish expression, he turned around and walked out."
Chein also makes another interesting observation: "The subject, that is, the one who carries out the activity, in our behaviors is generally taken to be the self; the subject in the behavior of others, a person. In our experience of behavior, we are primarily selves and only inferentially persons, whereas others are primarily persons and only inferentially selves."
I think this is a topic best left to the speculations of the professional philosophers but even we laypeople have a stake in it insofar as we live in a society in which the possibility of an afterlife is taken seriously by many. I must admit to being a monist, but if I am wrong I can only hope I will be pleasantly surprised.

All good fun, co-conspirators! Bully for all!

I found myself much like Nature as is the Universe to be infinitely immeasurable.
And defining myself further, pointless.
For surely if One defines infinite and immeasurable then One becomes finite and measurable and that most certainly is not me.
The beautiful side to this is I find every One and every thing connected and the same thIS Way, even the Ones who don't see it yet. Even the Ones who continue to measure.
All is infinitely One
Boundless, immeasurable, absolute, just and free.
=
Just me

Me and the Sea
One day I was fortunate enough to find myself walking down a road to the sea. The trees along the road were overgrown blocking any view or reflection of what was to come. Finally I stepped onto the beach and looked up and found the ocean so astounding it took my breath away. The water, the blue sky, the power of the waves, the sea breeze, the tanned sand, the birds, the beauty I beheld made my heart sing. The ocean view I saw that day was even more profound than beauty, it was the day I saw me.
Oneders, Oneders,
=
MJA

A CAMEO APPEARANCE
I like your simple theory: selves are people. Clean. Concise. Unburdened by the additive complexities we see everyday. The facts of uncertainty have always plagued my hopes, dreams and fears. But I agree, comfortably, with your assessment. So, if we are wrong---we are wrong in unison. I could name ten people who agree with what you have posited.
Each of those ten know ten more. And so on, and so on...
Carry on, John Perry---carry on.

I'm not big on mechanisms, or the mechanistic theory of human existence. Rene Descartes said, by best accounts: "I think, THEREFORE, I am." There is a linguistic difference between the words THAT and THEREFORE. But, as illustrated in a comment on another post, 'that' is a matter for linguists such as Chomsky, Pinker and others to sort out. There is no little man (homunculus) sitting inside my head, driving my body, notions and actions. If we suppose THAT artificial intelligence will someday become functional; yea, useful, we ought to remember that it shall remain, uh, artificial. Mechanism was invented by mankind when he became a conscious being and, over time, trial and error, figured out how to configure and manipulate his world. I could not get Emmanuel Kant---his explanations were tedious and convoluted to me. But, I do not feel ashamed or deprived. I never figured out Juergen Habermas either. That we cannot ever get it all seems a given. And, we must either live with that---or go mad.
The word, that, appears in the foregoing comment, more often than the word, therefore. Clearly, then, it is a more useful word---more adaptable. The advantage of therefore is its' limited utility--which precludes to some extent corruptibility. If I say: I think I am, that assertion is a subjectivism. If I say: I think that I am, the statement remains within the realm of individual subjectivity. But, if I say: I think, therefore, I am, the remark includes a larger audience. Descartes knew this. Linguistically brilliant. And a way to remain memorable, centuries on.
Reality is within our grasp, but that depends. It depends on what we want; where we look and how we process (i.e., choose to receive) what we find. It is not rocket science, no---much harder. We'll get it---or die trying. Don't you think?

Cogito ergo sum. Shouldn't that be translated, "I am thinking therefore I am being?"
Just wondering.

My background as a psychologist tells me that consciousness is brain and our feeling of self is an epiphenomena of brain processing - the bringing together of senses, memory, etc. But we have certain anomalies that suggest that consciousness may be a product of something else. One of those is the psi phenomena, and before you groan there are hundreds of good scientific studies showing the ability of mind to function beyond the confines of the brain. Until recently we did not have a theoretical understanding of reality that allowed for the self to exist outside the brain and so we disregarded the possibility. Like the church fathers who refused to look through Galileo's telescope, we have turned our back on this data and what it implies for our understanding of reality and self. In step the physicists. Through quantum mechanics, the physicists are giving us evidence that awareness (the center of my self) may actually create reality not just function within it. See descriptions of the particle/wave phenomena and Schrodinger's cat metaphor. The problem is that we cannot solve this problem of self/mind at the level it occurs. If a self exists that is beyond our brain, that collapses the wave function of reality, we will not be able to study it at this level of reality. All we will have are fingers pointing at the moon. However if we allow science to function as it should, it will advance our description of mind/self even if we can't actually catch the animal itself. Like inferring black matter or other theoretical objects. We are even now describing the many ways in which mind acts to influence the world. See Dean Radin's work on global consciousness and impact of global events on random number generators. We are definitely paradoxes containing both the mundane brain functions of sight, hearing, memory, cognition, feeling etc etc. and much more. Fascinating.
Audrey Irvine