| For me, today is in a sense Thursday because tomorrow is my last day at work this week which is handy. A nice long weekend will be just the ticket.
For some reason, in between work, my mind has been coming up with all sorts of strange ideas the last couple of days. The first is an idea of how it might be possible to live forever. I will explain...
The thing to note about nature is continuity - everything is about inclination, gradient, progression etc. I am gradually growing old. Species are gradually evolving. It is not possible to jump instantaneously from one state to another. A very quick change of state would be extremely difficult to accomplish - there are schools of thought which define a miracle as a violation of continuity with respect to physical laws. So, the solution must involve a gradual change. Assume that the nervous system as a whole (not just the brain) exclusively accomodates and gives rise to the mind (meaning the movement of a limb can be classed as a thought). Also assume that one's identity is a property exclusive to the mind. Now, under normal circumstances, the failure of the brain causes the permanant collapse and erasure of the mind, hence the death of the person. Compare this to a kind of brain damage in which a small, specific part of the brain is impaired. Say I have a stroke and the cells of my brain which I had used to control a certain limb died. Although a part of my brain had died, I suppose I would still exist. Loosely speaking, my mind could be said to be distributed over my entire nervous system. If a part of it died (and the remainder was capable of carrying on the task of supporting both mind and body, whether aided or not) might my mind simply retreat from the damaged area? Furthermore, it might be possible to relearn how to operate the given limb by training up replacement brain pathways.
So, what if it were possible to grow an extension to one's brain? A second brain. The mind would expand into it as it grew until it covered both brains. Then, upon the death of the first, rather than being erased, the mind would be left merely with diminished capabilities. It would be brain damage rather than brain death.
It's like the case of Trigger's broom from a certain episode of a certain comedy programme. The broom has had a dozen or so new heads and a dozen or so new handles over the course of its existence. How could it still be the same broom, then? Association - the mechanism which I'm sure is exclusively behind the workings of the mind. Consciousness is what happens when the mind associates different bits of its mental contents (memory, sensation etc.) with each other. Some of it is automatic, a throwback to millions of years ago, although thoughts about thoughts about thoughts etc. stack up in the more recently evolved areas of the brain, forming self-awareness.
Anyhoo, be all that as it may or may not, just consider the possibility of being able to clone yourself. However, the newly-forming embryo would be implanted within you, where it would form not one but two umbillical cords. The first would be the conventional link to the host's blood stream to receive nutrition and dispel waste. The second would be a complex neural link to the host's nervous system. It would be like gradually becoming aware of a new limb forming over the weeks and months as it gets ever bigger. However, the growing brain would start to take on more and more workload from the 'master' brain through the nervous systems in between. The host mind would be able to get more and more of a foothold. Whilst any memories encoded in the host brain would remain there, it might be possible for them to be re-encoded in the offspring brain as long as that brain hosted any thoughts from the mind (now shared across both brains via the connected nervous systems) which involved those memories, and that those thoughts were remembered by the offspring.
Eventually, it would be time to give birth to yourself, so to speak. Prior to the neural cord being cut, the host's brain (and as much of its nervous system as possible, without impinging on the offspring's) should be gradually shut down before finally being killed. What would be left would be the newborn offspring whose brain hosts what's left of the mind hitherto shared between both brains and nervous systems. It would be akin to massive brain damage but not quite the total erasure dreaded.
There's a huge amount in the above which is questionable and highly debatable. Ah, well. Still, you might want to look up 'parthenogenesis' and 'neurulation', perhaps turning left as 'personal identity' in the process. |
