Resurrection, Memory & "Will The Real CA Steve Please Stand Up?"

[CA Steve]

I am reading a book by Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic magazine, called  Why People Believe Weird Things. Pseudoscience, Superstition, and other Confusions of Our Times

The bulk of the book deals with subjects one would expect like evolution, the holocaust, young earthers/creationist, repressed memories and, oddly enough, Ayn Rand. I am really enjoying the book and I recommend it.

In the chapter 16 Shermer writes about  physicist Frank Tipler's arguments that not only can physics show God exists, it can also show that this universe was explicitly created to house the human race. That modern physics really describes Judeo-Christian doctrines.

Quote

Tipler claims that his Omega Point Theory is a "testable physical theory for an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God who will one day in the far future resurrect every single one of us to live in an abode which is in all essentials the Judeo-Christian Heaven" and that "if any reader has lost a loved one , or is afraid of death, modern physics: 'Be comforted, you and they shall live again.' " So everything we already believed to be true based on faith turns out to be true based on physics. Pg 267-268

Shermer goes on to outline 6 problems he has with Tipler book on this which is called The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead

of which number 5 caught my attention because it is a question I had never thought of and it applies very well to our beliefs in the resurrection as LDS. I  will copy it below in its entirety.

Quote

5. The Problem of Memory and Identity.

Tipler argues that Omega/God, toward the end of the universe, will reconstruct everyone who ever lived or could have lived in a super-virtual reality that will include their memories. The first problem is that if a memory is a product of neuronal connections and our flawed and ever-changing reconstruction of these neuronal connections, how will Omega/God reconstruct something that does not really exist? There is a vast difference between every memory that could be reconstructed and an individual's actual set of memory patterns, the vast majority of which are lost to time. The controversy over false memory syndrome is a case in point. We have very little understanding of how memory works, much less how to reconstruct it. Memories cannot be reconstructed in the sense of playing back a videotape. The event occurs. A selective impression of the event is made on the brain through senses. Then the individual rehearses the memory and in the process changes it a bit, depending on emotions, previous memories, subsequent events and memories, and so on. This process occurs thousands of times over the years, to the point where we must ask whether we have memories or just memories of memories of memories.

We have another problem, too. If Omega/God resurrects me with all of my memories, which memories will they be? The memories I had at a particular point in my lifetime? Then, that won't be me at all. All the memories I had at every point in my life? That won't be me either. Thus, whatever would be resurrected by Omega/God, it cannot possibly be me, with my very own memories, who will he be? And if Michael Shermer is resurrected, and he does not have my memories, who will he be? For that matter, who am I? These problems of memory and identity must be worked through before we can even begin to speculate well about resurrecting an actual person. p.270

Shermen notes that his questions do not disprove there is a resurrection, only that we should consider them when claims are made about  a resurrection.

 

On a similar note my deceased MIL had issues, to put it mildly. She was bi-polar. So we experienced first hand her highs and lows. In the resurrection, if her disease is cured, she will not be the same person. Setting aside the discussion of whether or not that is a good or bad thing, who will she be? Not the person I knew or the person she thought she was either. And if there are no gay people in the resurrection who will they be? Certainly not the same people who lived in this world.

 

So, which version of yourself do you want to be in the resurrection, the current one, a past younger version, or maybe a conglomerate of all of them?  

 

It's an interesting question.

 

Edited February 2, 2018 by CA Steve

[Metis_LDS]

1 hour ago, CA Steve said:

On a similar note my deceased MIL had issues, to put it mildly. She was bi-polar. So we experienced first hand her highs and lows. In the resurrection, if her disease is cured, she will not be the same person.

     I do not believe we are only what we do.  I know you can read this into the Gospel if you want. But we cannot be just what we do on earth.

What about infants that pass away a few days after being born or those that live longer but are not able to do very much at all.  I also believe strongly we are not just a sum total of memories or else we are doomed not to change but be changed.

[clarkgoble]

3 hours ago, CA Steve said:

In the chapter 16 Shermer writes about  physicist Frank Tipler's arguments that not only can physics show God exists, it can also show that this universe was explicitly created to house the human race. That modern physics really describes Judeo-Christian doctrines.

This is kind of an old discussion in philosophy. While I find Tipler's arguments pretty dubious (although he had a great freshman physics text) I'm not sure I buy Sherman's rejoinder either. 

For the obvious response, if you lose memories are you the same person? Most of us would say yes. Now of course we have continuous bodily connection. Yet most of the molecules of our body change (not all but most). This is the old Ship of Thesues thought experiment against identity. One, rather common, solution is to posit some hidden essence that is the real you -- usually an indestructible soul. However if you stop and think about it even for a minute that's not really necessary. It all rests on a fairly arbitrary assumption about what identity means. When the real issue is what we consider identical. 

i.e. despite Sherman's attempting to apply old skeptical arguments this isn't much of an argument. Plus Tipler is a Christian and probably believes in souls anyway. I always took him more as just extending the Singularity argument out for why we should believe in God independent of particular controversial ontological requirements. 

Certainly even in an LDS context in the resurrection we won't be the same person. Much like when we were born and memories were stipped along with capabilities we weren't. But so what? I'm not the same person I was at 10 either. Yet in an essential way I am. This is just an linguistic equivocation pretending to be a deep philosophical point.

Edited February 2, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Calm]

" The memories I had at a particular point in my lifetime? Then, that won't be me at all"

Am I missing something?  This logic seems to imply we are never ourselves.  At this point in  y lifetime I have a set of memories.  If in the future that set of memories is not me, then how can it be me now?

[CA Steve]

19 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

This is kind of an old discussion in philosophy. While I find Tipler's arguments pretty dubious (although he had a great freshman physics text) I'm not sure I buy Sherman's rejoinder either. 

For the obvious response, if you lose memories are you the same person? Most of us would say yes.

Clark,

 

Thanks so much for a response. Your posts are usually must read for me. We need more people with your talents and disposition presenting positive views and opinions of  the church.

That said, I really disagree with your comment here. While I understand that memory does not completely define a person, I cannot think of any other part of us that so defines us to ourselves and to others. Recently I lost my mother to a long battle with cancer and Alzheimers, a disease made much more severe by her chemo treatments which robbed her of any short term memory that was not already lost to the disease. In her last few years she, in no way resembled, the mother I knew. My elderly father who struggled with taking care of her eventually grew so frustrated with her that he wrote her a long letter explaining why he no longer wished to be married to her. Neither one of these people represent(ed) what I believe to be the "same person" at all, but who knows maybe age and disease actually expose us for who we really all. But this is the whole point, what defines us as ourselves and how is that selected in the resurrection. Who gets to define that is also important.

I have extensive personal experience with someone who suffers from mental illness, a disease which has helped me understand how easy it is for our brains to convince us of a reality completely different from what others experience. This person's delusions are as real to him/her as our realities are to us. In the resurrection what does he/she have as memories? The ones you and I consider were made up in his/her brain or other ones that somehow get put there by someone/something else? Who are my parents going to be when they resurrect? What they believed and thought when they died or some earlier version or even some conglomerate version of the two(three, four,five...) of them at different points in their lives? Are we somehow going to have the cognitive abilities of our 20's, coupled with the wisdom and experience of our 60's? That would be a different person than we are now.

There is a further important note to throw in here. We are eternal beings who have existed co-eternally with God, whose memories are somehow blocked when we come to this earth. I repeat "eternal beings". So suddenly when we return to the spirit world those memories are going to be coming back. Memories from an eternal pre-existence. How in the world will we be even close to the same person now, when 50-100 years of memories are supplemented by an eternity of memories? It boggles imagination to believe that these few years here on earth will someone be anything more than a small blip of who we actually are, and frankly I like who I am right now and am pretty sure I do not want to be over written by what ever version of me that existed before me. The realty is that as presently poorly understood in LDS soteriology, what ever version is the resurrected one, will be different from our current version or the one we were when we died, a lot different. If someone walked into the room right now and offered me the ability to exponentially increase my connotative abilities as well as restore accurately (not even sure what that would mean) all my past memories, I am pretty sure I turn that down. I would not leave that room the same person if I did accept.

There is an excellent Netflicks series called Traveler, whose premise is that in a post apocalyptic future the surviving humans have discovered a way to send their consciousness back to take over the bodies of people living in the present so they can try and prevent the future apocalypse. (They find people who were about to die anyways from accidents, and take them over just before their deaths and then avoid their accidental deaths- getting around the moral problem of killing someone, but that is not the point here.) One of the characters from the future is erroneously placed in the body of a severely mentally handicapped person who has significant brain damage, she can function  but they know she has only a short while to live. It takes them several months but they eventually figure out a way to fix her but it means "rebooting" her, if you will, to the version that was a couple of months past. She faces the dilemma of dying physically soon, or loosing out on some important relationships she has developed over the last months as well as other important memories. She knows that regardless of what happens she will never be the same person as she is now. (There is more on that later on and how she recovers some of those memories, but the point is still the same.)

So, I think Shermer's point still remains, and could even be expanded beyond how individual memories are constructed and reconstructed, into area like shared reconstructed memories that differ, or in other areas like gender, mental abilities and so on. Do the resurrected still retain the same level of cognitive function they had when they died? Where shared memories differ are they still retained? Memories that have been falsely reconstructed in our lifetimes (and in my opinion that is all of them to one degree or another) are they allowed to remain? In cases where people actually have false memories of abuse, will they still believe that in the afterlife?  Do people retain the same gender identity and thinking when they die? If not, again, not the same person.

 

We talk a lot about how the next life everything will be different in  a good way. I am not so sure that I want that. I quite like being who I am now, frankly.

 

 

[CV75]

On February 2, 2018 at 12:44 PM, CA Steve said:

So, which version of yourself do you want to be in the resurrection, the current one, a past younger version, or maybe a conglomerate of all of them? 

I think once the veil is opened, the issue of "memories of memories" will be resolved since the most authentic baseline will be established. Then will our life and life choices fully make sense. The assumptions of who we are will also be resolved for the same reason. The eternal value of a veil and seeing through a glass darkly through this life is to develop the same kind of faith God has, which is His own principle of power and action. The light of Christ is plainly manifest at some intrinsic level that we can sense, and while this does not remove the veil, it allows enough light and perspective through to allow us to develop that faith. We carry this principle of intelligence with us into the spirit world and beyond. 

[clarkgoble]

On 2/3/2018 at 1:00 PM, CA Steve said:

So, I think Shermer's point still remains, and could even be expanded beyond how individual memories are constructed and reconstructed, into area like shared reconstructed memories that differ, or in other areas like gender, mental abilities and so on. Do the resurrected still retain the same level of cognitive function they had when they died? Where shared memories differ are they still retained? Memories that have been falsely reconstructed in our lifetimes (and in my opinion that is all of them to one degree or another) are they allowed to remain? In cases where people actually have false memories of abuse, will they still believe that in the afterlife?  Do people retain the same gender identity and thinking when they die? If not, again, not the same person.

The reason I am skeptical of this line of reasoning is that when I imagine asking someone if they were missing a gap of memory they'd say they were the same person.

The way we typically resolve this problem is via higher order notions like causality. If there's a previous me causing the next me and so forth then we say we are the same regardless of memories. Oh sure we might not recognize ourselves in some ways. Heavens, am I the same person I remember in grade school? Not at all. But I say I am because there's something underlying it in which I see a line of causality. Now causality is a much more problematic notion that most people think. Hume recognized this and introduced a lot of new types of skepticism into modernism. Without going down that tangent, there might always be reasons to be skeptical.

Now Mormonism is interesting here since it introduces a variant that Sherman doesn't deal with. Our whole premise is that we forgot everything yet in some ways we're the same person. We say that because we believe something persists from heaven to our life now. But is that something an unique substance the way so many have thought of souls? It's possible but it's fairly easy to imagine that our pre-mortal self was just as much subject to the problem of the ship of Thesues as we are.

The idea that we are our memories just seems quite problematic. But again, let's be clear what the problem is. The problem is assigning judgment of identity to two very different temporally separated people. Ignore the soul for a moment. (Since for Mormon materialists it ends up facing the same problems physicalists face) We can't say DNA equates us since identical twins share DNA but aren't considered the same person (and artificial human clones are undoubtedly around the corner since we've done it to so many animals). We don't say it's a shared piece of consciousness since we can shut consciousness off without saying a person ceases to be nor that the person awakened is a different person. (Here not conflating that with sleeping where I think we're partially conscious but just not forming memories in a normal fashion) Now of course we don't face the kind of discontinuities in our life that science fiction givens us. (And what technology in science fiction is actually possible) But even if we are nothing but information under evolution, the way physicists talk about things, so what?

What counts is the judgment. If I judge myself the same then I am the same. If I judge myself as different then I am. Right now people can suffer from types of body dimorphism where they become convinced parts of their body aren't themselves. The point is that the judgment is a psychological judgment. There nothing essential to the judgment nor right is some deep metaphysical sense. If we think we're the same we are. If we think we're not we're not, regardless of what others think. Given that the arguments of philosophers seem like paper doubt and silly speculation since it's an empirical question of how many would make such judgments. Even if a philosopher in an armchair thinks they'd judge it one way, it's quite likely that were the experience to happen they'd not judge the way they think they would.

Most of the things you talk about right now appear to be functions of the brain. Further they're functions that can be disrupted, such as in body dimorphism. If so, it's ultimately just some equivalent to an algorithm making this conclusion. In which case, who cares? I certainly wouldn't. I can say I like myself right now and wouldn't want to change. But I'm getting old and will change whether I want to or not. I can't imagine being old. But then I distinctly remember the 12 year old me being unable to even fathom being alive in 2020 or what it would be like to be married or middle aged. Our guesses of the future ultimately don't matter. Memories are something we have and use, but they aren't us anymore than our expectations are.