Brain, Body and Ship of Theseus

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The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object which has had all of its original components replaced remains the same object. Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship?

Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. It is when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it previously functioned. These changes range from individual neuron pathways making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping or neural oscillation. Other forms of neuroplasticity include homologous area adaptation, cross modal reassignment, map expansion, and compensatory masquerade. Examples of neuroplasticity include circuit and network changes that result from learning a new ability, information acquisition, environmental influences, practice, and psychological stress.

Neuroplasticity was once thought by neuroscientists to manifest only during childhood, but research in the latter half of the 20th century showed that many aspects of the brain can be altered (or are “plastic”) even through adulthood.

People have had large sections of brain destroyed but then the brain functions that were lost are replaced by the remaining brain.

Jean Hebert proposes to grow bodies without brains by using CRISPR to knockout neocortex development genes. This would be proven in monkeys and then used on humans. There would need to be successful brain transplant surgery and reconnection of nerves and spinal cord. New brain tissue would replace old brain tissue over 6-10 brain replacement surgeries over 20 years. This would enable full brain replacement. The brainless body would grow on life support until the skull was large enough for transplant.

Economically, this process would be ok at scale. 90% of healthcare is spent on the last 5 years of a persons life. The body and brain replacement would be done before the decline of the last 5 years. Most of the medical system would be converted to growing and sustaining brainless bodies and the six to ten major brain surgeries every 40-50 years. The same procedures at scale would be made more efficient and cost effective.

10 thoughts on “Brain, Body and Ship of Theseus”

  1. Ya, nano-machines, each one capable of precisely duplicating the performance of a single neuron (or possibly a small cluster of them) introduced continuously over a long enough period of time might do the trick. Then you have a human mind that not only is inorganic, but could have an actual interface to communicate with other systems, or even enable itself to be downloaded, uploaded, or (gulp) overwritten. It might also be made to be networked, and/or multi-threaded, and, of course, be adjusted over time to have significantly greater capabilities (less limitations) than it originally had.

    The ship of Theseus question is a non-starter for biological beings in the first place. It seems pretty clear that we are complex and evolving patterns and the medium is of no serious importance. Which also means that the person we are at, say, age 50, is not the person we were at age 17.

    The darker side of this is that increasing knowledge of non-Euclidean geometry, quantum theory, and cosmology might reveal to us that we actually cease to exist in something like every Planck length of time and are replaced with something so similar it believes it is the same person. Races learning this, and proving it to themselves beyond doubt, could actually be a reason for the Fermi Paradox in that they simply give up on a continued existence, based on this discovery, although it seems unlikely they all would.

    On a side note, the characters in the ‘Altered Carbon’ series never address the biggest elephant in the room, which is why they seem to believe that a copy of their mind, uploaded into any medium, even someone else’s biological body, is still them, and not some copy picking up their credit cards and starting a new life, even while thinking that it is the same person the recording was made from.

    Possibly they have proof that consciousness, which is to say a state of consciousness, which is to say a state of awareness, extends across a myriad number of world-lines at all time where its general level of awareness is identical (such as the ones where it does not yet know if the cat in the box is alive or dead) and that they themselves are never really dead so long as their state of awareness can, potentially and eventually, rejoin a greater collective of their own consciousness. Although, I would love to see how they would prove that to their own satisfaction.

    Although, perhaps they merely ignore it, much in the same manner that we try not to dwell on the fact that general anesthesia works by chemically separating the brain into smaller components. We certainly have no reason to believe that allowing these components to reassemble themselves when the anesthesia wears off results in anything other than a new person, built with the old parts, and therefore merely having the capabilities and memories of the prior individual.

  2. I’m reminded of HGWells book “The Time Machine” where the human race is divided into 2 separate species, only this time I suggest the options will be mortal organic & immortal synthetic. But just like Robin Williams said “As a robot, I could have lived forever. But I tell you all today, I would rather die a man, than live for all eternity a machine.” Regardless, if our destiny is to be a space faring species I think extreme longevity is a requirement. Space is too vast & I haven’t seen a realistic solution to warp drives.

  4. [ Do we achieve same results if we replace activities by small quantities of ‘equal’ actions?
    Me, not thinking that will be comparable, because that doesn’t backup time&circumstances (and its relation to an omnipresent universe interacting with all of us, always)

    comparing A(?)Is with evolution of consciousness (and within, being aware of ‘our’ humans inability of understanding even complex life forms in nature in ‘all’ detail, e.g. octopuses with various (neural independent/interconnected?) brains within one complex ‘identity’), we should not avoid explaining to ourselves, why this evolutionary process burdened ‘humans’ with training&recreation&introspecting efforts (that might seem inefficient with plain fiscal (or other single POV&interest) reviewing)?

    exemplary ‘https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Time-Use-by-Country-OECD_850.webp’

    .thinking about a ‘socially connected’ A(?)I consulting peer AI’s (2023, is ‘humans’) for feedback and supervision and precautionary ‘forward error correction'(?) ]

  5. The combination of an advanced version of Neurolink connecting ones thoughts to an “onboard” device –implanted in one’s chest cavity perhaps, that is capable of hosting a highly tuned LMM that trains on one’s every thought, action and experience on a real-time bases, could be enough of a back-up that the “think meat” wouldn’t need to make the trip over to the new digs.

    Then it’s “Altered Carbon” for the next few thousand years.

  6. In reality the Greeks replaced their ships after only a few years,the barnacles and such wore out the timbers at the same time, very quickly.
    Even today, with all our technical achievements,have a hard time fighting those same types of animals.

  7. Eh, the ship of Theseus idea was to replace individual neurons with hardware that precisely replicates the neuron’s behavior. Do that with all the neurons over time and you’ve uploaded. All the original knowledge, skills, and personality transfers over because the new neural network has exactly the same configuration and weights, just on different hardware.

    Repeatedly replacing 10% of the brain with fresh new brain matter is not that. With each replacement you’ll lose major chunks of yourself. Maybe not completely, the brain seems sorta holographic, but you won’t be unscathed.

    On the other hand, at least you won’t have the difficult question of whether the fancy new hardware actually supports conscious awareness and qualia.

  8. Honestly, the brain portion seems on too coarse of a scale. You’d be continually in recovery from the equivalent of a major stroke, and have near complete loss of older memories and skills by the time it was over.

    I’m not saying that some people might not prefer it to just outright dying, but it’s sure not full on immortality.

    Ideally we want to be able to replace dying brain cells on a continual basis, perhaps by introducing properly programmed stem cells. This surgical approach removes an awful lot of functional brain just to replace what’s stopped functioning.

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