stolen from renwick

[novapsyche]

Staying Alive: The Personal Identity Game

From their webpage:

Objective: The aim of the game is to stay alive!

How to play: There are three rounds. In each round, you will be presented with a scenario and then offered two choices. The decisions that you make determine whether you stay alive or perish. You should always base your decisions on nothing more than the desire to keep yourself in existence. Also, note that you should take each scenario presented to you at face value. The situation will be as described - there are no "tricks" - and you do not need to worry about other 'what ifs'.

At the end of the game you will discover if you have stayed alive or not, although, being a philosophical game, the answer won't be that straightforward...

Your choices are consistent with the view that the continuity of the soul is essential for personal survival. [Two of your choices] showed a desire to keep your physical body alive. Yet [one of your choices] showed a willingness to jettison this physical body in order to save your soul. So presumably, you only valued the continued existence of your body because you thought it housed the soul.

However, some would find your choices problematic. First, why does the soul seem to require an attachment to the body rather than to psychological continuity? After all, the body is ultimately dispensable. Second, the soul seems rather an empty self. It is a self that needs no thoughts, beliefs or memories to exist. It is rather a kind of immaterial home for thoughts, emotions, beliefs and so on. Do you really think the self is such a thing?

1995 out of 11602 people chose the same path through the scenarios as you.

Comments

[arjuna.livejournal.com]

well do you think the self is such a thing?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

If you'd asked me this three years ago, I would have said that there is no evidence for a soul, so one must conclude that one does not exist. Needless to say, my views have changed dramatically.

I tend to think of the psyche, not the soul--that is, I like the Greek ideal, not the modern Western one. I believe in the process of metempsychosis, that the psyche doesn't die with the body but instead instantaneously finds itself in another body. In this process, memories die, but some core part of you survives.

This is why I chose the brain disease over the silicon--the ravages of the disease didn't destroy the true self, just the "current" one. Yes, I have a strange attachment to the natural body--no silicon, no transportation of individual cells--but that's due to my own idiosyncratic superstitions (which means that I realize that my views are not consistently rational).

So... what is the soul? I don't know. I can't figure out why anything exists at all. But I can say that my belief in souls and in metempsychosis go hand in hand--I don't know if I could imagine a different system. The modern Christian view of the afterlife just doesn't make any sense to me.

[inhumandecency.livejournal.com]

I made the same choices you did. The feedback didn't convince me that my beliefs were inconsistent, but it did make me realize that I'd forgotten the rules of the game. I don't think that reincarnation involves "staying alive" in any important sense, but I do feel like preserving my personal identity isn't worth depriving the world of the benefit of a soul that was good enough to create me. I guess this indicates that I think decently highly of myself...

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Well, if you believe in reincarnation, the need to stay alive is lessened somewhat, theoretically.