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- Embed this noticeyeah, we agree as to the existence of such things, but not about its uniqueness, both WRT species (or even genus), and WRT individuals
part of the complication is the separation between brain and mind; another part is that we can look at things in different scales, and they may seem inexplicably different at different scales (hoffstadter has great imagery about that), but my earlier point about multiplicity/uniqueness hinges a bit on these issues. different parts of our brains have different specializations, so it might be defensible to qualify them as separate organs, or as a single organ with different parts, just as we can look at our bodies and perceive different organs or a single organism. analogously, minds can probably be decomposed into, erhm, components, that may operate jointly or independently, and be perceived as separate entities or as a single entity, depending on scale and perceptions. hoffstadter also offers some an interesting thought experiment about a mind physically separated from the body, but still controlling it remotely, and then (spoiler follows) cloned exactly, and how they both remain one and the same, operating in perfect unison, until they perceive themselves as separate minds, at which point they diverge and start struggling against each other for exclusive control over the body. I find that experiment fascinating.