tanithryudo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tanithryudo) wrote2023-09-28 06:40 pm
tanithryudo) wrote2023-09-28 06:40 pm
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The Xianzhou definition of soul
Been reading a lot fics and stuff in the Star Rail genre lately, mostly centered around Dan Heng. Naturally, non-AU stories will have to deal with the special brand of reincarnation that the Vidyadhara possess, and whether/how much he is his previous incarnation or not.
Anyway, in the interests of keeping my lore straight, I went back into the game (or the wiki for the game) to get some first more first hand observations by the native Xianzhou citizens on their views of the soul and the self...
From the quest A Teacher and a Friend: Continued
Qingque: According to a book I flipped through at the repository of Divination Commission, life on Xianzhou doesn't end in a strict sense...
Qingque: When someone's life is on the brink of death - for example, when they become mara-struck - judge of the Ten-Lords Commission will bring them away and send their soul to the Hall of Karma.
--> What do you mean by their soul?
--- Qingque: The fact that you're an Outworlder has slipped my mind just now. Let me put it this way - the judge will make a copy of the person's consciousness. Got it now?
Qingque: According to what you said, Master Ryan passed away alone on Xianzhou without any relatives or friends taking care of his funeral. In that case, his soul - which is the data of his consciousness - should be stored in the Hall of Karma.
Xueyi: Your master has been dead for more than a century. Therefore, the master diviner will need to locate your master using the Matrix of Prescience to bring him out from the depth of the Hall of Karma.
Fu Xuan: Leave it to me.
Xueyi: Besides, the deceased don't have a physical body. To allow your master to speak, he'll need to possess an ingenium body like me. Please get it ready as soon as possible.
Chengjie: S-Sure... I've brought the aurumaton over here.
You: Are they really human souls in the Hall of Karma?
Fu Xuan: If you perceive your continued existence as the same one, then what is inside the Hall of Karma is the souls.
Fu Xuan: But for travelers, this is just something that carries information and a mark left behind by an artificial body.
You: Why do you have the power to do these things?
Xueyi: As a judge, my body is connected to the Hall of Karma. I wouldn't be a proper judge if I was unable to collect souls and decide on karmic consequences.
You: Let's get started.
Xueyi: The wandering soul in a deep slumber, please wake up and possess the body!
So here, a digital mind upload = soul.
The fact that it's a *copy* of consciousness doesn't even require uniqueness! At the time of copying and before the original person dies, is both the person and the copy the same soul?
Anyway, all this just means that according to Xianzhou law & governance, at least, what makes a person that particular person is just the data of one's mind.
What is the data of a mind upload? I would say memories plus the current state of thought/emotion.
But wouldn't that imply that this is in agreement with the Vidyadhara treatment of "rebirth" being a new person, because the memories are wiped even if the physical body is still the same. I mean, essentially the rebirth just does a format of the body's hard drive. Even if some bits and bytes might be left over and potentially recoverable, they are soon enough overwritten by entirely new data.
And if so, that just makes the fact that Dan Heng was still imprisoned for 1-2 centuries after rebirth due to his previous incarnation's crimes to be "unjust" even by Xianzhou's own legal/philosophical systems.
Of course, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. No matter what the laws say, the Xianzhou is supposed to be a culturally chinese society. And chinese society does have a saying for "父债子偿".
Anyway, in the interests of keeping my lore straight, I went back into the game (or the wiki for the game) to get some first more first hand observations by the native Xianzhou citizens on their views of the soul and the self...
From the quest A Teacher and a Friend: Continued
Qingque: According to a book I flipped through at the repository of Divination Commission, life on Xianzhou doesn't end in a strict sense...
Qingque: When someone's life is on the brink of death - for example, when they become mara-struck - judge of the Ten-Lords Commission will bring them away and send their soul to the Hall of Karma.
--> What do you mean by their soul?
--- Qingque: The fact that you're an Outworlder has slipped my mind just now. Let me put it this way - the judge will make a copy of the person's consciousness. Got it now?
Qingque: According to what you said, Master Ryan passed away alone on Xianzhou without any relatives or friends taking care of his funeral. In that case, his soul - which is the data of his consciousness - should be stored in the Hall of Karma.
Xueyi: Your master has been dead for more than a century. Therefore, the master diviner will need to locate your master using the Matrix of Prescience to bring him out from the depth of the Hall of Karma.
Fu Xuan: Leave it to me.
Xueyi: Besides, the deceased don't have a physical body. To allow your master to speak, he'll need to possess an ingenium body like me. Please get it ready as soon as possible.
Chengjie: S-Sure... I've brought the aurumaton over here.
You: Are they really human souls in the Hall of Karma?
Fu Xuan: If you perceive your continued existence as the same one, then what is inside the Hall of Karma is the souls.
Fu Xuan: But for travelers, this is just something that carries information and a mark left behind by an artificial body.
You: Why do you have the power to do these things?
Xueyi: As a judge, my body is connected to the Hall of Karma. I wouldn't be a proper judge if I was unable to collect souls and decide on karmic consequences.
You: Let's get started.
Xueyi: The wandering soul in a deep slumber, please wake up and possess the body!
So here, a digital mind upload = soul.
The fact that it's a *copy* of consciousness doesn't even require uniqueness! At the time of copying and before the original person dies, is both the person and the copy the same soul?
Anyway, all this just means that according to Xianzhou law & governance, at least, what makes a person that particular person is just the data of one's mind.
What is the data of a mind upload? I would say memories plus the current state of thought/emotion.
But wouldn't that imply that this is in agreement with the Vidyadhara treatment of "rebirth" being a new person, because the memories are wiped even if the physical body is still the same. I mean, essentially the rebirth just does a format of the body's hard drive. Even if some bits and bytes might be left over and potentially recoverable, they are soon enough overwritten by entirely new data.
And if so, that just makes the fact that Dan Heng was still imprisoned for 1-2 centuries after rebirth due to his previous incarnation's crimes to be "unjust" even by Xianzhou's own legal/philosophical systems.
Of course, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. No matter what the laws say, the Xianzhou is supposed to be a culturally chinese society. And chinese society does have a saying for "父债子偿".
no subject
On a biological/psychological level, even if you upload the entirety of the brain into the cloud, the copy is still different from the original simply because of the hardware difference and consequent later experiences. First, we have no idea how a brain reacts to the non-organic environment. Second, even placed into an organic environment, if the body isn't an exact clone with the exact amount of hormones floating around in the cerebral spinal fluid, the brain is still going to make different decisions based on differing neurotransmitters feeding the neurons. And third, even assuming the same data with an exact clone of the biological environment, there's still the inability to keep the perspective the same (aka the consequential future stimulus input), so at the very least from the point of cloning, the two consciousness have already moved in different directions.
And that's my long winded way of saying I don't think the copy can be considered a continuation of the original.
Then there's the entire legal perspective of whether the punishment is justifiable even if it is the same person. Not a lawyer, but am pretty sure "culture" and "tradition" aren't justifiable for sentencing. Even in ancient Chinese society, there's pretty tight regulations for how long you can put someone in prison for whatever the offense (ignoring the corruption that allows the sentence to keep getting longer and stuff), if nothing else then for the fact that running a prison is expensive and keeping too many prisoners around is asking for expenditures that the treasury can't afford. Even if you treat prisoners like shit, you still have to pay the guards...