This post is, roughly, a response to an old post by the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel about the choices we would have for our memories if we lived forever. He concludes that post with "Either amnesic infinite repetition or a limitless range of unfathomable alien weirdness. Those appear to be the choices." He puts the argument well, and it is a pretty easy read.
Now, heaven puts us in this exact situation: we expect to live forever, and we expect to remember it all. This premise excludes "amnesiac infinite repetition," leaving "a limitless range of unfathomable alien weirdness."
Amnesiac infinite repetition (henceforth: AIR) results from the universe having a finite number o possible states. Finite number of possible states results from having a finite amount of stuff, which can thus be arranged in a finite number of ways. Limitless range of unfathomable alien weirdness (LRUAW) results from denying AIR: if there is not a finite amount of stuff, then there is an infinite amount of stuff, thus put together in an infinite number of ways, and those ways must gradually diverge from normal.
It might seem that we can dodge LRUAW by supposing we merely increase the number of atoms of recognized kinds. This keeps the universe from repeating, but it does not help our experiences from repeating. Assuming the range of our senses stays the same, the area in which the non-repetition of states matters is an area centered on us with a range equal to that of our longest range sense. It also requires the potential states of our brains to not repeat, and thus our brains will have to grow to immense sizes over time.
A Christian might accept LRUAW, noting that we will be ever increasing in our knowledge of God, who is infinite and thus inexhaustible. The alien weirdness will be, at least in part, God's. So alien weirdness is not, per se, a problem. It is actually part of what Christians claim heaven will involve.
But we still have to deal with the expanding brain problem. The obvious solution would be to hold that our memories will not rely on neural connections but on our souls. This is logically possible, but falls afoul of views I hold about how we should extrapolate from our current situation to heaven. That is, in heaven, we will have resurrected human bodies, and these bodies will work as our current ones were meant to work, albeit perhaps ratcheted up a bit. That is, our resurrected bodies will operate on the same principles as our current ones, but in sanctified and perfected form. Currently, memories require neural connections, thus our memories in heaven will require neural connections.
The number of neural connections needed will approach infinity very slowly over time. It does not matter how slowly they increase, however, since we will have forever. The only way I can see to solve this problem is to conjecture that we will offload memories from our brains onto something external to ourselves. So, here are two offloading proposals.
First, it may be that we can store ever-expanding brains off-site. Perhaps our entire brains or only part of them. There need be no problems with resurrection brains taking over, since God can create extra space for the brains. The offsite brains might be able to communicate with our onsite bodies via whatever science fiction mechanism or divine assistance one likes. A variation on this would use a silicone mainframe to replace our offsite brains.
Second, we might simply purge some of our memories every now and then. Since God has them at his disposal, being omniscient, we can re-access them from him whenever we and he pleases. Perhaps we might even be able to share processing power with God or each other, allowing us to hold more in our own working memory than before (as many of us hope).
Both of these solutions are a little weird. Either one, however, solves the problem of ever-expanding brains for ever-expanding memories. There may be other solutions, but I am at least satisfied that I have provided a defense against the objection.
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