I comment a Post by Stathis addressed to Lee and I end up with a question to Hal.
Le 24-juin-06, à 15:01, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
<x-tad-bigger>Lee,</x-tad-bigger>
<x-tad-bigger> </x-tad-bigger>
<x-tad-bigger> It’s perhaps unfortunate that we are arguing about this because I think we basically agree on what Derek Parfit has called a reductionist theory of personal identity (in his 1984 book “Reasons and Persons”; apparently “reductionist” was not in wide use as a term of abuse back then). I like to emphasize the instantaneous or granular nature of personhood not because we literally die and are resurrected every moment, as those words are commonly understood, but because it would make no significant difference to our stream of consciousness or sense of self if in fact this were the case. Although in our experience the sequence of mental states making up an individual’s stream of consciousness always occur in the one brain, the brain does not provide any special “glue” joining the mental states together, and no such joining is necessary. Two or more mental states are experienced as part of the one stream of consciousness if their content is related in a particular way, like elements in a set. How, where and when the mental states are implemented is irrelevant and unknowable from a first person perspective, unless it actually affects the content of the mental states.</x-tad-bigger>
<x-tad-bigger> </x-tad-bigger>
<x-tad-bigger> Hal Finney in his recent thread on teleportation thought experiments disagrees with the above view. He suggests that it is possible for a subject to apparently undergo successful teleportation, in that the individual walking out of the receiving station has all the appropriate mental and physical attributes in common with the individual entering the transmitting station, but in reality not survive the procedure. I have difficulty understanding this, as it seems to me that the subject has survived by definition.</x-tad-bigger>
I mainly agree with you but I would not have ended with "by definition". I would have mentionned instead the comp *assumption* and perhaps also the serendipitously good choice of the correct level of substitution.
Froma logical point of view it is consistent (possible) that the one reconstituted is a zombie (although this would contradict comp or the choice of the level).
Comp itself cannot be proved but what can be proved is that IF comp is correct then comp cannot be proved, necessarily. So we have, somehow, to be open to non-comp beliefs.
Put in another way: if you survive when saying YES to the doctor, you have to respect those who say NO to the doctor (unless you have bad intentions of course or are ignorant).
Parfit has not see this, and that is why he dares to qualify (a bit provocatively I would say) his identity theory as a reductionist theory, or "the reductionist theory". With comp (when made explicit) Parfit's theory is mainly correct except on two points:
1) What I have just said: the theory is not reductionist---It is the contrary: it provides (by diagonalizations!) many vaccine against many form of reductionism. After dinner ;) I could even go as far as to say it gives a path toward that Unconceivable Freedom described by some mystic like Vimalakirti!
2) We are type, not token. There is no physical token. (with comp). Parfit thinks we are token. I have not the Parfit under the hand, I will give you the pages later. I don't think there are any mathematical token either. It looks like Parfit makes us token for avoiding immortality at the start.
To sum up, Hal Finney seemed to me coherent, giving that in its recent post he admits questioning comp. It is less clear for me how he can still use Kolmogorov complexity (a computer science notion), but still, logically that could make sense, perhaps through some Powerful Oracle resource (actual infinity of highly uncomputable information). I don't know. Hal?
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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