Stathis writes > I am not so sure that the standard model of personal identity with which we > are familiar would be a universal standard. Imagine intelligent beings evolved from hive insects which go through several radically different life stages, frequently share genetic information with each other like bacteria, identify self and others via pheromones which can change or be transferred to other individuals... the possibilities are endless. These beings would have an utterly alien psychology, ethics, aesthetics, and probably also an utterly alien sense of what it means to be a person, including what it means to be the same person from one life stage to another. <
Yes, I think that that is right. > However, if they were intelligent, they would come up with the same > scientific truths as us, even if they thought about them very differently, because such truths are in a fundamental sense observer-independent. < Right. > Perhaps we have reached a consensus of sorts (Brent and Lee, let me know if > you disagree): evolution has given us brains hardwired with a sense of continuity of personal identity over time for very good reasons, but it could have been otherwise, < Otherwise in the sense that if we were like insects (instead of mammals, or maybe just large primate-like creatures), yes, we might not have this lingering notion that we are the same people from day to day. And the sense that (I claim) young people have that they will not be the same people when they are old. > and it would not have been inconsistent with any logical or empirical fact > about the > world had it been otherwise. Yes, that seems so too: though no tribe of humans (or even lions, for that matter) would ever develop the notion of "day-persons" (see Mike Perry's book, Forever For All for his independent discussion of day-persons), that is indeed a contingent fact of evolution. > On the other hand, evolution has also given us brains which tend to believe > that the Earth is flat and that there is an absolute up and down in the universe, also for fairly good reasons. However, in the latter case, the received belief *is* inconsistent with empirical facts about the world. < Only inconsistent, of course, when data became available that was not available in the EEA (Environment of Early Adapteness). > This is a basic, and I think not immediately obvious, difference between > beliefs about personal identity and logical or empirical facts. < I would agree. Lee --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
