On 3/7/07, Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > How do you know that you are the same person from moment to moment in > > ordinary life? The physical processes in your brain create psychological > > continuity; that is, you know you are the same person today as yesterday > > because you have the same sense of personal identity, the same memories, > > woke up in the same environment, and so on. It is necessary and > > sufficient for survival that these psychological factors are generated, > > but it doesn't matter how this is achieved. > > How so? The Many Worlds idea seems to imply that you survive no matter > what. The consequences of natural selection obtain only within worlds which > are law-like - and we're back to the white rabbit problem. You survive if a sufficiently close analogue of your mind survives. This can theoretically happen in many ways other than the obvious one (survival of your physical body): in parallel worlds, in a distant part of our own world if it is infinite in extent, in the Turing machine at the end of time. The white rabbit universes are a problem: since we don't observe them, maybe these theories are wrong, or maybe there is some other reason why we don't observe them. Stathis Papaioannou --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
