Hi Kim, You have accepted the artificial digital brain. This means that you say "yes" to the doctor who proposes to you an artificial digital brain. You are thus obviously open to the idea that the MEC hypothesis in the cognitive science could be correct. Indeed, perhaps you believe it *has* to be correct, but I will have opportunity to raise doubt about that certainty.
From now on, we will always suppose MEC is correct. We will work in that theory. We are just searching the consequences. In case we arrive to a frank contradiction, we can say that we have refuted the MEC theory. If we arrive to weird conclusions only, we have to accept that MEC entails those weird conclusions (and we can begin to doubt MEC, or to look in Nature if that weirdness is confirmed or falsified, etc.). "KIM 2" is really the "2)" of the plan. See below(*) I propose to proceed by little steps, under the form of questions. MEC is correct (by assumption). This makes the following thought experiment possible. You get a new job, but the job is located on the planet Mars, and for personal reasons you want to continue your night life on Earth (say). No problem, MEC makes possible to scan you, at the right level of description (or below), to annihilate you (let us say this is a legal obligation), to send the scanned information (containing the plan of your body, including the plan of your brain in its instantaneous state) to the planet mars (using some laser, radio waves) where there is a receptor and a reconstitution machine, which using the atoms in the martian neighborhood (re)build yourself in the relevant state, which, by construction, is really the state of your body 4m before on earth. (4m, because light takes four minutes to travel from Earth to Mars, as you surely know). I assume very short scanning-annihilation times and short receipting- reconstitution times. Hypotheses like that, or like the fact that your "generalized" brain is in your skull, will be eliminated explicitly later. The role of those hypotheses consists only in making the reasoning more easy. I assume all the usual default hypotheses: everything works fine. No bugs in the scanning and reconstitution processes, no asteroid hurting mars. The substitution level has been correctly bet, and it exists, by the MEC assumption. All right? The first question is: do you accept the job on mars, knowing that you will be obliged to use this teleportation machinery every morning and evening. I assume of course that you are interested in that job, ... Yes or no? (or comments, questions, precisions, etc.) Put in another way, do you agree that if we assume MEC and the default hypotheses, teleportation like this is a safe mean for transporting oneself. Here are slight variants of the same question which will be useful later. I suppose you, Kim, are doing the teleportation, and that I, Bruno, remains on Earth during that time. Both Kim and Bruno assumes MEC and the default assumptions. On Sunday, you are on Earth, Monday your job on Mars begins. Is is true that: -On Sunday, Kim believes he will find himself tomorrow on Mars. i.e. On Sunday, Kim believes "Tomorrow, I will find myself on Mars" -On Sunday, Kim believes he will be, tomorrow, on Mars. i.e. On Sunday, Kim believes "Tomorrow, I will be on Mars" -On Sunday , Bruno believes that tomorrow Kim will be on Mars. -On Sunday, Bruno believes that tomorrow Kim will find himself on Mars. -On Monday, Bruno and Kim believes that now Kim is on the planet Mars. -On Monday, Kim feels himself to be now on planet Mars. What do you say? Bruno (*) the plan was: A) UDA (Universal Dovetailer Argument) 1) I explain that if you are a machine, you are already immaterial. 2) Mechanism entails the existence of a subjective or first person indeterminacy or uncertainty. 3) The Universal Machine, the Universal Dovetailer and the reversal physics/bio-psycho-theo-whatever-logy. B) AUDA (Arithmetical or Abstract Universal Dovetailer Argument). 1) Ontology: Robinson Arithmetic 2) Epistemology: Peano Arithmetic 3) Arithmetical Interpretation of Plotinus (including Plotinus theory of Matter). ----------------------------------------------------------------- http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
