2009/2/11 Jack Mallah <[email protected]>: > > --- On Tue, 2/10/09, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> wrote: >> It seems that the disagreement may be one about personal identity. It is not >> clear to me from your paper whether you accept what Derek Parfit calls the >> "reductionist" theory of personal identity. Consider the following >> experiment: >> >> There are two consecutive periods of consciousness, A and B, in which you >> are an observer in a virtual reality program. A is your experiences between >> 5:00 PM and 5:01 PM while B is your experiences between 5:01 PM and 5:02 PM, >> subjective time. A is being implemented in parallel on two computers MA1 and >> MA2, so that there are actually two qualitatively identical streams of >> consciousness which we can call A1 and A2. At the end of the subjective >> minute, data is saved to disk and both MA1 and MA2 are switched off. An >> external operator picks up a copy of the saved data, walks over to a third >> computer MB, loads the data and starts up the program. After another >> subjective minute MB is switched off and the experiment ends. >> >> As the observer you know all this information, and you look at the clock and >> see that it is 5:00 PM. What can you conclude from this and what should you >> expect? To me, it seems that you must conclude that you are currently either >> A1 or A2, and that in one minute you will be B, with 100% certainty. Would >> you say something else? > > I'd say it's a matter of definition, and there are three basic ones: > > 1) If I am A1 and will become B, then A2 has an equal right to say that he > will become B. Thus, one could say that I am the same person as A2. This is > personal fusion.
OK. > 2) If the data saved to the disk is only based on A1 (e.g. discarding any > errors that A2 might have made) then one could say that A1 is the same person > as B, while A2 is not. This is causal differentiation. Yes, but I'm assuming A1 and A2 have identical content. > 3) If I am defined as an observer-moment, then I am part of either A1 or A2, > not even the whole thing - just my current experience. This is the most > conservative definition and thus may be the least misleading. This is the way I think of it, at least provisionally. > Regardless of definitions, what will be true is that the measure of A will be > twice that of B. For example, if have not yet looked at the clock, and I > want to place a bet on what it currently reads, and my internal time sense > tells me only that about a minute has passed (so it is near 5:01, but I don't > know which side of it), then I should bet that it is before 5:01 with > effective probability 2/3. This Reflection Argument is equivalent to the > famous "Sleeping Beauty" thought experiment. But the point is, I do look at the clock and I do know that I am A, with probability 1, and therefore that I will soon be B with probability 1. This would still be the case even if the ratio of A:B were 10^100:1. There is no option for me to feel myself suspended at 5:01 PM, or other weird experiences, because the measure of A is so much greater. -- 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
