2009/2/21 Stephen Paul King <[email protected]>: > > Hi Stathis, > > A question : Is is incorrect of me to infer that the psychological > criterion of personal identity discussed in Shoemaker's book and, by your > statement below, used by a predominance of members of this list is one that > treats conscious self-awareness as an epiphenomena arrising from a Classical > system and that it is, at least tacitly, assumed that quantum effects have > no supervenience upon any notion of Consciousness? > While I welcome the rejection of notion of "Souls" which are in > principle non-verifiable, could we be endulging in meaningless chatter about > computerizing consciousness if we do not first determen that consciousness > is a purely classical epiphenomena? After all we are repeatedly told that it > is the classical view of the Universe and all within it is a theory long ago > refuted.
The psychological criterion of personal identity is, or should be, agnostic on the question of how consciousness is actually generated. It says simply that if I am destroyed here and a copy of me with the same psychological properties is created there, then I will suddenly find myself there. It is possible to accept this criterion but deny that the right sort of psychological properties could be duplicated in a computer, or by any physical means at all if there is a supernatural element involved in consciousness. What I find incoherent is the idea that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul cannot be duplicated. -- 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
