On 27 Feb 2009, at 15:57, Quentin Anciaux wrote: > > > 2009/2/27 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> > > On 26 Feb 2009, at 18:41, Quentin Anciaux wrote: >> >> There is no identity without memories... makes no sense to me. > > I take it as a superficial part of identity, with respect to > surviving. Personal identity, I think is more and less than personal > memories. > By loosing memory "I" would be wounded, not dead. > > By loosing your memory, the resulting 'I' is no more the previous > 'I' and in this settings it makes no sense to talk about 'I', the > subject is not the same.
So you die with Stathis' Midazolam. > > > > >> >> >> If "I" with my memories happen to have no next moment with my >> memories... I will be dead, and no cul-de-sac is false... a next >> moment where none of your memories is left is no more a next moment. > > No memories at all? In that case some month ago I would have agreed > with you, but I have lost any certainties here. > > What is you ? By what you say, I'm as you as you are... But I can > assure you, I'm not you, and if tomorrow you wake up without your > memories but mine instead you'll be me not you anymore (and If you > have my memories you'll be rightly believe so). If I wake up with your mind correctly uploaded in my brain (if that can be made), that "I" is you, I agree. But memories here include the interpreter of those memories, in part build by those memories, but also a part which reflects the constraint "reality" leading to consistency and truth, and most probable histories. > > > > > >> >> You know it was you because you did wake up as you... > > > How could I know that? > > Because now you remember it and you are fully self aware and know > who you are. My brain can fool me completely. Like many, when training myself in lucid dream technic, I got long sequences of 'false awakenings', dreaming to wake up in cascad, each time sure to be fully aware, and "knowing who I am". Each time I think I know who I am, I realize I am wrong, yet something, never definable, survive in such changes. Now I have an identity cart, and a body, but this kind of notions will not tell you who I am really, in the sense or surviving per se, including amnesia experiences. If I lost my life memories, in the street, probably my identity cart will help a lot for surviving in practice, but it will not tell me who I am unless it happens I got the memory back. Memories are not always good, and it seems that for surviving, some people have to forget, to develop partial amnesia. Collectivity can develop amnesia. The "I" is the "I" which survives those possible amnesia, as difficult as such an idea can be. In the second season of "the heroes", amnesia is used as torture, indeed. > > > > > >> you didn't know inside the dream... > > > This is Maury's conception of dream. I doubt it a lot, and consider > it refuted by the work of Laberge and Dement (and Hearne) on lucid > dreaming. > > > Well... I had once what is call a "lucid" dream... but I knew I was > somehow "conscious" only when I was able to recollect it (when I > woke up)... I don't know if I could ascribe meaning to say I was > really conscious during the dream. > > > > >> note that I'm not even sure we have of sense of self while dreaming, > > > OK, here I disagree rather strongly. > > > What could prove that wrong ? In the state of dream you are paralyzed and hallucinating, except for your eyes muscles. When well prepared in specific lucid state dreaming, having the REM waves and being paralyzed, some lucid dreamers can communicate with the people in the environment (of the bed). The activity in the cortex is mainly the same as in the one of a brain by someone being awake, except from cerebral stem perturbation providing inputs to the dream (making sometimes hard for the subject to maintain the lucidity. I would say the experience of Dement, Laberge and followers makes you, not wrong, but hardly plausible. In "conscience and méchanism" I show that Malcolm's argument against mechanism are deeply related to his arguments against consciousness in dreams. (All references are in the general bibliography of C & M.) > > > > > >> I accept we have it during a recollection of the dream. > > > Personal identity is indeed related to recollection of some memory, > even in awaked state. Yet I do distinguish dying and forgetting. > > > Well I don't differentiate forgetting everything and dying... result > is the same. I am not sure. It could depend on the forgetting path. > > > > > >> >> >> >> Memories, like body and brain are things we possess, and this >> means, I think, that we can still survive without them. >> >> I think not. >> >> >> Suppose that I die tomorrow, and that sometimes after someone find >> a backup of "me" at the age of five, so that "I" am reconstituted >> from that backup. Would you say I am dead, or would you say that I >> have survived, only with a severe sort of amnesy ? >> >> You will be dead. > > Gosh! And what if the backup has been done last year, or one minute > ago? I will be dead too? Less dead? > > Best regards, > > Bruno > > Well a backup of one minute ago is nearer to your you now... And in > a sense I could say you survive 'at least a very actual near you did'. > > My current 'I' is the past of an "infinity" of futur 'I' where all > these 'I' having as past my current 'I' have all the right to say > they were me... But one of these 'I' which was differentiated of the > others 'I' cannot claim that the others 'I's are valid > continuation... They are not. If the memory is "I met my girl friend", I will make a backup. If my memory is "My girl friend leaves me", I could well be able to forget making a backup. The natural brain does already things like that. It is bad, but necessary in some situations. > > > What I care to continue is 'I', meaning my knowledge, my memories, > my name, what I've done, who I did know... If it dissappears then > it's plain death. I think comp could imply the existence of an agnosologic path, where you loose each memory bit a bit, without ever noticing anything. Consciousness is a sort of invariant, personal identities is a personal matter on which comp per se will say nothing, except for showing the non triviality of the most basic beliefs (addition, multiplication) making possible self-reference, and showing the price of universality (we can be wrong, we can be fooled). Those incompatibilities will lead to different computationalist practices, in the long future. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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