Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
> On 11 Nov 2009, at 19:52, Brent Meeker wrote:
>
>>
>> But how is the "first person point of view" defined? Can this theory
>> tell me how many persons exist at a given time?
>
>
> I come back on this. The question "how many persons?" is a question
> which remains very hard in the mechanist theory.
>
> To answer it, let me ask you a question. Suppose that old fashioned time
> travel is possible, and that Brent Meeker of the future decides to
> travel in the past, and to say hello to the younger Brent Meeker. They
> met in a kitchen and drink coffee. Nobody else is present in the
> kitchen. How many person are there in the kitchen? What would you say?
>
> I think this: if you answer one, then I will tend to say that there is
> only one person in the multiverse, but it manifests itself in different
> overlapping contexts. If you answer "two", then I will tend to say that
> there are an infinity of persons in the multiverse.
>
> What do you think?
I think closed time-like loops are probably impossible. But your answer
just points to possible equivocation on "person". The time traveling
Brent is a different person from the untraveled Brent because he has
different memories just as the 70yr old Brent is a different person than
the 10yr old Brent. But in another sense - causal continuity - they are
the same person. It isn't necessary to introduce time travel to
create this confusion of terms.
But the first part of my question was about how a "first person view" is
defined in this mathematical abstraction? What computations must my
computer perform so that it has a first person view?
Brent
The person I was when I was 3 years old is dead. He died because
too much new information was added to his brain.
-- Saibal Mitra
>
> Note that in UDA, I use a definition of first person which identify a
> person with its personal memory, and so where many different persons can
> exist.
> But in AUDA, I use a more mathematical definition which eventually
> identify all persons. Then they can differentiate through a mixture of
> amnesia (they forget that they are the "universal person"), and personal
> memories (which they will use as self-identification means).
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
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