On 28 Jan 2010, at 20:27, RMahoney wrote:
On Jan 8, 12:38 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
Welcome RMahoney,
Nice thought experiments. But they need amnesia (like in going from
you to Cruise). I tend to think like you that it may be the case that
we are the same person (like those who result from a self-
duplication, both refer as being the same person as the original,
yet
acknowledge their respective differentiation.
Yes I think I understand what you mean by amnesia, you couldn't
carry any rememberance of your old self when changing to Tom Cruise,
but you would in the intermediary steps and gradually would lose the
concept of your old self that is gradually replaced by Tom's self
concept.
OK.
I think there is an "agnosologic" path from any "person" to any
"person", for example from you to a bacteria, or Peano Arithmetic,
perhaps even the "empty person". Agnosia is a term used for disease
with deny, like people who become blind and pretend not having
perceive any difference.
Thing is, it is very similar to the process happening as we age. I
began
a journal when I was in my 20's, capturing my thoughts every time I
visited this subject in my "mind trips". So when I read a page from
that
journal today, I sometimes go "wow, I was thinking that, then?" I've
obviously acquired a bit of amnesia. Yet I feel like I'm the same
person
because I've always had this body (although an aging body). What
would
it be like if everyone had default amnesia such that any thought
older
than 20 years is erased? So you wouldn't remember your earlier years
but you were that person once. I could claim to have originated from
Tom Cruise's childhood and it wouldn't make any difference.
Sure. From a third person point of view identity is relative.
But from a first person point of view it is a sort of absolute related
to the way you have build your (current) self through your experiences
and inheritage relatively to a normal set of computations. We are what
we value, I would say, but this makes it a personal question.
Note that the uda reasoning is made in a way which prevents the need
for clarifying those considerations, albeit very interesting.
Just like
I don't believe it makes any difference to say why I am I? and not
you?,
as we are we, simultaneously, and we are they, all those who lived
past lives, etc.
... and future lives, alternate lives, and states.
OK, especially if you see that such a view prevent relativism. When
the 'other' makes a mistake, in the past, or the present, (or the
future!) the question is how could *I* be wrong, how could *I* have
been wrong, how could *I* help for being less wrong. Such an attitude
encourages the dialog and the appreciation of the "other(s)", despite
(or thanks to) its relative unknown nature. Eventually this can help
to develop some faith in the unknown, together with the lucidity on
the hellish paths, which can then be seen as mostly the product of
certainty idolatry, and security idolatry. It is a natural price of
consciousness: by knowing they are universal, Lobian machine know that
they can crash. And being never satisfied, they will complain for more
memory space and time to their most probable local universal
neighbors, up, for some, to their universal recognizance, and so quite
happy to dispose of what 'God' (arithmetical truth) can offer them
(and has already offer them).
Knowing you are the other is a reason to embellish the relation with
the many possible and probable universal neighbor(s). The
computationalist good cannot make the bad disappears, but it may be
able to confine it more and more in the phantasms and fantasies, or
second order, virtual, dreamed realities.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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