Until we recognize the role of perception in terms like 'identical' and 'equal', we cannot make sensible predictions about duplication or emulation. Because we have, through science, encountered truths which contradict our naive realism, we have assumed now that those truths are final, and that viewing our native perception through this reflection produces a new class of unquestioned assumptions about the limits of our own perception.
We assume that since two rooms in different parts of the world appear 'identical' to us visually, that there is no way for someone who wakes up in one room to know that they are not in the other. My position is that vision is only one channel of sense that we can be conscious of. We already know that we experience a synergistic effect from our multiple sense organs and sense channels (the visual quality of depth would not likely be anticipated from the fact of our stereo eyes - just as we might assume that insects with compound eyes experience multiple images rather than a single wholistic image with multiplicity of fixed options for intentional focus). There may be many sense channels which are subconscious to most of us most of the time, but impact our consciousness nonetheless. www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v2/n6/full/ncomms1364.html http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/news/item/7322632/The+Emotional+Oracle+Effect?&layout=cbs_print&top.region=main I would guess that a person who had no reason to believe that they had been knocked unconscious or moved to a different room could not be sure that they were moved, but I think that a thorough physiological exam there is very likely to be a difference in how some parts of the brain behave. A twin in Moscow and a twin in Honolulu may very well be able to track their own position on Earth. Even something like elevation would make an obvious difference, even in a windowless, humidity controlled room. Ideas of 'identical' are, I think pretty obviously, a function of our own perceptual limitation. Nothing can be truly identical because all events occur in a unique spacetime context relative to the rest of the universe. An event can only be 'duplicated' or 'repeated' to the extent that our memory and pattern recognition are satisfied that we can't tell the difference right away. Perceptual equivalence, however, is not existential equivalence, and in the most all-encompassing terms, equivalence itself can only be a pattern which is recognized from a particular perspective and scale, and set of detection- participation capacities. Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
