On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
> >> if you duplicated the entire city of Washington and sent one Bruno >> Marchal to Washington1 and the other Bruno Marchal to Washington2 then >> there would only be one Bruno Marchal having a Washington experience. >> > > > No problem with that. > I'm glad to hear you say that but then it's even more mysterious that you can't extrapolate that fact to its logical conclusion. When the start button is pushed on that duplicating machine your brain and body may have been instantly duplicated but "you", the first person perspective, has not been and will not be until there is something in the environment in Washington that makes a change to one of your sense organs that is missing in the environment of Moscow; only then, when there is a difference between the two, is your first person perspective split and it's meaningless to ask which one is "really" you. So "first person indeterminacy" is entirely the result of the fact that Washington and Moscow happen to be not identical, if they were there would be no differentiation of perspective regardless of how many brains and bodies there were. So "first person indeterminacy" is functionally equivalent to "the environment is changeable and unpredictable" and the idea can bring no enlightenment into the nature of personal identity or consciousness. > I can duplicate you in two closed little rooms. In step 6 you are > duplicated on a chip. The unpredictable nature of the place where the > reconstitution are done is irrelevant > If the two closed rooms are identical then its irrelevant where the rooms are, but if the rooms are identical then the first person perspective that you're so concerned about (me too) has NOT been duplicated. > With comp you know in advance that in the duplication experience, your > 1-pov will remain unique > Forget "comp", from simple logic you know that your first person point of view will remain unique. If 2 things have the same first person point of view then there is only one first person point of view and so it remains unique; and if 2 things have a different first person point of view then each one remains unique because it's different from anything else. OK I admit that's not very profound, but unlike most theories in philosophies tautologies do have the virtue of being true. >> No matter what diary entry I come up with you keep saying it would not >> disprove your theory because of blah blah point of view blah blah, so I >> want you to tell me exactly what diary entry WOULD disprove your theory? >> > > > I will feel to be in W. Confirmed by the guy in W, but disproved by the > guy in M. I want to be certain I understand, you seem to be saying that if before the experiment the subject had written in his diary "I will feel like I'm in Washington and only Washington" and had written nothing else, and then after the experiment you had interviewed the subject in Moscow and he said "I feel like I'm in Moscow and only Moscow" then you would concede that your theory of first person indeterminacy is incorrect. I could be wrong but I have a feeling if that had happened you would not make such a concession, if so then please state precisely what diary entry WOULD disprove your theory. If there is no hypothetical experimental result that can disprove your theory then it predicts nothing because it predicts everything and is not science. > > The 1-indeterminacy is not a theory, it is a theorem in the theory comp. > A theorem is a statement that has been proven from OTHER statements, but in one important step in your proof of "1-indeterminacy" you assume "1-indeterminacy". John K Clark -- 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.
