On 6 July 2012 10:27, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote: *In which structure is that relative-frequency defined, and to whom does it apply? How can we verify it?* * *
The structure, if you like, is the total state of knowledge of the "knower" (as you have characterised it in a post to Brent) which ex hypothesi must embrace all possible occasions of sentience. Each such occasion is here conceived as a set of spatio-temporal relations in the context of a particular personal history. Taken as a whole the structure is of course timeless and eternal. Hoyle's heuristic is then simply a way of thinking about this structure such that occasions are given (i.e. from the pov of the knower) in proportion to their measure, in mutually exclusive succession. Hence the intrinsic spatio-temporal relations of the substrate are conceived as unfolding experientially in the form of the myriad personal histories. It's a way of rationalising the experiential dynamic, if you like, from the pov of a universal knower, which as you yourself point out, cannot be an arithmetical, or indeed a physical, notion. You ask me how this could be tested; since it is a way of thinking, rather than a theory, the only relevant test is whatever power it may possess to reduce confusion and enhance conceptual clarity. I became particularly aware of this when reading some of the posts about jumping and backtracking, etc. When we reason about some divergence of "my future moments" in copying scenarios it is perfectly natural of course to relativise these to my personal history as given, without consideration that the relevant reference class might be any broader. Furthermore, since our reasoning here seems naturally to "follow" the spatio-temporal evolution of some underlying "real system" (as Bitbol calls it), it does not seem relevant to distinguish the logico-physical relations of next or prior from the bare notion of succession itself. Real problems of coherency in this way of thinking emerge, however, when we begin to consider "future moments" of low intrinsic measure, such as in quantum suicide scenarios, or extreme threats to conscious survival. At this point, we seek to avoid cul-de-sacs or occasions of extreme improbability by resorting to notions of jumping or backtracking referred to a particular personal identity, or even in extreme cases the idea of merging with the infant consciousness of a different identity entirely. But here we are no longer following - or at the very least least are forced to undertake highly non-standard excursions within - the real system. This reaches perhaps its reductio ad absurdum in Saibal Mitra's treatment of memory erasure scenarios. He is forced by this mode of reasoning to speculate, for example, that the "you" that "escapes" disaster by memory erasure has "swapped histories" with another "you" that would otherwise have avoided it! It is interesting to speculate how one would test, or even recognise, *this* eventuality! It should, I hope, be obvious that all of the above incoherencies can be resolved quite simply by adopting the heuristic under discussion. The structure under consideration, as I have said, is the total state of knowledge of the knower; all possible occasions of sentience, duly distributed amongst distinguishable personal histories in due measure, exist within it. All that is required, conceptually, is to make explicit the experiential notion of the mutually-exclusive succession of occasions of sentience; all relativisation of personal identity and past-future relations are referred to those aspects of the substrate associated with a given occasion. There is no suggestion of prior or next in the bare notion of experiential succession; no extrinsic ordering whatsoever is implied. The logical consequence is that *all* notions of personal history are referred to a singular point-of-view: that of the knower. "I" am fundamentally that knower, and the knowledge successively recoverable from occasions of sentience is what informs me of who, where, when, and relative to what, I am on any given occasion. David -- 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.
