On Wed, Oct 2, 2013  Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:

>> philosophically my low-tech experiment works just as well and is just as
>> uninformative as your hi-tech version.
>>
>
> > Not at all. In your low tech (using a coin), you get an indeterminacy
> from coin throwing,
>

And the coin throw was random so you ended up in Moscow rather than
Washington for no reason at all, but that's OK because there is no law of
logic that demands every event have a cause.

> You agreed some post before, that anyone remembering having been the
> Helsinki man can consider himself rightfully as the Helsinki man
>

Agreed? I'm the one who introduced the idea to this list! And I was very
surprised that I even had to talk about such a rudimentary concept to a
bunch of people who fancy themselves philosophers.

> he has just been duplicated
>

Yes.

> and the 1p-indeterminacy comes from this.
>

Please note, if the following seems clunky it's because it contains no
pronouns, but a inelegant prose style is the price that must be payed when
writing philosophically about personal identity and duplicating chambers:

What question about personal identity is indeterminate? There is a 100%
chance that the Helsinki man will turn into the Moscow man because the
Helsinki Man saw Moscow, and a 100% chance the Helsinki Man will turn into
the Washington Man because the Helsinki Man saw Washington, and a 100%
chance that the first person view of the Helsinki Man will be a view ONLY
of Helsinki because otherwise the first person view of the Helsinki Man
would not be the first person view of the Helsinki man.

And before Bruno Marchal rebuts this by saying John Clark is confusing peas
with some other sort of peas please clearly explain exactly what question
concerning personal identity has a indeterminate answer. AND DO SO WITHOUT
USING PERSONAL PRONOUNS WITH NO CLEAR REFERENT!

>> if you change the meaning of the personal pronoun "I" you can change the
>> probability to 100% for both cities. But no matter what "I" means it will
>> always be the case that the man who sees Moscow will be the Moscow man.
>>
>
> > Sure. But this does not help to predict. As you have admitted the
> probabilistic equivalence with your low tech coin throwing
>

Who cares? I'm not interested in prediction and certainly not a prediction
about which way a coin will fall, I'm interested in the nature of personal
identity, and correct predictions have zero effect on that, exactly the
same as incorrect predictions do.

> So please, read the step 4
>

I never read step 4 of any proof unless I thoroughly understand step 3.

  John K Clark

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