On 23 January 2014 08:39, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: Let us take the WM-duplication. Suppose that the guy in Helsinki is told > that the "randomly chosen unique flaslight sequence will illuminate W > "just" after the duplication (if this makes sense). Should he decide that > P(W) = 1 and P(M) = 0? Is the guy in M, which exists (even with just > Behavior Mechanism), a zombie? >
Oh dear no, that makes no sense whatsoever. I would humbly suggest that this is not at all how Hoyle intended his metaphor to be applied. In my understanding, his idea bears rather on the specific question of "personal universality". IOW, in what sense, if any, can we intelligibly conceive of consciousness as the "property" of some unique, universal person (as, for example, in Hindu or Buddhist theology)? Let us assume that we are to understand "person" in the sense of the "owner" of some *particular*logical ordering of conscious moments. Then, if the idea of a "universal person" is to be made intelligible in some way, it should be as the owner of *all possible* logical orderings of conscious moments. If that be so, the question then arises: How to make sense of the experience of such a universal person? What could it possibly be "like"? If Hoyle's metaphor, or heuristic, is considered in this way, it should I hope be apparent that it is not any sort of proposal for a "second time dimension" or indeed any kind of additional "machinery". That it is not the former should be manifest in that the "flashlight" is merely one possible metaphor for the unique consideration of a logical sequence of particularised moments, each to the exclusion of any other. It is redundant - nor does it make any sense - to think of a mere heuristic of this sort as necessarily introducing any supplementary or independent properties of duration, rate or order. Its role is rather to assist us in making some sort of intuitive sense of something that is no doubt much deeper and more complex, without (hopefully) doing it irreparable violence. The mental picture of the logical sequence of the flashlight's random walk should suggest or entail no characteristic other than the "momentary" filtering out of a *single* perspective. Filtered, that is, from the otherwise "panoptic" view that we should presumably attribute to a universal personhood. The question then arises: Could the intuition of such a "multiplex" of random momentary filterings possibly give an adequate account of the myriad, ordered experiential trajectories of each and every one of "us"? Hoyle's answer, simpliciter, is yes it could. If that be so, it perhaps becomes at least intelligible to reconsider some of our favourite thought experiments as, so to speak, the interleaved "dreams" of a *single* solipsistic multiple-personality. Such an attempt, I suggest, while often bringing forth exceedingly puzzling questions in itself, can sometimes resolve apparent paradoxes (especially those related to identity) or at least offer some interesting nuances. I know we have discussed these ideas before and each time I have proposed them to you in more or less the same terms as I have just recapitulated. However your question, quoted above, gives me pause that I have as yet failed to communicate the real gist and point while at the same time succeeding in attaching additional, unintended baggage. Nonetheless I don't think we're necessarily too far apart. ISTM that Hoyle's idea must rely on the opacity of 1p "personal history" to delay, suspension, etc. in the 3p view, that you argue for in UDA 1-6. Where he goes a step further is to generalise this to a "universalist" perspective (which hasn't been, I assume, any part your own professional goal in this regard), relying on the intuition that no moment is ever simultaneous with any other moment: not "yours", not "mine". "You" and "me" can then be understood as mere proxies for a deeper unification. This might lead us to the remarkable intuition that the universal first-person can indeed be understood in terms of a *unique* first-personal serialisation. That in turn might lead us to wonder what other "proxies", with whom we may bear some relation, may be experiencing whilst we are "suspended". And so forth and so on. Though I am tempted to provide a more specific rejoinder to your question above, I hope that it may now succeed in answering itself in the light of the foregoing points. If so, we might find ourselves better able to consider some of the more "intriguing" consequences I had in mind. David David -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
