On 26 Mar 2014, at 04:44, LizR wrote:
On 26 March 2014 16:30, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 3/25/2014 8:18 PM, LizR wrote:
On 26 March 2014 15:52, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
On 3/25/2014 6:52 PM, Joseph Knight wrote:
It is trivially a theorem of COMP, since the existence of such a
substitution level is the COMP axiom itself. If COMP is true, then
the substitution level is unknowable (although it can be honed in
upon scientifically).
I have trouble with this. How would you know if your consciousness
were different after the substitution? I generally don't know why
thought A comes to me instead of thought B. I can see that after
the substitution you could ask your friends if you seemed different
and you could compare your remembered past actions and feelings to
present ones in similar circumstances; but it seems to me it would
be impossible to say with any confidence that you had "survived" as
a stream of consciousness. If your friends said to acted similar
to before, maybe a little different, couldn't it be with quite
rather different internal narrative - just as a good actor could
pretend and act like you.
This is a general problem - how do you know you're the same person
who went to sleep last night, the same person who joined the
everything list a year or two ago, etc?
You don't, of course, as Heraclitus (and "Memento") have pointed
out. You only have memories of being those people, and what feels
like a sense of continuity. But a Fred Hoyle style "pigeonhole"
theory of identity would claim that all you can really say is that
you exist at this moment, with the memories attached to this moment
giving evidence for everything else. A reasonable hypothesis is
that these memories relate to other moments that have occurred, and
that this has something to do with the presumed physical continuity
of the person who you see in your bathroom mirror. However, if you
accept the assumptions of either comp or "Frank Tipler style
quantum state immortailty" (I must think of a better name for that)
then your person moment to moment continuity is of exactly the same
nature as your comp duplication or your jumping from one copy to
another across a googolplex lightyears.
But if it's *exactly the same* then it *is* the same.
As usual that isn't a "but" because that's just what I was saying.
That is, I said that the "continuity is of exactly the same
nature" (not that the states were the same - in fact the states are
successor states, as I mentioned - which is something assumed to
exist but still to be defined).
I think that the successor states are well defined, in the 3p view,
and i the 1p view too, even if the domain of the 1p indeterlinacy is a
complex and highly non constructive notion.
Bruno
There is no reason to distinguish them. Distance is a relation
and there's no distance between *indentities*. So if I have a
perfect illusion of my continuity as a body and person, in what
sense can it be said to be an illusion. An illusion of what?
YOu're the one saying it's an illusion so you tell me.
That seems to be just "gee-whiz" mystery mongering.
Uh huh.
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