On 15 May 2014 13:43, Dennis Ochei <[email protected]> wrote: > You can still care if you die normally but something like the swampman > thought experiment is just as good as ordinary survival under Parfit's > view, which a reductionist I feel is forced to accept. You care that you > keep experiencing but there is no self to be found that persists. > Destructive uploading or teletransportation preserve everything worth > preserving. That you are what once was is purely an illusion. Naive closed > individualism reveals itself as deeply flawed when subjected to thought > experiments.Unless you subscribe to Kolak's view you can't redeem the idea > that you are in any sense the same consciousness that you remember being
I have thought about this a lot over the years and have come to the conclusion that it is an illusion that there is a self that persists over time. Nevertheless, it is an important illusion for me and I make efforts to ensure that the illusion continues. > On Wednesday, May 14, 2014, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> >> >> >> On 15 May 2014 04:33, Dennis Ochei <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> But that's exactly the point. Consciousness, if construed as the >>> container of conscious experience (or the surface upon which experience is >>> written) has no principle of individuation--all conscious experiencers >>> abstracted from their experience are identical. For this reason a >>> consciousness swap is as meaningless as swapping the location of two >>> electrons or shifting the universe 6 feet to the left. This is not at all >>> the route Kolak takes to his conclusion, but suffices as a quick exposition >>> of why one would entertain the position. In short, patterns (complex >>> organisms) emerge in the universe that allow the universe to be conscious >>> of itself. All consciousness is one part of the universe experiencing >>> another part of itself as other. >>> >>> Course, one could also take the position that there is no experiencer >>> independent of the experience. The experiencer and the experienced are >>> one. In which case you are identical solely with yourself right this >>> moment, and what will wake up in your bed tomorrow will not be you, but >>> something that is merely like you in many ways. Under this view you now and >>> you tomorrow are different persons. This is the view pushed by Parfit. >>> >> >> I am sympathetic to Parfit's view, but it doesn't change the way I feel >> about things. For example, to be consistent I shouldn't care if I die, >> since I die anyway even if my tomorrow self seems to persist; however, I do >> care if I die. >> >> >> -- >> Stathis Papaioannou >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the >> Google Groups "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/S5Qi3Q_2TTI/unsubscribe >> . >> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, 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/d/optout. >> > > > -- > Sent from Gmail Mobile > > -- > 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/d/optout. > -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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/d/optout.
