On 5/15/2014 2:57 PM, LizR wrote:
Comp and the capsule theory of memory (and "Memento") suggest that a "person" is a series of person-moments, each of which is considered to last somewhere around 1/10th of a second (it could be longer or shorter and the idea would still hold) and assumed be the same person due to being linked by memories.
I think there's an implicit assumption here that 'person-moments' refers only to conscious thoughts. Subconscious thoughts, e.g. information processing, may take longer and overlap and occur in different parts of the brain. Just because they are not conscious thoughts, I don't think we can ignore them. After all, acting from habit, "without thinking", is part of a person's character.
Generally this is considered to be because of physical continuity, but comp-style thought experiments, at least, can deconstruct that idea. The question is whether physical continuity has some bearing on identity, or is just incidental (i.e. nature hasn't found any other way to do it). The usual argument against the importance of physical continuity is that we replace our cells - even our brain cells, apparently - every few hours/days/years/whatever.
I don't think we replace our brain cells, but even if we do, isn't the fact that they are replaced and the replacements are functionally similar important to who we are?
And more specifically, the atoms involved in a thought might go on to do something else - take part in a different thought, form a memory, pay a visit to the big toe... they're constantly being moved around, even without being lost from the system.
Replacing atoms is not problematic since we think any two of the same species are strictly identical. The question is whether the brain could be implemented in some completely different medium and still instantiate the same consciousness. I think it could only do so approximately - so it might be close enough to fool your friends but still not be exactly you. But does this imply, per Bruno's MGA, that no physical instantiation is needed at all - just the existence in Platonia of those computations is enough? I think the argument only proves that there could be another world, in which you are instantiated in whatever is the physics of that world, e.g. Turing machine computations.
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