On Fri, Feb 27, 2015Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> To be fair to Bruno, that is not what he claims. The FPI comes from the
> fundamental uncertainty in know which person you are,
^^^
John Clark doesn't understand the question. Which person who is?
> > it seems Everett did much the same thing with the MWI.
>
I disagree for 3 reasons:
1) Everett was trying to explain the strange observations of the Quantum
world in a logically cohesive way and to show why Quantum Mechanics was
able to make such good predictions about future physical events. Everett
said nothing about consciousness because he didn't need to, and that is the
HUGE advantage Many Worlds has over other Quantum interpretations and is
the only reason I'm a fan of the MWI. In the other Quantum Interpretations
consciousness soon enters the picture, that would be OK if they could
explain consciousness but they can't. Everett can't explain consciousness
either but he doesn't need to because consciousness has nothing to do with
his theory.
2) Like Everett Bruno is interested in predictions but unlike Everett Bruno
thinks that good predictions are the key to personal identity, and that's
just nuts. The sense of self depends on the past not the future. You
remember being Russell Standish yesterday so you feel like Russell Standish
today, but if one of your predictions was false and things didn't turn out
as you expected (and I imagine that has actually happened to you at some
point in your life) you'd still feel like Russell Standish, you'd just feel
that you've made a mistake. Bruno has got it backwards, he's trying to push
on a string.
3) With Everett the meaning of the personal pronoun "you" is always
obvious, it is the only person that the laws of physics allow me to observe
that fits the description of Russell Standish, but in a world with matter
duplicating machines as in Bruno's thought experiments there are 2 (or
more) people who fit that description, and so the word "you" is ambiguous
and conveys zero information. Bruno says he wants to explain the nature of
personal identity but then without a second's pause acts as if the concept
of personal identity was already crystal clear even though in his thought
experiments such concepts are stretched about as far as they can go. In
such circumstances to keep using personal pronouns with abandon as Bruno
does without giving them a second thought is just ridiculous.
John K Clark
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