On Sat, Feb 28, 2015 at 9:38 AM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 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. > There is an implicit unstated assumption in Everett that consciousness is duplicated with the split. This requires a physicalist/materialist/mechanism account of mind, rather than idealism or dualism, where each person has a singular uncopyable soul. Note that Everett's theory pre-dates functionalism and computationalism as popularized by Putnam. > 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. > Personal identity is irrelevant in the FPI. Only personal experience is considered. With experiments like the quantum erasure, you are forced to identify your self with multiple past entities. Why do you seem to have so much trouble with the same when its in the other direction of time? You admitted earlier that an AI within a forked computer simulation where one thing differed in each instance of the simulated environment would experience the fork as subjective randomness. Keep going from there. > 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. > > > When one starts trying to define you, you get into questions of personal identity. When one talks about a subjective first-person experiences of two third-personal identifiable duplicates, there's no need for personal identity to come into it. What is your mental block that turns you irrational on this matter? Jason -- 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.
