On 14 April 2015 at 08:21, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Not only is consciousness logically duplicable, it is duplicable as a >> matter of fact, since that is what happens in everyday life. There is a >> question as to whether we could do it with a computer or with chemicals, but >> that does not have any bearing on the philosophical problem of personal >> identity. > > > It might be useful if you or Bruce could provide a formal definition of the > problem of personal identity. The problem is to decide what it takes for a person to persist as the same person from moment to moment. > Is personal identity anything more than a bunch of information -- memories > and learned behaviors? If it is just that, then it seems obvious to me that, > if you duplicate a person, both copies will have exactly the same personal > identity at the moment they are created and start to diverge immediately > after. I can't see how, logically, personal identity could be more than mental contents. Suppose it were an extra thing - a soul. It turns out that the soul is destroyed if I sin and eat chocolate. I eat chocolate, and my soul is destroyed; but I feel the same and I behave the same. What have I actually lost? > Even if some protocol is used to keep both copies experiencing exactly the > same stimuli, there are still two first person views. I don't think that a > first person view and a personal identity are the same thing. If the copies are running in lockstep then I would say there is only one stream of consciousness, and nothing is lost by terminating one of the copies. -- 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.
