On 23 Jun 2015, at 03:31, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 6/22/2015 5:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 6/22/2015 2:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Tuesday, June 23, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]
>> wrote:
On 6/22/2015 3:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I diverge from my previous self from moment to moment in
ordinary
life, but I still consider that I remain me. If I woke up
tomorrow taller because I had a growth spurt during the
night I
would still consider that I was me; yet by the "closest
continuer" theory, I would stop being me if a copy that hadn't
grown was made somewhere else.
I think waking up somewhere else would count strongly against
being the closest continuation.
What if, while both are asleep, the original is moved to another
location and the copy moved to the original's bed?
That would help, but there's an implicit assumption that
asleep=mindless. Anesthetic would make a better example. But
won't both the original and the copy find himself in a disjoint
location incompatible with where he was before?
I think part of the problem here is that the first-person
impression is taken to be definitive. Since the closest continuer
theory weights bodily continuity fairly highly in the metric
whereby 'closest' is to be determined, what happens to your body,
whether or not you are conscious of it, is an important
consideration.
It was my understanding that closest continuer was to be judged
entirely in terms of conscious thoughts, e.g. memories. Of course
these include memories of ones body so noticeable physical changes
would count against, but discontinuity that was not noticeable
wouldn't. Causal connection doesn't count because the idea is to
explain everything, including causality in terms of consciousness.
I'm not even sure the theory is coherent. I want to ask;
continuer of what? It seems to intuitively rest on the idea a
being or soul that *must* continue and so must attach to some best
vehicle.
That might be Bruno's idea -- he defines personal identity solely in
terms of memories of one's previous selves. In fact, in the way you
put it here, such a theory seems to be inherently dualist.
In UDA it is enough t make the point.
In the math part, the first person is no more definable by the machine
itself, but is defined by a relation betwen justification/
representation and truth.
But in my opinion, Bruno's definition is too narrow, and self-
serving. The closest continuer theory as discussed in the
philosophical literature on personal identity is much broader. It
takes account of all features of a person -- memories, bodily
features, environment, causal connections, values, temperament,
personality, skills, etc, etc. The definition of a 'person' is seen
as irreducibly multi-dimensional. Of course, that means that one
must define a metric across those dimensions in order to determine
what is 'closest'. The metric is not absolutely specified by the
theory, and I think it can, in fact, be flexible, in that one
weighting of factors might be more appropriate in one setting than
in another.
I study the consequence of not having infinitely many non computable
relations of that type.
What you say here is no threat for the very weak comp hypothesis
studied.
The point is that one should capture as much of the notion of
personal identity that we use everyday as is possible. In
particular, it should take account of those difficult cases where
memory is lost or impaired in one way or another. Bruno's definition
is just too restrictive to be of any use in the real world.
I use the standard definitions in both UDA and in its translation in
arithmetic.
Also avoid expression "real world" because that is a notion that we
cannot take for granted when working in this subject.
Bruno
Bruce
But maybe Stathis should explain what he means by the theory.
Brent
--
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.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
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.
