On 24 Jun 2015, at 01:39, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 23 Jun 2015, at 03:31, Bruce Kellett wrote:
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.
The question is whether in your reductionist pursuit of simplicity
you might not have gone too far, and lost some essential aspects of
the subject under discussion. I quote Einstein:
"These fundamental concepts and postulates, which cannot be further
reduced logically, form the essential part of a theory, which reason
cannot touch. It is the grand object of all theory to make these
irreducible elements as simple and as few in number as possible,
without having to renounce the adequate representation of any
empirical content whatever." (Einstein, 'On the Method of
Theoretical Physics', Herbert Spencer Lecture, Oxford, June 1933.)
Often paraphrased as: "Make things as simple as possible, but no
simpler."
My argument is that you have simplified away some essential elements
of personal identity.
Which one? I assume only that there are no little Non-Turing Emulable
daemon playing some role in the brain.
You are, of course, entitled to make any assumptions and definitions
you like in developing your theory.
It is not my theory. it is one of the oldest theory suggested by many
since a long time. It is just made more precise through Church thesis
and the digitalness.
By definition, we lost nothing of consciousness, personhood, etc. We
would say "no" to the doctor in that case.
But if you simplify away essential elements of the subject matter --
in this instance, persons --
?
Persons are not only saved by comp, but get immune against all
reductionism based on computational *metaphor*.
you cannot expect the end results of your deliberations to have any
relevance to the real people of this world.
It could teach humility to some, as it shows that even in that
"simplified" case, the mind-body problem is a complex problem, yet
having a precise mathematical formulation, and explaining already many
feature of the physical, usually taken for granted or dismissed.
So 'comp' is irrelevant to reality because it is an
oversimplification:
It would be, before Gödel.
it discards essential elements of its subject matter. A person is
more than just a disembodied consciousness, even if one could make
any sense of such a concept.
Who ever said that a person is a disembodied consciousness? Why would
we call a doctor at step 0 if that was the case. It is the primitive
matter which can be said to be eventually disembodied, not persons.
I think that it is you who do the oversimplification, of both computer
science (a branch of math) and of the mind-body problem.
I don't see a point, Bruce. Just a speculation about some God-of-the-
gap (a primary physical universe) to evade the consequence of a theory.
Bruno
Bruce
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
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