On 25/09/2015 12:53 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Wednesday, 23 September 2015, Bruce Kellett <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 24/09/2015 4:02 am, Jason Resch wrote:On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 8:45 PM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote: On 9/09/2015 1:29 pm, Jason Resch wrote:On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 9:44 PM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote: I presume you mean that the world is duplicated on each toss, with one branch showing each outcome. We are back to the dreaded "person duplication" problem. My opinion on this is that on such a duplication, two new persons are created, so the probability that the original person will see either heads or tails is precisely zero, because that person no longer exists after the duplication. So if some aliens create a copy of you in Andromeda, then you cease to exist as a person?Since I might know if they gathered the requisite information, it is not an issue. I don't see how this follows. Are you saying you would cease to exist as a person if a duplicate of you arose far away in this universe, or that you would not cease to exist as a person?The closest continuer account of personal identity would have no difficulty with this. The remote "copy" is purely a matter of chance, which has no physical or causal connection with you, so is not a continuer in the required sense.You present "closest continuer theory" as if it is obviously correct, and it is not. In any case, even granting the theory, why should the causal or physical connection make a difference? I've sometimes encountered this claim in these discussions but it is just ad hoc.
The theory is no more ad hoc than any other theory of personal identity. When we seek to encapsulate an intuitive notion in language, any attempt could be criticized as being ad hoc, so that charge is of no substance.
No, that is not enough. The Copernician principle is not a law of physics -- or of anything else, for that matter. It is a useful heuristic, nothing more. The so-called "uniformity of the universe (isotropy and homogeneity)" is also nothing more than a useful approximation that can be used only on the largest scales -- when you average over all local structure. Such arguments have no force against the position I am arguing.Note: according to current comological models, space is infinite and uniform, which means infinite copies of you exist (though very far away).Such models make really quite strong assumptions about initial conditions. This all follows from thw concordance model of cosmology, which is the "standard model" in cosmology. See: http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/PDF/multiverse_sciam.pdf You might well have an infinity of worlds with our present cosmology, but they might all be copies of some bland, boring model with no intelligent life. I don't think you grasp the implications of infinity. If there are infinite worlds, there is effectively 100% probability that an infinite number of them will be identical to this entire Earth as you see it.As I said, that assumes some regular distribution over initial conditions -- condition for which we have no evidence whatsoever. So our universe - and our particular personal existences - might be unique, even in an infinite universe. There can be universes of zero probability measure.The Copernican Principle in conjunction with the observation that the universe is uniform in all directions is enough.
You appear not to have grasped the significance of initial conditions. The initial conditions of our observed universe are far from generic, and all "uniformity" arguments require that initial conditions be uniformly generic over the whole infinite extent that is considered.
Bruce
Pi has infinite digits. Any sequence, however long, the encoding of any documentary, can be found in the digits of Pi, and moreover, it recurs an infinite number of times.That, too, is an unproved assumption about uniformity --essentially the assumption that pi is a normal number. And that has never been proven. Bruce
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