> On 24 Sep 2015, at 6:07 PM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On 25/09/2015 12:53 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, 23 September 2015, Bruce Kellett <[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]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> On 9/09/2015 1:29 pm, Jason Resch wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 9:44 PM, Bruce Kellett
>>>>>> <[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.
It's ad hoc to say that if one copy differed from the original by 1% and the
other copy by 1.001%, then the 1% copy is the continuation of the original and
the other copy a different person. It sounds like something made up by
legislators rather than philosophers, like an arbitrary cutoff for a speed
limit. If you can't "encapsulate an intuitive concept in language" then you
should state that, or conclude that there is something wrong with the intuitive
notion.
But my more substantive dispute was with your assertion that if a copy arose
through random processes then it wouldn't really count as a continuation of the
original. That's like saying that if car fell together from parts in a junkyard
stirred up by a whirlwind it wouldn't really be a car - even though it
functioned exactly like a car made in a factory.
>>>>>> 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.
> 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.
Your argument misses the point, which is that IF the universe is infinite and
uniform THEN there would be infinite copies of you and everything you see, and
you could not know which of these copies you were at any moment. There is
reason to believe that in fact the universe is infinite and uniform; but if it
is not, which is possible, the conditional argument still stands. So, do you
think you would experience the world differently if there were infinite copies
of you and of every possible variation of you?
> 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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