On 25/09/2015 2:58 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 24 Sep 2015, at 6:07 PM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 25/09/2015 12:53 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
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.
That is a contrived situation. The full theory has a defined metric
(which may or may not be a personal preference) by which one quantifies
the differences between copies (or potential other persons). That metric
will specify when differences become too small to be significant -- we
then claim ties for 'closest' continuer. There need be no conundrums if
one does things sensibly.
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.
I suggest you tell this to Plato and suggest that he withdraws his
Theaetetus! The majority of philosophy (100% for linguistic
philosophers) is the attempt to make the intuitive concepts of language
more precise -- to encapsulate an intuitive notion is language. Ad hoc
means only that something is devised for a purpose -- literally, 'to
this', or 'for this'. The term is used in this sense every day, in
things like "An ad hoc committee was formed to investigate....". Ad hoc
has a pejorative use only in science when an arbitrary adjustment is
made to a theory in order to account for an anomaly (or some similar
circumstance). The closest continuer theory of personal identity is not
ad hoc in this pejorative sense.
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.
That analogy does not fly. Your random car is not the continuation of
any previously existing car: the random person appearing in the
Andromeda galaxy is not a continuation of me, no mater how similar it is
to me on the relevant metric. That random object may well be a person,
just as the car in your junk yard is a car -- it is just that neither is
the continuer of any existing person or car.
........
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.
This is false. It is like the old probability problem of how many people
you need in a room for there to be a greater than 50% probability of two
having the same birthday. The answer, iirc, is 23. However, the number
required in order for there to be a greater than 50% chance for there to
be a person who has the same birthday as you do is substantially
greater. The necessity for copies does not imply that you are copied.
Think of it this way. Take the Tegmark Type I multiverse and suppose
that you are unique (no copies anywhere. Or better, that our
life-friendly universe is unique). Then, by time reversal invariance,
continue that universe back to the big bang to recover the initial
state. Is that initial state impossible? Or any less likely than any
other potential initial state? Duplicates there will be in the
multiverse, but there is no necessity that you, or our observed
O-region, be duplicated.
And even if you are duplicated as Tegmark suggests, so that there are
many copies far outside our O-region, or even our particle horizon, then
there is absolutely no possibilitiy of any interaction between these
copies, so their existence or non-existence can have no effect on you,
so they are irrelevant -- in principle, not just FAPP.
The situation then is just like that with the disjoint worlds of the MWI
in QM: the separate worlds are disjoint -- non interacting -- so their
existence has no bearing on you or your future. In fact, Susskind and
others have identified Tegmark's level I multiverse with the MWI of
quantum mechanics. I think this identification is nonsense, but the
relevance of the potential copies is the same in both cases -- zero!
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?
No. Not that I believe that there are such copies, but even if there
were, they would be of zero consequence for anything whatsoever.
Bruce
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