Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: > > Probabilities are simply the result of ignorance
Before about 1925 almost all physicists would agree with you but after that, particularly after 1964 when Bell discovered his famous inequality, virtually no physicist would. > > Many worlds is nothing more than a hypothetical construct. True. > > There is no concrete evidence one way or the other. There is overwhelming evidence that Many Worlds is correct or something even weirder is, the possibility that the universe behaves in a reasonable way that any person with common sense would expect is zero. Whatever the truth turns out to be it will be odd, very very odd. > > > > If the worlds are non-interacting, as almost certainly is the case, Agreed. > > > then they have absolutely no consequences for psychology or the problem of > consciousness. Not necessarily, not if Bruce Kellett doesn't have thoughts but Bruce Kellett is thoughts. If that is the case then it doesn't make any difference what chunk of matter is thinking Bruce Kellett or in what universe that collection of atoms happens to be in. > > > God could resurrect you using knowledge of your brain state prior to death, Yes. > > > or by exhaustively reconstructing every possible human state, Yes. > > > of which yours is one. Many more than one would be yours, there would be one for every instant of your life. > > > In the latter case there would be no causal connection. Well, in your example they all have the same cause, God. However I don't see what causal connection has to do with any of this; if 2 things are the same then they're the same regardless of how they got to be the same. > > > Even if the universe is infinite, there may be patterns (of zero measure) > which do not repeat. Yes but unless your mind is infinite, or at least unlimited, YOU will repeat regardless of what the rest of the universe is doing. There are only a finite number of states the 3 pound human brain can be in so it can't be immortal. 3 pounds is just not big enough, it must expand or die. > > I think the real point here is that personal identity is irreducibly > multi-dimensional. It is not all about psychological continuity, Subjective experience is ALWAYS continuous even under anesthesia, the external objective world may take discontinuous jumps but consciousness never does. > > > about memory, or about physical causality and bodily continuity. Atoms come and atoms go, you are not the man you once were. Your body, including your brain, is very literally last years mashed potatoes. So are you really Bruce Kellett ? > > > You cannot rely solely on memory, because your memory may be faulty. Memory is always faulty, so suppose there is a copy out there somewhere that has a more complete and accurate memory than you do of the experiences Bruce Kellett had yesterday; would that make you a zombie with no identity? And if I killed that copy and you now inherited the title "Closest continuer" would consciousness suddenly spring into you along with the name Bruce Kellett? That seems unlikely to me. > > > If there is no physical interaction of any kind, particularly if such > interaction is physically impossible, then the two persons are different, > and have nothing other than a chance resemblance. Maybe 2 things are identical because of chance, maybe they're identical for some other reason, it doesn't matter, it doesn't change the fact that the 2 things are identical. John K Clark -- 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.
