On 2/10/2015 2:22 pm, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 2:28 AM, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I understand what you mean by "psychological continuity". I simply
maintain that such a concept makes no sense between conscious
beings outside each others light cones.
1. Do you think you could in theory be taken apart atom by atom, and
put back together to "survive" this ordeal?
2. Do you think it is important that all atoms be put back into their
exact places, or could two hydrogen atoms, from different parts of
your body and brain be swapped without making a difference?
3. Do you think you could be reconstituted after being taken apart
atom by atom, using mostly new atoms?
4. Do you think you could be reconstituted after being taken apart
atom by atom, using an entirely new set of atoms?
5. Do you think the distance between your deconstruction and
reconstruction is of any relevance to whether or not you survive?
6. Do you think time between your deconstruction and reconstruction is
of any relevance to whether or not you survive?
7. Do you think there is some non physical element of you, beyond your
organization of atoms, which must travel to (and be limited by the
speed of light) the location of your reconstruction in order for you
to survive the reconstruction?
If you answer *yes* to questions 1-4, and *no* to questions 5-7, then
bringing up light cones is irrelevent. The existence of identical
instances of you 10^10^28 meters away enable the survival of your
consciousness.
"Your" consciousness? Your series of questions above all involve a
physical transfer of information, in which case light cones are
relevant, because there can be no physical transfer of information from
you now to a point outside your future light cone. If there is a
purported copy of you outside your past and future light cones, then
there is no way that it can be verified that it is actually a copy. So
the question is purely hypothetical, without operational content.
If you answered yes to question 7, in what sense is the reconstituted,
atom-for-atom identical version of you not alive, or not you, whereas
one created by beaming a signal to guide the arrangement of the atoms
in a certain way from the location of your destruction, /is/ you or
/does result/ in you?
If there can be no physical interaction, then there is no
continuity, psychological or otherwise.
In the computationalist doctrine, you are your patterns and
information. If those patterns and information continue and survive
elsewhere, you survive. The history of how the atoms got to be in the
pattern of information they are now in is of no relevance to how the
atoms behave and interact.
So much the worse for the computationalist doctrine! It becomes a matter
of unverifiable faith, so of no relevance to any serious scientist. What
is even worse, if "The history of how the atoms got to be in the pattern
of information they are now in is of no relevance to how the atoms
behave and interact", then you have abandoned any possibility of
connecting your theory with the physics of the observed universe.
Bruce
Duplication of a person, even an entirely emulated AI, requires a
physical transfer of information. Information is physical, and its
transfer is subject to physical laws. You can't circumvent this by
inventing some magical concept of "psychological continuity".
Bruce
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