On 2/10/2015 5:01 pm, Jason Resch wrote:
On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 11:45 PM, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
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.
A transfer of information is not required for atoms to be arranged in
identical form as you. E.g. there might be some machine that
instantiates all permutations of matter. This machine could recreate
you without having received any information from where you last
existed. The question is, what is different about a copy of you
created by this machine vs. one in which the machine was told which
permutation to start with?
Could you provide your answers to questions 1 - 7?
No need because those questions all involve the physical transfer of
information, which is not relevant to purported chance "copies" outside
the light cone. A chance copy anywhere has nothing to do with me since,
to be "me", it would have to be an accurate copy of all my environment
-- probably including all the observable universe. "I" am not just my
brain -- I am a brain-in-a-body-in-a world-in-a-universe. All components
are necessary for personal identity.
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.
Could you level that same attack against any theory of consciousness?
No. The standard theory of consciousness supervening on the physical
matter of the brain is the subject of extended serious scientific
investigation. In that investigation, the way in which the matter came
to be arranged the way it is is of fundamental importance. Particularly
through evolutionary theory.
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.
Atoms are, as far as anyone can tell, memoryless. Any non-magical
theory of mind will assert that atoms placed in an identical
arrangement will behave identically, and so an exact duplicate will
behave exactly the same whether it is created by a teleporter, by
chance, or by iteration. Do you not agree with this?
I don't agree that a chance arrangement of matter that reproduces my
brain is of any relevance to my continued consciousness. particularly if
that body of matter is outside my light cone.
I don't understand your second comment, about abandoning any
possibility of connecting computationalism to physics. Could you explain?
According to computationalism, physics is found in the measure over
computations that pass through the conscious state. If the way in which
matter comes to be represented in that conscious state is irrelevant to
computationalism, then computationalism abandons any claim to have
relevance to physics.
Bruce
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