On 6/10/2015 11:14 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 6 Oct 2015, at 9:05 AM, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 6/10/2015 12:29 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 5 October 2015 at 22:10, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 5/10/2015 7:46 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 5 October 2015 at 14:09, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 5/10/2015 1:53 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 5 Oct 2015, at 12:11 PM, Bruce Kellett
<[email protected]> wrote:
So psychological continuation is very dependent on the
exact details of the case, and if copying of
consciousness ever becomes possible, then, by and large,
it will simply be regarded as another way of creating new
people -- it will not be a recipe for immortality in any
except a very impoverished sense.
The example I was thinking of was destructive copying.
This is equivalent to being knocked out and carried to
another place. It doesn't matter how far or if there is a
time delay, since you don't experience this. It also
doesn't matter if there is a causal connection, as there
would be in teleportation or being knocked out and
carried, or if the copying occurs randomly. There is no
way for you to know from introspection how you have come
to wake up in a new place.
You might not then be able to tell by introspection whether
you had been destructively copied to a new location or
simply carried there while unconscious.
That is exactly the point I have been trying to make. Further,
you can't tell from introspection if you have been copied
through exhaustive enumeration of all possible brain states
10^100 metres away or simply carried to the next room while
unconscious.
I disagree. You certainly can tell that you have not been
created by chance 10^100 metres away because that would involve
the transfer of information over that distance, and that is not
feasible in the time spans we are considering.
We have gone over this before: no transfer of information is needed
if the copy is made by trying every possible configuration of atoms.
Transfer of information is needed to verify that there is a copy and
an original, but this makes no difference to the experience of the copy.
I think there is more involved than this. It is not a matter of
experience. If a purported copy of you arises at some remote time or
place by random chance, then there is no connection with your
physical existence or consciousness. A clearer situation arises if
you argue that there are an infinite number copies of you in the
infinite type I multiverse. Each of these 'copies' is a complete
conscious person with his/er own personal history. If you, here, die
suddenly, then in so far as the copies are identical, they will also
die. And if they are only approximately equivalent (so that they
don't die), then they are not going to take too kindly to your
turning up suddenly and trying to usurp their brain, body and
consciousness!
From this comment it seems that you have an odd idea of how a person
survives from moment to moment, as if they have a soul that needs to
be transferred from one body to the other. That isn't how it works. If
A1 survives as a later entity A2, it is necessary and sufficient that
A1 and A2 have certain physical and psychological properties. No spark
or soul needs to jump from A1 to A2, and they neither need to have any
matter in common nor do they need to have any physical continuity,
since these factors have no effect on experience.
Yes, I am aware that this is a dualist notion. But I had the impression
that this was implied by what you said.
These duplication scenarios make sense only if the remote person is
connected with you by transfer of information -- such as by send your
complete brain/body scan to the remote location and then
re-assembling the copy there. That might resurrect you, or make a
viable copy, but no chance configuration, or already existing remote
person, is able to fulfill the scenario you wish to paint.
You state this, but you haven't answered how you would know or care if
you had been duplicated in the incorrect (according to you) way.
I thought I had. If the purported duplicate has no possibility of
physical contact with you, then its existence or non-existence is of no
consequence. It cannot affect me in any way whatsoever. A local copy
might or might not resurrect you. Whether this is desirable depends on
the details of the physical instantiation.
That is why one needs independent external evidence to be
sure about what is going on.
To be sure what is going on, yes, independent external evidence
is needed. But it is not needed in order to be conscious.
But it is needed in order to be sure of what person you are.
Self deception is the most common form of deception, and only a
fool would rely solely on introspection for any important question.
Information about any other copies is interesting but it has no
bearing on your sense of continuity of consciousness.
If personal copying is essentially unavailable in your
experience, then you might believe that you had simply been
carried somewhere while unconscious. If personal duplication
were commonplace in your experience, you would require more
evidence to tell what might have happened. In either case,
introspection is a poor guide to the nature of reality.
But introspection is an excellent guide to your thoughts and feelings.
But I am more than my thoughts and feelings. They are a poor
guide to my identity. they change far too rapidly and
chaotically to be a reliable guide to anything.
Your identity is only your thoughts and feelings. Your brain, body
and the environment are only relevant because they affect your
thoughts and feelings. If you were uploaded to a simulation that
preserved your thoughts and feelings you would not notice that
anything unusual has happened, even though the substrate in which
your mind resides has changed radically.
This, of course, is the heart of our disagreement. Your identity is a
lot more than your thoughts and feelings because those thoughts and
feelings only have meaning in a context. And it is your physical body
and immediate surrounds that provide that context. You might be right
about uploading if the uploading is into an environment that is not
too dissimilar from the current context of your body. However, if
your sensory inputs change to any marked extent, you will certainly
be aware that something has happened. If the changes are too drastic
and inexplicable, you will quite probably go mad.
Obviously, the change in environment would only have this effect on
you if it impacted on your psychology. The idea is that if you were
copied, the difference between copy and original, including change in
environmental inputs, is no greater than the sort of change you would
survive in ordinary life.
I don't think your psychology is all that independent of the physical
environment. That is what supervenience means.
I agree that the hardware of your brain, per se, is not important.
But only if one form of hardware simulates the other, essentially
exactly. And if the wider environment is largely reproduced.
Consciousness supervenes on the physical brain, and replacing the
hardware does not alter this fact -- your consciousness still
supervenes on the physical substrate. It is not independent of it as
you wish to maintain.
Leaving aside Bruno's argument that there is no primitive physical
substrate on which consciousness supervenes, the point I am trying to
make is that consciousness is not an immaterial substance that flits
from body to body. If the physical substrate is reproduced in another
place and time, the consciousness will be reproduced. The most
efficient way of doing this is physical connection, but this is not
necessary for psychological continuity. This is obvious from the
meaning of the words "psychological continuity".
I agree that duality is a bad idea. Local copies are one thing. Remote
copies with no possible connection are another. I do not know what it
means to say that such things reproduce the same consciousness. That is
a claim that can never be checked, and has no possible consequences. So
Occam's razor comes into play.
One trouble with the idea of copies of you in other parts of the
multiverse is that most such copies will not be identical -- they may
pass through the same conscious state at a particular moment, but
because they are in different environments, they will immediately
diverge. The only sensible interpretation of such a situation is that
there are other independent beings who are similar to you in some ways.
That is the case anyway, and we do not necessarily believe in
panpsychism. If there are identical copies, then they necessarily exist
in identical environments, and anything that happens to you will also
happen to them. So they do not provide a means for your consciousness to
continue -- if you die, your identical copy also dies.
Bruce
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