On 06 Oct 2015, at 00:54, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 10/5/2015 3:05 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 6/10/2015 12:29 am, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 5 October 2015 at 22:10, Bruce Kellett
<[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!
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.
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.
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.
It's not clear to me who is arguing for what. Stathis may think
that consciousness is independent of it's physical substrate, but I
don't see that he's arguing that here. He's arguing that there can
be more that one instance of "the same" consciousness.
Yes, like for example when you are duplicated at W and M, but still in
the box, before opening the box. There are two instantiation of the
same consciousness. From the 1p view, the person can be consistently
said to be unique, at both place at once. Once she opens the door, she
get the bit of information which differentiate her from her
doppelganger.
The same can be said if by chance, or laws, an exact copy of yourself
appears out of your light cone. from the first person experience you
will differentiate. This does not violate relativity, no more than
making you unconscious, or making your brain working much slowly could
make you feel travelling at a speed higher than light, but that is
only a first person "illusion". Likewise with a sudden reconstitution
of you which would be very far, and actually, that is the case with
all your reconsistituion in the sigma_1 arithmetical reality (which
explains the problem of matter confronting computationalists)
But it's not clear what is meant by "the same". Does one think of
one's own consciousness as being the same as it was a second ago?
No, the same means exactly the same, like if two computers run the
same (relevant) program.
You have a sort of choice to dubble or not the consciousness. It is
unique from the 1p view, but it can be, and is, necessarily,
incarnated in many different computations, executed by different
universal machine/number.
an hour? a year? twenty years? I think there must be degrees of
"sameness".
My consciousness one second before belongs already to a myth, it is a
souvenir. But the sameness bears more on the notion of person. I am
the one who collect my souvenirs and interpret it in term of possible
futures or accessible states. "Who am I" is a too much personal
question that it is almost impolite to ask in the comp frame.
Similarly, the degree will depend on the environmental context and
interaction. If you became completely immobilized I think it would
change your consciousness. Stephen Hawking is quite different than
he was 50yrs ago. If you had a chip implanted that allowed you
perceive the whole EM spectrum, including polarization, it might
well change your consciousness. Drugs and accidents change
people's personality and so, by inference, their consciousness.
So does just plain learning.
I agree with what you say.
Is the question really about "Can we achieve immortality by copying
to different substrates?" As Bruce points out we would only
preserve our "self" exactly up to the last copy event, since we
would have diverged from there. It's like making a backup on your
computer, it doesn't mean that nothing's lost when it crashes.
OK.
That does not mean that something is lost, either.
Immortality quest is a waste of time, because once immortal, there is
no more fun than to be mortal again.
It is vain, from computationalism "well understood", as we are
already, although not in a believable or justifiable way. (So I am
close to a G* minus G blaspheme here ...)
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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