On 6 October 2015 at 16:54, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 6/10/2015 3:59 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > On 6 Oct 2015, at 11:48 AM, Bruce Kellett < <[email protected]> > [email protected]> wrote: > > 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. > > > Do you doubt that mental states can be duplicated by duplicating the > physical configuration of a brain? Do you think the duplication would work > if information is transmitted from original to copy but not if the copy was > made without such information, even though the physical configurations are > exactly the same? That would imply that two brains could be exactly the > same physically but differ mentally, which contradicts the physical > supervenience thesis. This would be a dualist position. > > It is possible that you might be able to make copies -- you certainly can > for AI. A copy means that information from the original was used to > construct the copy. > Where I use "copy" you might use a different word. Let's define "doppelganger" as something which resembles the original arbitrarily closely but was not constructed using information from the original, while a "copy" is the same except constructed using information from the original. Using these definitions, are you saying that if you are replaced by a copy you will survive, whereas if you are replaced by a doppelganger you will not? > > If there are, by chance, other persons who happen to have, > instantaneously, the same brain configuration as you do, then there are > simply two people who share a momentary psychological similarity. Since the > environments are different, these two individuals will have had different > histories, and will rapidly diverge. So calling one the continuation of the > other is a bit arbitrary -- neither is a continuation of anything other > than themselves. If the similarity is such that the universes are > identical, as well as chance brain states, then it may take a little longer > for the divergence, but you still always have two separate individuals with > only chance similarities. Neither is a "copy" of the other. > You will diverge from whatever physical and mental state you were headed towards if there is a small environmental change, but this does not kill you. All future versions of yourself branching out from the present are valid. > > So I am saying that two brains could be the same physically, and mentally, > but still be different people. There is no duality here. The physical > supervenience thesis requires that physical and mental processes track each > other one-for-one. But similar mental states do not mean identical persons. > If two brains are physically and mentally the same then they are at that point the same person, but if they diverge they are different people from then on. > > This is a consequence of the theory of personal identity. If you have a > tie for closest continuer, you have created two new persons. And it does > not matter what these persons think, or what conclusion they reach by > introspection. Physical factors are more important in such cases than > psychological factors. > "Closest Continuer" is not *the* theory of personal identity, it is *a* theory. > > 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. > > > Copies that start off identical diverging does not present a problem. > There is a chance that you will experience any of the possible worlds > branching from your present one, and if you die at one location you will > only experience the worlds where copies of you survive. > > No *you* won't. Other persons who resemble you to a greater or lesser > extent might. But if there is another identical with you, they necessarily > die when you do. Quantum suicide is a no-brainer! > Recall that in quantum many worlds, the different worlds are different, by > construction. So continuations in the different worlds are always different > - they get different results from the quantum experiment. > If you are to be killed if a radioisotope decays, then one version of you is killed, and the other version is not. You survive as the version that is not killed. This is equivalent to being destructively copied into the world where the isotope does not decay. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
