On 29 Jul 2016, at 08:30, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 7/28/2016 11:11 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 29/07/2016 3:59 pm, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 7/28/2016 10:20 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
On 29/07/2016 2:42 pm, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 7/28/2016 9:20 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
That is one of the paradoxical aspects of duplication -- the
duplicates become different persons because of the divergence
of experience. But, by the same token, their experiences differ
from the original, so how come they can be said to be the same
person as the original?
They both remember being that person.
Sure, and if that is your sole criterion of identity, they are
still the one person.
But they are not "one person". Although they share the same
memories of before the duplication that have different memories
afterward.
According to that argument, you are not the "one person" from
moment to moment because you have different memories as new things
happen to you.
I'm the one person I was a moment ago because I have all the
memories of that person and no one else has the memories I have and
he doesn't.
Such considerations led some, such as Parfit, to question
whether personal identity was all that important, considering
'survival' to be a more significant consideration. Survival as
in psychological continuity. So one could 'survive' as several.
But then, is one psychologically continuous with oneself as a
foetus?
Insofar as my fetal state had a psychology, I'd say yes. It
doesn't seem any more problematic than being continuous with my
50yr old self.
Or your 70 yo. self reduced to a vegetative state?
I said "insofar as my state had a psychology". In a vegatative
state I'd say there is probably no survival of any psychology.
There's nothing to be continuous with. It's like following a road
that turns into a trail that turns into a path and finally becomes
unrecognizable from the rest of the terrain. Whether we call it
"the same" along it's length is just a semantic choice, analogous
to having a legal ruling on personhood.
But still, the common intuition is that the body on the bed after
severe head injury is still the same person as before -- just
without memories, though who can say if still conscious or not?
But I agree that it might not be the case empirically. Bruno,
based on his experimentation with salvia, seems to think there
is some essence or soul of Bruno which is indepedent of his
memories and hence of his past experience. If it's
independent of experience then it can't be bifurcated by
experience.
That seems to be a perilously dualist position. Experience
seems to be important to personhood.
But maybe not explicit memories. If I suffered amnesia and
didn't remember any of my past life, I would still retain many
characteristics that would make me recognizable to my friends.
These may derive from experience, but they would be encoded in
the physics of my brain and wouldn't imply dualism.
No, but it does imply that memories are only one of the many
dimensions that are important in defining the self, or in
determining personal identity. Is physical continuity one of the
other important dimensions?
Physical continuity is a good indicator in the absence of
duplicating machines, but I don't think it's definitive. Consider
the example of multiple-personality-disorder, in which seemingly
different persons occupy the same body at different times.
Hence the no-branching condition in theories of personal identity.
Branching - recombining, both play havoc with one-one notions of
identity. So how is identity to be defined?
Why does it need to be defined? Why not recognize it is not a well
defined concept...like the end of a road. We need operational legal
definitions as to when a person is still competent to make decisions
about themselves...and those are pretty much in place. I imagine
that multiple-personality disorder has also caused some legal
problems: Is Eve White bound by the contract Eve Black signed? If
duplicating machines are ever invented then we can choose some rough
and ready legal definitions. But all this discussion of theories of
personal identity seems more about semantics and pronouns.
It is about prediction, using the computer science semantics for
pronoun (but very intuitive as the UDA illustrates).
The reasoning shows that when we use physics to predict a first person
experience, like seeing an eclipse, we use implicitly an extremal
inductive clause. We suppose that we are unique in the relation
defined by the experiment. This is refuted if there are Boltzmann
brains, and eventually we know that there are Boltzmann brain in
arithmetic, and much more, so we have to justify the physical
statistics from the infinitely many computations structure only, and
that one is entirely determined already in weak theories like RA. So
we get the necessary reduction of physics to arithmetic (modulo
confirmation of computationalism 'course).
Bruno
Brent
--
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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
