On 3/08/2016 4:28 am, Brent Meeker wrote:
On 8/2/2016 5:40 AM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
The point that I am trying to make here is that a person's
consciousness at any moment can consist of many independent threads.
From this I speculate that some of these separate threads could
actually be associated with separate physical bodies. In other words,
it is conceivable that a duplication experiment would not result in
two separate consciousnesses, but a single consciousness in separate
bodies. If this is so, the fact that the separate bodies receive
different inputs does not necessarily mean that they differentiate
into separate conscious beings, any more than the fact that I receive
different inputs from moment to moment means that I dissociate into
multiple consciousnesses.
Or that the fact that you get two different perspectives on the same
object by seeing it and by feeling it doesn't cause you to split into
two consciousnesses. But it seems that it can if your corpus callosum
is cut. Then your left hand (controlled by the right brain
hemisphere) and left field of vision may disagree on the nature of the
same object. And only the left brain hemisphere will be able to
report on the object. Which indicates to me that not only is thought
a physical phenomenon, but the "conscious self" is only unified
superficially by the creation of a verbal narrative.
Of course I agree with this. Previous philosophical work on personal
identity with split brains was essentially based on the experiences of
people with split brains, or of severed corpus callosum. This is
basically why one associates a consciousness with a physical brain --
splitting the brain (even though the halves are not identical) leads to
two distinct persons (at least, as far as we can tell).
The point I am making to Bruno, however, is that these physical examples
are not in evidence by step 3 of his argument. He cannot rely on
conclusions of the total argument to justify intermediate steps in the
argument -- that is manifestly circular: Bruno cannot use physical
results to justify any of the steps in his argument for FPI or anything
else.
Bruce
--
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.
