On 19 April 2017 at 08:24, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: John has never write one clear post refuting the step-3 which would make it > possible to answer by one post. There is no need for this, as the answer is > in the publications, which makes clear the 1-3 distinction, so the > ambiguity that John dreams for cannot occur.
I've often wondered whether Hoyle's heuristic could be a way of short-cutting this dispute. Hoyle gives us a way to think about every subjective moment as if it occurred within the 1-view of a common agent. Essentially the heuristic invites us to think of all subjective experiences, aka observer moments, as a single logical serialisation in which relative spatial and temporal orientation is internal to each moment. In comp terms this conceptual agent might perhaps be the virgin (unprogrammed) machine, on the basis that all such machines are effectively computationally equivalent. Anyway, in this way of thinking, after my 3-duplication there are of course two 3-copies; so in the 3-view it can make perfect sense to say that each copy is me (i.e. one of my continuations). Hence my expectation in that same 3-sense is that I will be present in both locations. However, again in terms of the heuristic, it is equally the case that each 1-view is occupied serially and exclusively by the single agent: i.e. *at one time and in one place*. Hence in that sense only a single 1-view can possibly represent me *at that one time and that one place*. Hoyle shows us how all the copies can indeed come to occupy each of their relative spatio-temporal locations in the logical serialisation, but also that *these cannot occur simultaneously*. The crucial point to bear in mind is that according to Hoyle, both of these understandings are equally true and *do not contradict each other*. Furthermore, comp or no comp, they are surely consistent with anything we would reasonably expect to experience: namely, that whenever sufficiently accurate copies of our bodies could be made, using whatever method, our expectation would nevertheless be to find ourselves occupying a single 1-view, representing a subjectively exclusive spatio-temporal location. Indeed it is that very 1-view which effectively defines the relative boundaries of any given time and place. Subjective experiences are temporally and spatially bounded by definition; it is therefore inescapable that they are mutually exclusive in the 1-view. So what Hoyle's method achieves here is a clear and important distinction between the notion of 3-synchronisation (i.e. temporal co-location with respect to a publicly available clock) and that of 1-simultaneity (i.e. the co-occurrence of two spatio-temporally distinct perspectives within a single, momentary 1-view). Whereas the former is commonplace and hence to be expected, the latter is entirely inconsistent with normal experience and hence should not be. By the way, I shall be on holiday in Sicily from April 20th until May 12th (one of me only, I trust) so I probably won't be appearing much in the list during that period. David -- 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.
