On 14/08/2017 3:25 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 13 Aug 2017, at 01:46, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sat 12. Aug 2017 at 03:12, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
<mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
On 12/08/2017 3:22 am, Bruno Marchal wrote:
> On 11 Aug 2017, at 13:40, Bruce Kellett wrote:
>>
>>> Are you telling us that P(W) ≠ P(M) ≠ 1/2. What do *you*
expect when
>>> pushing the button in Helsinki?
>>
>> I expect to die, to be 'cut', according to the protocol. The
guys in
>> W and M are two new persons, and neither was around in H to
make any
>> prediction whatsoever.
>
> Fair enough.
>
> You think the digital mechanism thesis is wrong.
Correct.
There is a fundamental problem with your person-duplication thought
experiments. This is that the way in which you interpret the scenario
inherently involves an irreducible 1p-3p confusion. The first person
(1p) concerns only things that the person can experience directly for
himself. It cannot, therefore, involve things that he is told by
other
people, because such things are necessarily third person (3p)
knowledge
Things that are told by othet people reach us as 1p experiences. We
accept them (or not) based on our own internal models of reality.
Some people trust evangelical preachers, others trust what is
published in Nature. It is only by personal cognitive processes that
we can make such choices. There is no such thing as pure 3p
knowledge, that is nonsensical.
There is no 3p knowledge as such. But there is still a 3p Theaetetical
possible knowledge, in a theoretical frame.
I think you and Telmo are losing sight of the basic grammatical meaning
of first, second, and third person. First person = 1/we; second person =
you/you; third person = he/they (to retain the nominative case!).
Essentially all of science is third person knowledge: they did this
experiment; he wrote this paper/text book; etc. Of course, I can read
the paper or the text book and I then gain first person knowledge about
the experiments/results/theories. But this is knowledge /about/, and it
is about third person knowledge: it is not first person knowledge
because I did not do the experiments, write the papers, and so on.
So you accuse scientists of seeking to eliminate the first person, while
you explicitly eliminate the third person! It is the fact that you
include 3p knowledge in the duplication experiments -- by claiming that
the subject has full knowledge of the protocol, which is 3p knowledge --
but then deny that the duplicates can exchange information, thus
excluding 3p knowledge after the duplication in an arbitrary and /ad
hoc/ way. It would seem that this is why you have your duplicates
reconstructed in remote cities -- a smoke-and-mirrors trick to make the
reader believe that the copies cannot communicate. But there is no
reason why the same experiment could not be performed with the
duplicates appearing in adjacent rooms, or even the same room, so that
direct communication between them is evident. Once the copies
communicate, they can see that both possibilities are in fact realized,
so the probabilities before duplication are all unity. The only escape,
then, is to accept that the copies are different distinct persons, and
neither is the same person as the original.
So the argument through steps 3, etc., are all based on the elimination
of the third person. This is an unjustifiable /ad hoc/ manoeuvre, and
the argument collapses.
Bruce
For example, just imagine that 2 + 2 = 4 is really really really
really true (imagine!), then I would say that if a machine is such that
(B_(that machine) "2 + 2 = 4") is true about that machine, then,
assuming Mechanism, (or not, I am not sure) we can say that the
machine has a correct 3p knowledge, even 0p knowledge if the machine
itself bet on Mechanism.
So, we don't have third person (3p) knowledge, OK, it would be non
sensical. In fact knowledge is pure 1p.
But, in the frame of some axiom in metaphysics, like Mechanism, I
think that a part of mathematics becomes a 3p knowledge (arithmetic!).
You can someone observe the arithmetical truth from outside, and "see"
all the "diaries" of all machines, and their astonishment when
"opening" the doors, or just through birth, when they find themselves
in this or that galaxy or city ...
I think that for a believer in mechanism, who would based his belief
from studying computer science (and not just obeying his doctor!),
arithmetic and the core of computer science is 3p knowledge, and even
0p knowledge: Nagel's point of view of nowhere.
That 3p knowledge, is of course still only an 1p belief, from the 1p
view. I agree with you from the 1p view! I just make precise that in a
theoretical frame, God can see that sometimes, some-relative-states I
should say, some of our belief are true. I do think that this is the
case for 2 is a divisor of 24.
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