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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