On Tue, 23 Jul 2019 at 11:50, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > On 7/22/2019 1:35 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > Brain scans might have some bearing on whether not your brain can be >> replaced by some equivalent digital device. Once you can do this, questions >> about personal identity become an empirical matter, as has been pointed out >> several times. >> > > The substantive problem is a philosophical one, since by assumption in > these debates the copied brain is identical by any empirical test. > > > But what if, as seems likely to me, it is theoretically impossible to copy > a brain to a level that it undetectable, i.e. it will necessarily be > possible to distinguish physical differences. Now these differences may > not matter to consciousness, or they may imply only a brief glitch at the > conscious/classical level, but we know from Holevo's theorem that the > duplicate can't be known to be in the same state. > I feel that I am the same person today as yesterday because I am pretty close to the person I was yesterday, even though if you were to look at me in enough detail, even using simple tests and instruments, I am quite different today. It seems unreasonable to insist that a copy of a person must be closer to the original than the "copying" that occurs in everyday life. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAH%3D2ypV0OadB%3DQ998%3DiSA8Wmt2uFbN5JMKv1QC-8x0nUMMs3vA%40mail.gmail.com.
