> On 26 Jul 2019, at 09:24, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 26, 2019 at 5:12 PM Bruno Marchal <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > On 25 Jul 2019, at 18:44, Jason Resch <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> Personal identity theories based on psychological or bodily continuity can >> always be shown to break down, either by holding the body the same and >> changing the psyche, or holding the psyche the same and changing the body. > > They break down with digital mechanism. > > So what? I am not assuming mechanism.
OK. > The everyday understanding of personal identity was developed in a world > without person duplication or other exotic brain experimentation. I found everything I say just by looking at amebas. Nature "has invented” duplication much before the humans reason about it. In fact I predicted the “many worlds “ view of reality from this, much before I knew anything about quantum phycics? I did have the feeling that I was refuting Mechanism, because the idea to be multiplied into infinity at each instant seemed to me to be a little too gross, but QM put a doubt on tis “easy refutation”. > The idea is to develop a theory of identity that can deal with some of the > more reasonable thought experiments without doing violence to everyday > concepts. We need continuity of concepts as well as continuity of body and > memories. Who need this? Science is not wishful thinking. Facts are facts. The evidence favours mechanism and some “many histories” interpretation of arithmetic and physics. > > With soma analog mechanism, or non-mechanism, we can’t conclude (but we can > also feel that such a move is ad hoc and non convincing). > > Feeling that it is ad hoc is not necessarily a disadvantage -- until we > actually have experience of person duplication and the like, we cannot > reasonably expect to develop a completely satisfactory theory -- the only > data we have to work on comes from a non-duplicating world. We can assume Digital Mechanism, and test it. Digital mechanism is the most obvious theory, and after Gödel, we know we were quite wrong when thinking that the arithmetical reality is simple and obvious. Now we know that it is beyond all theories, but it accounts for the fact, where physicalism has still the obligation to invoke an ontological commitment, which is not available when we use the scientific method, unless some evidences (there are none). > > With digital or numerical mechanism, we avoid such ad hoc move and the > “closer continuers” can be numerous, (even infinite) like in Everett > Relative State, indeed. > > MWI is irrelevant to this discussion, since the branches in MWI are > completely disjoint and form separate coherent worlds. Without overlap, > common sense notions of personal identity continue unchanged in all branches > separately. That’s quite correct, and applicable already in arithmetic. Bruno > > 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] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSdgdgbfOu2cWG8Y6FCu%2B5i4bAsemiRYQgcV55_PrmEDA%40mail.gmail.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLSdgdgbfOu2cWG8Y6FCu%2B5i4bAsemiRYQgcV55_PrmEDA%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- 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/4B89D04C-6B2B-4B45-8968-0ADF35509C50%40ulb.ac.be.
