On Friday, August 2, 2019, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > On 8/2/2019 1:06 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > > > On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 1:40 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On 8/2/2019 11:03 AM, Jason Resch wrote: >> > It is like Saibal Mitra said, the person he was when he was 3 is >> > dead. Too much information was added to his brain. If his 3 year old >> > self were suddenly replaced with his much older self, you would >> > conclude the 3 year old was destroyed, but when gradual changes are >> > made, day by day, common-sense and convention maintains that the >> > 3-year-old was not destroyed, and still lives. This is the >> > inconsistency of continuity theories. >> >> On the contrary I'd say it illustrates the consistency of causal >> continuity theories. >> >> > Your close friend walks into a black box, and emerges 1 hour later. > > In case A, he was destroyed in a discontinuous way, and a new version of > that person was formed having the mind of your friend as it might have been > 1 hour later. > In case B, he sat around for an hour before emerging. > > You later meet up with the entity who emerges from this black box for > coffee. > > From your point of view, neither case A nor B is physically > distinguishable. Yet under your casual continuity theory, your friend has > either died or survived entering the black box. You have no way of knowing > if the entity you are having coffee with is your friend or not. Is this a > legitimate and consistent way of looking at the world? > > > Did the black box take A's information in order to copy him, or did it > make a copy accidentally. > Would that change the result? > > > Incidentally, my not knowing the difference between two things is not very > good evidence that they are the same. > > > That there's no physical experiment, even in principle, that could differentiate the two cases, I take as evidence that notions of identity holding there to be a difference are illusory. Jason -- 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/CA%2BBCJUg-K-%2BOD4_0N7fzcV6Dnb5CjTDfJDir3oCGbP0Gy3ALOA%40mail.gmail.com.
