At 16:05 14/11/03 -0200, Eric Cavalcanti wrote:
- Original Message -
From: Bruno Marchal [EMAIL PROTECTED]
When you said earlier that:
In a materialistic framework, ' I ' am a bunch of atoms.
These atoms
happen to constitute a system that has self-referential
qualities that we call consciousness.
I would say I *own* a bunch of atoms. And we should distinguish
third person self-reference like after the self-duplication you
will see
me at W and at M, say, and first person self-reference like
after
the self-duplication, if comp is true, I will either feel to be
at W, or
I will feel to be at M, but I will never feel to be at both place at
once.
I agree that *own* is a better term. But I still don't agree that I
should
either feel to be W or M. I believe I would still be the original. I
have
been discussing this on this list for a while and did not yet see a
convincing argument. In fact, I think the people in this list have
various
different beliefs in this topic. Some say I should somehow expect to
be
both at the same time;
To be precise I have no certainty in that domain, except probably
that
if we postulate explicitly that we are turing emulable (comp)
then we can
prove that from a first person perspective we will feel to be at W, or at
M, but
not at both place, neither at none place.
some say personal identity does not
exist at all,
which is quite nice to be said but hard to make a sense of (if you
are
not an enlightened buddhist or something);
Indeed, I agree. To say personal identity does not exist at all has
no
meaning except for a zombie (but from a zombie point of view the
word
exists, pain matter ... has no
meaning).
and some, like you, believe
I should have equal subjective probabilities of being
each.
The fact is that I am in a state of maximal ignorance before the
experiment.
But I don't see a justification for
this beyond personal taste. I know
I must have lost this argument earlier on this list, but could you
refer me to a more complete argument, or give a description of it
here?
OK, I try here (more reference below)
Remember that we accept the comp hyp as a working hypothesis. Note
that
this is apparently original: in the literature talk about comp is always
directed toward a refutation or a defense of comp. I don't care becuase
my
point is that ONCE we postulate comp, then we get that comp first
person
indeterminacy, and eventually the complete reversal between physics
and
machine psychology (physics being redefined as what is really
invariant
in all consistent extension of the universal turing
machine...).
So a computationalist is someone who says yes for using
teleportation
(classical teleportation) where he is scanned and read at the correct
level
(which exists by comp), then he is annihilated at D (departure
city)
(under anesthesia if you prefer)
then he is reconstituted at some place.
Now suppose he is reconstituted at two different places, W and M to fix
the things.
(D is different from W, which is different from M, he is still
annihilated at
D).
At each of those two places we can imagine he is reconstituted in
some
closed box, and that he will localized himself by using a GPS system, and
will note
the result in his notebook. OK?
Now, with comp, the one in M will localized himself at M and write M in
the notebook,
and the one in W will localized himself at W and note W in the
notebook.
SO, If we ask before the experiment to a candidate where he will find
himself
after the annihilation (! what he will note in the notebook)
then
1) He cannot say I will be at none places, because he
believes comp, so he
believes he survives teleportation (and the duplication does not change
anything
because the two copies are supposed to be computationaly
independent).
2) He cannot say I will be at the two places because by the
definition of
first person (which is just (at this stage) the content of
memory/notebook), he
knows that each notebook will contained a note like the GPS result
= W or
the GPS result = M and no notebooks will contained the
GPS result =
W and M.
3) He cannot say I will be for sure at W because, by comp
(unless putting W
in the definition of his brain, but then choose other cities for the
experiment),
both reconstitution are 100% (numerically) symmetrical.
4) Nor can He say I will be for sure at M, for the same
reason.
My feeling, if I remember correctly some of your post is that you
will, say 1), that is I will be at none places, because (and
tell me please
if I guess it correctly) you will say I remain the original which
has been
destroyed at D. I have no problem with that. It means you disagree
right
at the start with the comp hyp.
There is a problem only if you believe in comp (mainly that you are
turing
emulable) and still disbelieve with the comp first person
indeterminacy.
OK?
If you want to know why comp eventually force us to derive the laws
of physics, perhaps the simplest exposition are the
following
posts:
Discussion with Joel Dobrzelewski
