Re: A calculus of personal identity
John Mikes writes (quoting Brent Meeker): > > Well that's the question isn't it. Is there > > something besides memories and personality that > > makes you you... > > > But how much do we (already???) know about our > memories > which for sure is a concoction with our personality, > of which we just as well know very little. > Different people have different memories of the same > event (not only the biased eyewitnesses). \ > Never ask a psych-professional because he may be just > as biased in "knowing his profession" as you are with > yours. (Stathis, no hard feelings, please, you have > disclosed a lot of thinking beyond your learned > topics) > We have a crude fractional picture of who we are and > what we know (or don't) and "memory" is a big mystery. > Bigger only is "personality". We can't be sure that our memories are accurate. This puts us in a similar position when we consider our own past as when we consider someone else's past: we think that we know what it was like to be five years old, but our brains may have changed so much in the intervening years that this recollection may be little more vivid or accurate than if we were imagining what someone else's childhood was like after reading a book about it. There is no reason why every other mental quality, including the sense of identity, might not also change greatly over decades, with the only reason we think we remain the same person being that this change is gradual. Stathis Papaioannou _ Try Live.com: where your online world comes together - with news, sports, weather, and much more. http://www.live.com/getstarted --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: A calculus of personal identity
Stathis writes > Lee, > > It’s perhaps unfortunate that we are arguing about this because > I think we basically agree on what Derek Parfit has called a > reductionist theory of personal identity (in his 1984 book > "Reasons and Persons"; Yes, I was very relieved to have read portions of that book. Very few people I knew---and they, only because I had talked them into it---accepted the theory that you and I are espousing. > apparently "reductionist" was not in wide use as a term of > abuse back then). Oh yes it was; I think that it got even worse before it got better. But even today, it may be that you have to come to an "Everything" list, or other forum where the skeptical and well-read hang out. > I like to emphasize the instantaneous or granular nature of > personhood not because we literally die and are resurrected every > moment, as those words are commonly understood, but because it > would make no significant difference to our stream of > consciousness or sense of self if in fact this were the case. Why are you so sure that there is a fact of the matter? Insofar as facts are concerned, there is a lot of agreement that you are the same person you were yesterday. I'm not sure why we need to redefine what is normally meant. > How, where and when the mental states are implemented is > irrelevant and unknowable from a first person perspective, > unless it actually affects the content of the mental states. Oh, well if you mean to be talking about mental states, then I cannot disagree with anything you've said. But if we are trying to talk about "people" or personhood, it's evident that many mental states correspond to one person. > Hal Finney in his recent thread on teleportation thought > experiments disagrees with the above view. He suggests > that it is possible for a subject to apparently undergo > successful teleportation, in that the individual walking > out of the receiving station has all the appropriate > mental and physical attributes in common with the individual > entering the transmitting station, but in reality not survive > the procedure. I have difficulty understanding this, as it > seems to me that the subject has survived by definition. Well, if you've characterized his views correctly, then he's not in agreement with you, me, and Derek Parfit. What might be fun to explore is how desperate some people would have to be in order to teleport (or perhaps how lucrative the opportunity?). Also, I suppose that if you confided to them that this was happening to them all the time thousands of times per second, they'd still have some unfathomable reason not to go near a teleporter. Finally, if we had such devices, soon only the real old fogeys and a few peculiar philosophers wouldn't make steady use of them. Lee --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
RE: Only Existence is necessary?
Stephen writes > it seems that we have skipped > past the question that I am trying to pose: Where does distinguishability > and individuation follow from the mere existence of Platonic Forms, if > "process" is merely a "relation" between Forms (as Bruno et al claim)?! > > In my previous post I tried to point out that *existence* is not a > first-order (or n-th order) predicate and thus does nothing to distinguish > one Form, Number, Algorithm, or what-have-you from another. I don't know about that; I do know that 34 and 3 are not the same thing, nor are they very similar. I wonder if you are joining those who might say that I cannot speak of 34 or 3 without mentioning the process by which I know of them. (In my opinion, that puts the cart before the horse. A lot more people in history were more certain, and rightly so, that there was a moon than that they had brains.) > The property of > individuation requires some manner of distinguishability of one "thing", > "process", etc. from another. Mere existence is insufficient. > We are tacitly assuming an observer or something that amounts to the > same thing any time we assume some 3rd person PoView and such is required > for any coherent notion of distinguishability to obtain and thus something > "to whom" existence means/affects. Well, I just disagree. Before there were people or even atoms, quarks and leptons were not the same thing. They didn't have to be perceived by anyone in order for that to be true. I know that you disagree with this: they didn't even have to affect anything in order for that to be true. If there had been just one quark and one electron in the whole universe, and if they were separately by almost infinitely many light- years, then there would still have been one quark and one electron. Unfortunately, I probably can be of no more assistence to you on this question. Lee > We can go on and on about relations between states, numbers, UDs, or > whatever, but unless we have a consistent way to deal with the source of > individuation and thus distinguishability, we are going nowhere... --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Fermi Paradox and measure
Ron Hale-Evans writes: > My favourite answer to the Fermi Paradox has been that the aliens are > using nearly-perfect compression or encryption for their radio signals > (if they're using radio), and that's why all we can detect is noise. > > However, tonight another "answer" occurred to me. What if we're living > in a finite simulation? I don't know that multiverse concepts explain the Fermi paradox, but they do cast it in a different light. As Bruno points out, our first-person experiences could be created by many different kinds of programs, corresponding to different "realities". It could be that everything is pretty much as it seems. Or perhaps we are living in a simulation controlled by aliens, or our descendants, or robots. Or it's even possible that everything is an illusion and we are in effect imagining it. All of these possibilities contribute to the measure of our experiences. So in some sense it must be simultaneously true that we are in a simulation, and that we are not in a simulation. Both situations exist in the multiverse and both contribute to the reality of our experiences. The hard part of the Fermi question still remains. It might be stated, why is the universe seemingly so large and so empty? In multiverse terms, why is the measure of observers who live in large, empty universes so large, compared to the measure of observers who live in universes teeming with life? For if the measure of the latter observers were much greater than the measure of the former, we would be highly unlikely to find ourselves one of that very small set of observers who see sparse universes. (Of course, I am skipping past the various conventional explanations that have been offered which allow for the universe to in fact be full of life but for it somehow not to be observable. Those have not been generally found to be convincing so we should focus on the hard part. Also, note that while I write "life" for short I really mean intelligent life.) A while back I speculated as follows. Presumably there are laws of physics which would lead to very densely populated universes. And we know that there are laws that lead to very sparse universes, like the ones we live in. All universes exist; all laws are instantiated. For various reasons many of us argue that universes with simpler laws are likely to be more common, to have larger measure. Now, we know that if the laws are too simple, life cannot exist. Trivial universes are not living ones. Presumably, as the laws get more complex, we pass a threshold where life can start to exist. But perhaps it is reasonable to assume that we will first find laws where life can barely exist, before we find laws where life is very common. If so, then there is a band of complexity where universes at the simple end of this band have very sparse intelligent life, and universes at the complex end have very dense intelligent life. Then, to be consistent with our observations, we have to conclude that this band is quite wide - that universes that are just barely complex enough for life have much simpler laws than universes that are teeming with life. That is how we would explain the fact that we find ourselves in one of the first kind. Their boost from having simpler laws must outweigh the increase in numbers of intelligent life forms in the more complex universes. I read that the universe is estimated to have about 10^23 stars. A universe with a high density of intelligent life might therefore be 10^23 times more densely populated than ours. This is about 2^75 times. Therefore we would predict that the physical laws necessary to create such a densely populated universe would be at least 75 bits longer than the simpler laws of our own universe. This is a prediction of multiverse theory as I interpret it. If it should turn out that there are very simple sets of laws that would create very numerous observers, then that would contradict the theory in this form. Hal Finney --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: A calculus of personal identity
--- Brent Meeker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: to Stathis (excerpt): > Well that's the question isn't it. Is there > something besides memories and personality that > makes you you... But how much do we (already???) know about our memories which for sure is a concoction with our personality, of which we just as well know very little. Different people have different memories of the same event (not only the biased eyewitnesses). \ Never ask a psych-professional because he may be just as biased in "knowing his profession" as you are with yours. (Stathis, no hard feelings, please, you have disclosed a lot of thinking beyond your learned topics) We have a crude fractional picture of who we are and what we know (or don't) and "memory" is a big mystery. Bigger only is "personality". John Mikes > Could you feel that your memories belonged > to somebody else? I think that no duplication > is going to be perfect - it's just a question of > whether the difference will be detectable with > reasonable effort. If one remembers having a green > pencil in the first grade and the other > remembers having a blue one, how could anyone know > which is right? > > Brent Meeker > > > > > --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Dear Bruno, I would like to cut to a couple parts of your reply. - Original Message - From: "Bruno Marchal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 4:29 AM Subject: Re: Only Existence is necessary? snip >> [SPK] >> >> Pratt does not seek to reify neither a primary notion of matter or >> time. >> His Dualism becomes a Russellerian neutral Monism in the limit of >> Existence in itself. >> When the notion of distinguishability vanishes, so do all notions >> of Predicates and Properties, all that is left is mere Existence. This is >> why I am pounding hard on the apparent problem that monistic Platonism >> suffers from a severe problem, that it is only a coherent theory if >> and only >> if there is some "subject" to which the Forms have a meaning and this >> "subject" can not be a Form! > > [BM] > I agree one hundred percent! > With comp this can already be justified in many ways: > 1) The (counter)-intuitive comp level: no 1-soul or first person can > recognize herself in any third person description done at any level. [SPK] This seem to me to accert that no entity has a subset that has a complete map of the whole within itself *that can be compared to the whole". Here I am considering the "ability of self-recognize" in terms of the existence of a self-referencing map. Somehow it seems that this is trivially obvious but difficult to comprehend... > The 1-soul has no description, no name, it is indeed not a Form. [SPK] Ok, then this implies that Platonia is Incomplete! > 2) The limit of the self-extending self cannot be defined by > him/her/itself. [SPK] Same as 1). > 3) When I interview the lobian machine, I define the first person by > the knower, and I take the Theaetetical definitions of knowledge, and > this gives thanks, to incompleteness, a non nameable, by any person, > person. Technical reasons show how 1 2 and 3 are related. We can come > back on this when people get some familarization with the > diagonalization stuff. [SPK] I am hoping to comprehend the "diagonalization stuff" some day, my posts are a part of that attempt... snip >>[SPK] >> http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#concur02 >> >> http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ratmech >> >> http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#P5 > > [BM] > Most of those papers are very interesting. By the way, Stephen, I > realize you are the only one I thank in my last (Elsevier paper) and > this indeed for having make me read some of Pratt's papers. > (The others in the list disappears from the paper when, for reason of > conciseness I drop the "related works" section. Sorry). > > But Pratt, and Girard (and Abramsky) react to the failure of Hilbert > program by mainly weakening logic, at first. I believe that if a > mathematical theorem, like Godel's incompleteness, forces us to weaken > (or enriche) the logic, then an analysis of the incompleteness > phenomenon should help us to chose the exact way of weakening the > logic. I would only criticize Girard and Pratt for not providing enough > motivation. I have still some hope to get an arithmetical *linear > logic* and extract the relevant "Chu transforms", in the long run. I > appreciate very much those papers, but in this list the closer I have > been to that approach is in the combinator posts (prematurely too much > technical, I would say now.). But see my Elsevier paper for more on > this. [SPK] Could you post a link to the Elsevier paper? >>[SPK] >> Bodies are the sets (as point and their interactions = Physics!) >> and >> Minds are the Boolean algebras (information structures and their >> implications = Computations!). Is this so hard to swallow? > > [BM] > I totally agree and swallow this with pleasure :-) (although this is a > very abstract immaterial view of "bodies") > More can be said: the quantum appears through parallelizing the boolean > algebras, and generates the many locally classical bodies. No problem. [SPK] I disagree! QM does not follow merely from linear superposition, there is also (at least) the non-commutativity of observables... Pratt et al seems to believe that this latter aspect shows up when we consider the concurrency problem http://www-i2.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/Forschung/MCS/Mailing_List_archive/con_hyperarchive_1988-1990/0075.html http://chu.stanford.edu/guide.html#ql http://www.di.ens.fr/~goubault/link002.html >[BM] > Pratt would be more convincing about those mind/body issue if he could > apply it to the mind/body issues explicitly addressed by the mind/body > researchers, also, I think. [SPK] Pratt is dealing with a deeper aspect of the mind/body problem than most reseachers consider, with the notable exeption of David Chalmers and Stuart Hameroff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Chalmers http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/Fundamentality.html snip >>[SPK] >> All we are asked to do here is do stop trying to make up a static >> Universe! > > [
Re: Only Existence is necessary?
Le 26-juin-06, à 23:09, Tom Caylor a écrit :
> I also agree that the "subject" to which the Forms have meaning cannot
> be a Form itself. But as my previous post(s) on this thread mentioned,
> I see it as a "recognition" of what "is there". I like to use the word
> "re-cogn-ize" ("again know"). A year ago in a meeting of fathers and
> sons, the question was asked, "What does the word recognize mean?" My
> son, who was 8 years old, said, "It's when you know something, and you
> know that you know it." Jesus said, "Unless you become like children,
> you will not enter the kingdom of God." Bruno, you have brought up
> examples of children being able to see simple truths, like the
> 7+7+7+7+7+7 in your fairy-riddle introduction to diagonalization.
> (Along those lines, there's the classic objection to the Penrose
> argument, objecting that it shouldn't require the ability see the truth
> of the Godel statement in order to qualify for having consciousness. I
> agree, but think the objection portrays a misunderstanding of Penrose's
> argument, even though I don't necessarily agree with all of Penrose's
> conclusions.)
>
> Anyway, I think this is a pretty good definition of recognize, "to know
> something, and to know that you know it". Now people object that this
> just produces an infinite regression, but this is assuming that we
> never can have any direct contact with truth. I think Bruno is partly
> right in that the key lies in the infinite. I think we adults have
> gotten so caught up in building our own empire (science), in a
> computational step-by-step manner, that we often blind ourselves from
> simple truth.
I agree with you. Most theories of knowledge (or "knowledgeability")
accept the axiom named "four":
4: Kp -> KKp (knowable p entails knowable knowable p; or "if I can
"cognize" the truth of p, then I can (re)cognize that I can "cognize"
the truth of p). Of course we will come back on this. the "K" here will
be defined through the Theaetetical variant of the Godel beweisbar "B",
which hides many diagonalizations.
> My comment about math being about invariance was not meant to be a
> global definition of math. "Math is about invariance" was meant to
> imply "math is about looking for invariance". This is something that
> children understand even more naturally than numbers.
Invariance is for me mainly the subject matter of group theory or
geometry, and I would argue that numbers are more elementary. I am
happy because I will have the opportunity this summer to teach math to
very little children (6 year old), so I will have perhaps a better
idea. I have not so much experience with so young students except a
long time ago when I worked with highly mentally disabled one. You
could be right in some sense. Piaget wrote about this and I should
perhaps reread it. But then this question is also a little bit out of
topic given that you seem already agreeing with AR, if only for the
sake of the comp argumentation.
BTW, I will send asap the solution of the four diagonalization
questions. Thanks to you and George for your patience,
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Re: A calculus of personal identity
Le 26-juin-06, à 14:28, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit : Bruno Marchal writes (quoting SP): > > Of course, it is not possible for a third person observer to be > > certain about first person mental states, and this would apply to our > > teleportee: he may feel as if he is the same person as he was prior to > > the procedure, but he might be wrong. > > If he is a zombie, by definition he feels nothing. I am assuming here he is not a zombie, that he has a memory of what he felt like pre-teleportation, but that he may be wrong about this. I am not sure any entity can be wrong about a (first) personal feeling. The person can only be wrong relatively to some (personal) interpretation of some (non personal) world (its most probable history/computation). (Actually even a zombie cannot be wrong when he asserts, for example, that he has a headache. But this happens for a different reason: he is *not* interpreting at all its own words. Feelings have to be conscious by definition I would say). When we remember our past, we are doing something analogous to what we do when we look at someone else's account of their first person experience and try to imagine what it must have been like to have that experience. All right, but only partially so. We hardly succeed imagining the real things here, except perhaps twins or doppelgangers, but in both case, only serendipitously. Memories of our past are generally more vivid and hold more information than writing, film etc., but there may come a time when people directly share memories with each other as easily as they now share mp3 files. Selling, buying, sharing memories belongs to the future of applied bio-information science, I guess. But still, despite infinite possible progress in that matter, what will always really be shared will be numbers and partially similar decoding and interpreting procedures. For example, the mp3 files contains binary digits, and people share indeed the same first level decoding machinery (a Mac, a PC, an ipod, etc.). They does not share the personal experience (ex: for one the music will makes him/she recall nice memories, for someone else: only bad memories). Now you make one step further and share the good/bad memories. This can only partially be done, and then it will be similar to number-mp3 sharing. To share the first person experience completely you will have to erase memories for maintaining enough (self-) consistency, and you will actually fuse the persons. The quantum analog is quantum erasure of information which allows interference effects (and thus history-fusion) to (re)appear. The first person itself is not first person-self-definable (I will come back on this, but those following the diagonalization post can already smell this phenomenon: the collection of all computable functions from N to N cannot be enumerated by a computable function). > I would agree if I was believing in Nature. As a scientist I am neutral > about the existence of nature, but assuming comp "Nature", like > "matter" should not be reified. Can you think of any findings in evolutionary biology which count as evidence either for or against the existence of a material world? We must be very careful here. Evolutionary biology assumes a material world, and I would say (just apparently against comp) that evolutionary biology CORRECTLY assumes a material world. Somehow like a chess player assumes some local chessboard and a car driver assumes some local car. It just happen that evolutionary biologists are not so much interested in the very nature and origin of that material world. They either define it as a bunch of interacting fields and particles they heard about, or even more generally just as the object matter of physics, without looking to the conceptual problem of physics at all. For example in "consciousness explained" Dennett explictly asserts that there is no more conceptual problem in physics: only technical problem would remain. (This attitude evolves slightly thanks to quantum computation). Note that this is also the reason why comp cannot threaten evolutionary biology, quite the contrary, it proceeds according to the same basic mechanist philosophy. A case can even been made that comp extends Darwinism by allowing the physical laws to evolve, in some logical or psycho or theo-arithmetical selection process. Of course, most scientists, like most people, assume there is a material world out there, but this is not a premiss on the basis of which scientific theories stand or fall. The science or art of doing good pizza does not depend on atoms, quarks, or waves, still less on the interpretation of those terms. Any irrefutable (non scientific) fuzzy notion of matter will do. Most scientist assume a material world, but none make this explicitly, and matter is just a background decor at least since about 500 after JC. Biologists are almost all materialist, although nuances can already be made when comparing molecular
Re: Teleportation thought experiment and UD+ASSA
Hal, thanks for explaining! I think that your approach makes a lot of sense. Applying this to copying experiments, the probability of finding yourself to be the digital copy is: m1/[m1 + m2] where m1 is the measure of the mental experience corresponding to knowing that you are the digital copy and m2 the measure of the mental experience corresponding to knowing that you are still in biological form. I think that for practical implementations m1 = m2 because the digital implementation will just simulate the brain, so the complexity of the translation program would be practically the same. Saibal - Original Message - From: ""Hal Finney"" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 08:49 AM Subject: Re: Teleportation thought experiment and UD+ASSA > > "Saibal Mitra" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I don't understand why you consider the measures of the programs that do the > > simulations. The ''real'' measure should be derived from the algorithmic > > complexity of the laws of physics that describe how the computers/brains > > work. If you know for certain that a computation will be performed in this > > universe, then it doesn't matter how it is performed. > > I think what you're saying here is that if a mental state is instantiated > by a given universe, the contribution to its measure should just be > the measure of the universe that instantiates it. And that universe's > measure is based on the complexity of its laws of physics. > > I used to hold this view, but I eventually abandoned it because of a > number of problems. I need to go back and collect the old messages > and discussions that we have had and put them into some kind of order. > But I can mention a couple of issues. > > One problem is the one I just wrote about in my reply to Russell, the > fuzziness of the concept of implementation. In at least some universes > we may face a gray area in deciding whether a particular computation, > or more specifically a particular mental state, is being instantiated. > Philosophers like Hans Moravec apparently really believe that every > system instantiates virtually every mental state! If you look at the > right subset of the atomic vibrations inside a chunk of rock, you can > come up with a pattern that is identical to the pattern of firing of > neurons in your own brain. Now, most philosophers reject this, they come > up with various technical criteria that implementations have to satisfy, > but as I wrote to Russell I don't think any of these work. > > The other problem arises from fuzziness in what counts as a "universe". > The problem is that you can write very simple programs which will > create your mental state. For example, the Universal Dovetailer does > just that. But the UD program is much smaller than what our universe's > physical laws probably would be. Does the measure of the UD "count" as a > contribution to every mind it creates? If so, then it will dominate over > the contributions from more conventional universes; and further, since > the UD generates all minds, it means that all minds have equal measure. > To reject the UD as a cheating non-universe means that we will need a > bunch of ad hoc rules about what counts as a universe and what does not, > which are fundamentally arbitrary and unconvincing. > > Then there are all those bothersome disputes which arise in this model, > such as whether multiple instantiations should add more measure than > just one; or whether a given brain in a small universe should get more > measure than the same brain in a big universe (since it uses a higher > proportion of the universe's resources in the first case). All these > issues, as well as the ones above, are addressed and answered in my > current framework, which is far simpler (the measure of a mental state > is just its Kolmogorov measure - end of story). > > > > The algorithmic complexity of the program needed to simulate a brain refers > > to a ''personal universe''. You can think of the brain as a machine that is > > simulating a virtual world in which the qualia we experience exist. That > > world also exists independent of our brain in a universe of its own. This > > world has a very small measure defined by the very large algorithmic > > complexity of the program needed to specify the brain. > > I agree with this, I think. The program needed to specify a mental state > a priori would be far larger than the program needed to specify the laws > of physics which could cause that mental state to evolve "naturally". > Both programs make a contribution to the measure of the mental state, > but the second one's contribution is enormously greater. > > The key point, due to Wei Dai, is that you can mathematically treat the > two on an equal footing. As you have described it, we have a virtual > world with qualia being created by a brain; and you have that same > world existing independently as a universe of its own. Those are pretty > different in a Sch
Re: A calculus of personal identity
Brent Meeker writes: > > Is the duplication process good enough to match or better the mechanisms naturally in place to> > preserve the functional integrity of the brain from moment to moment? That is the question that> > needs to be answered. It would be unreasonable to speculate that the duplicate may not be the> > same person as the original based on some test which, if applied consistently, might also cast> > doubt on whether we are still the same person from moment to moment in ordinary life. Putting it> > differently, maybe we *aren't* the same person from moment to moment: maybe we are constantly> > dying, to be replaced by a close, but necessarily imperfect copy. After all, nature will not> > evolve a system to perfectly preserve mental attributes throughout life just because such an> > arrangement is aesthetically pleasing. Preservation of the majority of memories, personality,> > other learned and instinctive behaviours, and a *belief* that we are the same person throughout> > life so that we will plan for our future well-being are the only qualities that evolution could> > act on. Since our brains are being continuously rebuilt at considerable metabolic expense, any> > subtle mental quality that has no effect on behaviour would be ruthlessly pared away by> > evolution's razor.> > Well, only assuming there is some evolutionary cost to them. There might be lots of what Gould > called 'spandrels'. But what I'm wondering is whether the *belief* that we're the same person is > some wholistic property of the brain or is it just some small module. If the latter then it seems > possible the duplicate could have all the other attributes, but lack that belief. This seems > perfectly plausible, since I can have doubts about other things why not doubt I'm me? A "spandrel" must not only be benign, it must also be a side-effect of some other positive evolutionary benefit, otherwise in the long run it will fade away into the genetic noise. Regardless, it is possible that the sense of personality identity is some complex and delicate property of the brain which might be difficult to capture in duplication even if everything else is apparently intact. Well, all that means is that it would be technically difficult to achieve an identity-preserving duplication. Is there any reason to think this would be a different kind of difficulty to the difficulty involved in duplicating any other mental quality? There are another couple of positions on this question which have been expressed at one time or another by other list members. One is the traditional dualist view, that despite perfect physical duplication, and despite the duplicate behaving like the original, what has in fact been created is a zombie. The other position is that despite perfect physical *and* as a consequence perfect mental duplication, the subject has still not survived (as he would have survived in ordinary life). The first of these I merely disagree with, but the second I find incoherent. Stathis Papaioannou Express yourself instantly with Windows Live Messenger! --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: in turn Re: A calculus of personal identity
Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Brent Meeker writes: > > >>> If the duplicate did not feel he was the original, then he wouldn't have >>> "all the memories >>> and personality of the original", would he? >> >> Well that's the question isn't it. Is there something besides memories and >> personality that >> makes you you. Could you feel that your memories belonged to somebody else? >> I think that no >> duplication is going to be perfect - it's just a question of whether the >> difference will be >> detectable with reasonable effort. If one remembers having a green pencil >> in the first grade >> and the other remembers having a blue one, how could anyone know which is >> right? > > > Is the duplication process good enough to match or better the mechanisms > naturally in place to > preserve the functional integrity of the brain from moment to moment? That is > the question that > needs to be answered. It would be unreasonable to speculate that the > duplicate may not be the > same person as the original based on some test which, if applied > consistently, might also cast > doubt on whether we are still the same person from moment to moment in > ordinary life. Putting it > differently, maybe we *aren't* the same person from moment to moment: maybe > we are constantly > dying, to be replaced by a close, but necessarily imperfect copy. After all, > nature will not > evolve a system to perfectly preserve mental attributes throughout life just > because such an > arrangement is aesthetically pleasing. Preservation of the majority of > memories, personality, > other learned and instinctive behaviours, and a *belief* that we are the same > person throughout > life so that we will plan for our future well-being are the only qualities > that evolution could > act on. Since our brains are being continuously rebuilt at considerable > metabolic expense, any > subtle mental quality that has no effect on behaviour would be ruthlessly > pared away by > evolution's razor. Well, only assuming there is some evolutionary cost to them. There might be lots of what Gould called 'spandrels'. But what I'm wondering is whether the *belief* that we're the same person is some wholistic property of the brain or is it just some small module. If the latter then it seems possible the duplicate could have all the other attributes, but lack that belief. This seems perfectly plausible, since I can have doubts about other things why not doubt I'm me? Brent Meeker --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
in turn Re: A calculus of personal identity
Brent Meeker writes: > > If the duplicate did not feel he was the original, then he wouldn't have > > "all the memories and personality of the original", would he? > > Well that's the question isn't it. Is there something besides memories and > personality that makes > you you. Could you feel that your memories belonged to somebody else? I > think that no duplication > is going to be perfect - it's just a question of whether the difference will > be detectable with > reasonable effort. If one remembers having a green pencil in the first grade > and the other > remembers having a blue one, how could anyone know which is right? Is the duplication process good enough to match or better the mechanisms naturally in place to preserve the functional integrity of the brain from moment to moment? That is the question that needs to be answered. It would be unreasonable to speculate that the duplicate may not be the same person as the original based on some test which, if applied consistently, might also cast doubt on whether we are still the same person from moment to moment in ordinary life. Putting it differently, maybe we *aren't* the same person from moment to moment: maybe we are constantly dying, to be replaced by a close, but necessarily imperfect copy. After all, nature will not evolve a system to perfectly preserve mental attributes throughout life just because such an arrangement is aesthetically pleasing. Preservation of the majority of memories, personality, other learned and instinctive behaviours, and a *belief* that we are the same person throughout life so that we will plan for our future well-being are the only qualities that evolution could act on. Since our brains are being continuously rebuilt at considerable metabolic expense, any subtle mental quality that has no effect on behaviour would be ruthlessly pared away by evolution's razor. Stathis Papaioannou _ Try Live.com: where your online world comes together - with news, sports, weather, and much more. http://www.live.com/getstarted --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
