Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 24-juin-05, à 22:43, Pete Carlton a écrit : (Sorry for the delay; I like to spend several hours writing here but I have had meetings to attend etc..) On Jun 22, 2005, at 4:19 AM, Brent Meeker wrote: Bruno wrote There are two *physical* issues here. 1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy (or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacy without the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everett contribution. I do see how comp / first-person indeterminacy can account for, or can be equivalent to, quantum indeterminacy. In other words, asking Why am I the one in Washington instead of Moscow is like asking Why am I the one who sees the cat is still alive, etc. But my point is that we don't need to postulate primitive first-person phenomena like observer moments to account for the larger 3rd person fact, which is just that there will exist people who are going to ask these questions. I agree with you if the larger 3rd person facts are taken from computer science or arithmetic. I am far less sure that we must postulated matter space time etc. At the same time I think we must postulate 1 person existence and right (It is even in the constitution of most democratic country). And I don't think people take their own personal experience as a postulate, but more as a given. You never postulate you *feel* a headache. I'd rather postulate classes of third-person phenomena (such as those that fall into Dennett's 'intentional stance') Yes but Dennet is very naive on those points. he believes physics as something having no more problem of interpretation, like if we knew what matter really is! that are able to explain the *apparent* first-person phenomena such as the absence of white rabbits. Numbers explain better than anything relying on the matter postulate. Dennett associates the number to matter in a way incompatible with comp. I like Dennett, if you read him carefully he acknowledge not having make progress in the mind-body problem (despite deep ideas). That way Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason remains intact: it isn't the case that There's no sufficient reason why I find myself in Moscow; rather, there *is* a reason why there's one person in Moscow, and one in Washington, and they're both asking certain questions that contain the word I. Right. But this makes them ignorant of their future in case they (re)do the experiment, keeping betting on comp. There is a first person indeterminacy. You get the point. But it is just a step in a much longer reasoning. 2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number of appearances of first person white rabbits I don't see that either. The SWE doesn't predict that *everything* (which is what I presume you to mean by white rabbits) will happen. If it did it would be useless. -or (if I understand correctly) it doesn't predict that everything will happen to the same extent. But, anyway, I agree that the white rabbit problem is real, although I see it as a third person problem rather than an (intrinsically) first person problem. Well, for a Tegmarkian there are varieties of 3-person Rabbit problems and 1-person rabbit problems. With comp there is a 1-person rabbit problems, and it is just open if some 2-rabbit problem will appear ... and the only way to solve this, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWE from the comp indeterminacy bearing But the indeterminancy of comp arises from equivocation about I as Pete noted. It assumes first that there is an I dependent on physical structure and then sees a problem in determining where the I goes when the structure is duplicated. Right - I think that the physical structure (which I'm happy to equate with mathematical structure, or a program, etc.) You cannot do that. I mean you can, but it is a very strong assumption. With comp physical striucture is eventually identifiable with covering relation of computational histories ... is all there is - But OK. You are near comp, or Tegmark, Schmidhuber, ... and once you've explained that, you've explained everything. Schmidhuber error. I humbly think. What really happens is that when you do identify me with a program, you can use computer science to begin to formulate the 1-3 person problem. The I that comes out of it is a very useful pattern to us but it isn't something further, something primitive. It is not primitive. But the relation between 1-person and 3-person everybody takes for granted since 2300 years (Aristotle) just does not work. The best example I can think of where the first person as primitive reasoning takes us into weird territory, is the talk of observer moments. I think that taking these as primitive leads us into error; I agree with it. Except the concept has not
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 22-juin-05, à 13:19, Brent Meeker a écrit : -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 8:16 AM To: Pete Carlton Cc: EverythingList Subject: Re: Dualism and the DA Le 21-juin-05, à 21:21, Pete Carlton a écrit : snip Now, if you introduce copies to this scenario, it does not seem to me that anything changes fundamentally. Your choice on what kind of scenario to accept will still hinge on your desires for the future of any persons involved. The desires themselves may be very complicated, and in fact will depend on lots of hitherto unspecified details such as the legal status, ownership rights, etc., of copies. Of course one copy will say I pushed the button and then I got tortured, and the other copy will say I pushed the button and woke up on the beach - which is exactly what we would expect these two people to say. And they're both right, insofar as they're giving an accurate report of their memories. What is the metaphysical issue here? There are two *physical* issues here. 1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy (or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacy without the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everett contribution. I think Pete has a good point; I don't see how this bears on his analysis of I. Could you elaborate a little bit? I don't see how it could possibly not bear on Pete's analysis of I. I mean if Pete is right about his I, he should agree with Everett's notion that the probabilities are subjective in QM. 2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number of appearances of first person white rabbits I don't see that either. The SWE doesn't predict that *everything* (which is what I presume you to mean by white rabbits) will happen. If it did it would be useless. Once you accept comp, the explosion of rabbits follows from the UD Argument (UDA). Invoking the SWE here is irrelevent, unless to say that the SWE is the only way to solve the rabbits problem. Showing this from comp only would be derivation of the SWE from comp. and the only way to solve this, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWE from the comp indeterminacy bearing But the indeterminancy of comp arises from equivocation about I as Pete noted. I can agree with the use of such vocabulary. It assumes first that there is an I dependent on physical structure The physical structure is what makes an I to be able to manifest eself relatively to some probable computation. and then sees a problem in determining where the I goes when the structure is duplicated. Yes. on all computational states/histories. The fact that all these metaphysical problems and bizarre results are predicted by assuming *everything happens* implies to me that *everything happens* is likely false. 1) Weirdness is not falsity, but ok I am open we will get a falsity from comp, and then comp will be refuted and that would be a giant result. 2) everything happens in the comp frame, just means that the set of all possible computations is as well defined as the set of natural numbers. You cannot make disappear a computation for the same reason you cannot dismiss the number 13 or the least prime bigger than 100^(100^(100^(100^(100^(100^(100^(100))). I'm not sure what the best alternative is, but I like Roland Omnes view point that QM is a probabilistic theory and hence it must predict probabilities for things that don't happen. OK, but that is an ad hoc wishful thinking move to preserve unicity of history. Even Roland Omnes agrees that such a move is non cartesian. And then, in the french edition (but not in the english edition if I remember correctly-I will verify again!) he opposes Heidegger against Descartes in the most irrational way. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 22-juin-05, à 21:26, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a écrit : x-tad-biggerActually, it occurred to me lately that saying everything happens may be the same as the paradox of the set of all sets. /x-tad-bigger That is indeed close to may critics of Tegmark. But as you know logician have made progress in set theories, and today there exist reasonnable set theories which can make you comfortable with notions of universal sets. Now comp gives the most simple of them all, and that's why, I don't insist on all those non-comp variants. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Re: Dualism and the DA
(Sorry for the delay; I like to spend several hours writing here but I have had meetings to attend etc..)On Jun 22, 2005, at 4:19 AM, Brent Meeker wrote:There are two *physical* issues here.1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy(or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacywithout the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everettcontribution. I do see how comp / "first-person" indeterminacy can account for, or can be equivalent to, quantum indeterminacy. In other words, asking "Why am I the one in Washington instead of Moscow" is like asking "Why am I the one who sees the cat is still alive", etc. But my point is that we don't need to postulate "primitive" first-person phenomena like observer moments to account for the larger 3rd person fact, which is just that there will exist people who are going to ask these questions. I'd rather postulate classes of third-person phenomena (such as those that fall into Dennett's 'intentional stance') that are able to explain the *apparent* first-person phenomena such as the absence of white rabbits. That way Leibniz's principle of sufficient reason remains intact: it isn't the case that "There's no sufficient reason why I find myself in Moscow"; rather, there *is* a reason why there's one person in Moscow, and one in Washington, and they're both asking certain questions that contain the word "I".2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the compindeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number ofappearances of first person white rabbitsI don't see that either. The SWE doesn't predict that *everything* (which iswhat I presume you to mean by "white rabbits") will happen. If it did it wouldbe useless.-or (if I understand correctly) it doesn't predict that everything will happen to the same extent. But, anyway, I agree that the white rabbit problem is real, although I see it as a third person problem rather than an (intrinsically) first person problem. and the only way to solvethis, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWEfrom the comp indeterminacy bearing But the "indeterminancy" of comp arises from equivocation about "I" as Petenoted. It assumes first that there is an "I" dependent on physical structureand then sees a problem in determining where the "I" goes when the structure isduplicated.Right - I think that the "physical structure" (which I'm happy to equate with mathematical structure, or a program, etc.) is all there is - and once you've explained that, you've explained everything. The "I" that comes out of it is a very useful pattern to us but it isn't something further, something primitive. The best example I can think of where the "first person as primitive" reasoning takes us into weird territory, is the talk of "observer moments". I think that taking these as primitive leads us into error; in particular the idea that there's a definite answer to the question "what observer moment am I now experiencing?".Best regards Pete Carlton
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 21-juin-05, à 21:21, Pete Carlton a écrit : I think the practical differences are large, as you say, but I disagree that it points to a fundamental metaphysical difference. I think what appears to be a metaphysical difference is just the breakdown of our folk concept of I. Imagine a primitive person who didn't understand the physics of fire, seeing two candles lit from a single one, then the first one extinguished - they may be tempted to conclude that the first flame has now become two flames. Well, this is no problem because flames never say things like I would like to keep burning or I wonder what my next experience would be. We, however, do say these things. But does this bit of behavior (including the neural activity that causes it) make us different in a relevant way? And if so, how? This breakdown of I is very interesting. Since there's lots of talk about torture here, let's take this extremely simple example: Smith is going to torture someone, one hour from now. You may try to take steps to prevent it. How much effort you are willing to put in depends, among other things, on the identity of the person Smith is going to torture. In particular, you will be very highly motivated if that person is you; or rather, the person you will be one hour from now. The reason for the high motivation is that you have strong desires for that person to continue their life unabated, and those desires hinge on the outcome of the torture. But my point is that your strong desires for your own survival are just a special case of desires for a given person's survival - in other words, you are already taking a third-person point of view to your (future) self. You know that if the person is killed during torture, they will not continue their life; if they survive it, their life will still be negatively impacted, and your desires for the person's future are thwarted. Now, if you introduce copies to this scenario, it does not seem to me that anything changes fundamentally. Your choice on what kind of scenario to accept will still hinge on your desires for the future of any persons involved. The desires themselves may be very complicated, and in fact will depend on lots of hitherto unspecified details such as the legal status, ownership rights, etc., of copies. Of course one copy will say I pushed the button and then I got tortured, and the other copy will say I pushed the button and woke up on the beach - which is exactly what we would expect these two people to say. And they're both right, insofar as they're giving an accurate report of their memories. What is the metaphysical issue here? There are two *physical* issues here. 1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy (or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacy without the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everett contribution. 2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number of appearances of first person white rabbits and the only way to solve this, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWE from the comp indeterminacy bearing on all computational states/histories. The issue 1) is that an indeterministic physical theory is reduced to a deterministic physical theory. The issue 2) is that physics is reduced (at least in principle) to math/computer science. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Dualism and the DA
-Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 22, 2005 8:16 AM To: Pete Carlton Cc: EverythingList Subject: Re: Dualism and the DA Le 21-juin-05, à 21:21, Pete Carlton a écrit : I think the practical differences are large, as you say, but I disagree that it points to a fundamental metaphysical difference. I think what appears to be a metaphysical difference is just the breakdown of our folk concept of I. Imagine a primitive person who didn't understand the physics of fire, seeing two candles lit from a single one, then the first one extinguished - they may be tempted to conclude that the first flame has now become two flames. Well, this is no problem because flames never say things like I would like to keep burning or I wonder what my next experience would be. We, however, do say these things. But does this bit of behavior (including the neural activity that causes it) make us different in a relevant way? And if so, how? This breakdown of I is very interesting. Since there's lots of talk about torture here, let's take this extremely simple example: Smith is going to torture someone, one hour from now. You may try to take steps to prevent it. How much effort you are willing to put in depends, among other things, on the identity of the person Smith is going to torture. In particular, you will be very highly motivated if that person is you; or rather, the person you will be one hour from now. The reason for the high motivation is that you have strong desires for that person to continue their life unabated, and those desires hinge on the outcome of the torture. But my point is that your strong desires for your own survival are just a special case of desires for a given person's survival - in other words, you are already taking a third-person point of view to your (future) self. You know that if the person is killed during torture, they will not continue their life; if they survive it, their life will still be negatively impacted, and your desires for the person's future are thwarted. Now, if you introduce copies to this scenario, it does not seem to me that anything changes fundamentally. Your choice on what kind of scenario to accept will still hinge on your desires for the future of any persons involved. The desires themselves may be very complicated, and in fact will depend on lots of hitherto unspecified details such as the legal status, ownership rights, etc., of copies. Of course one copy will say I pushed the button and then I got tortured, and the other copy will say I pushed the button and woke up on the beach - which is exactly what we would expect these two people to say. And they're both right, insofar as they're giving an accurate report of their memories. What is the metaphysical issue here? There are two *physical* issues here. 1) The simplest one is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy (or similar) you get an explanation of the quantum indeterminacy without the collapse of the wave packet. This is mainly Everett contribution. I think Pete has a good point; I don't see how this bears on his analysis of I. 2) The less trivial one, perhaps, is that if you agree with the comp indeterminacy you get an a priori explosion of the number of appearances of first person white rabbits I don't see that either. The SWE doesn't predict that *everything* (which is what I presume you to mean by white rabbits) will happen. If it did it would be useless. and the only way to solve this, assuming the SWE is correct, must consist in justifying the SWE from the comp indeterminacy bearing But the indeterminancy of comp arises from equivocation about I as Pete noted. It assumes first that there is an I dependent on physical structure and then sees a problem in determining where the I goes when the structure is duplicated. on all computational states/histories. The fact that all these metaphysical problems and bizarre results are predicted by assuming *everything happens* implies to me that *everything happens* is likely false. I'm not sure what the best alternative is, but I like Roland Omnes view point that QM is a probabilistic theory and hence it must predict probabilities for things that don't happen. Brent Meeker
Re: Dualism and the DA
Brent Meeker: The fact that all these metaphysical problems and bizarre results are predictedby assuming *everything happens* implies to me that *everything happens* islikely false. I'm not sure what the best alternative is, but I like RolandOmnes view point that QM is a probabilistic theory and hence it must predictprobabilities for things that don't happen. end quote Actually, it occurred to me lately that saying "everything happens" may be the same as the paradox of the "set of all sets". Tom Caylor
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Jun 20, 2005, at 10:44 AM, Hal Finney wrote:Pete Carlton writes: snip-- we don't need to posit any kind of dualism to paper over it, we just have to revise our concept of "I". Hal Finney wrote:Copies seem a little more problematic. We're pretty cavalier aboutcreating and destroying them in our thought experiments, but the socialimplications of copies are enormous and I suspect that people's viewsabout the nature of copying would not be as simple as we sometimes assume.I doubt that many people would be indifferent between the choice ofhaving a 50-50 chance of being teleported to Moscow or Washington, vshaving copies made which wake up in both cities. The practical effectswould be enormously different. And as I wrote before, I suspect thatthese practical differences are not to be swept under the rug, but pointto fundamental metaphysical differences between the two situations.I think the practical differences are large, as you say, but I disagree that it points to a fundamental metaphysical difference. I think what appears to be a metaphysical difference is just the breakdown of our folk concept of "I". Imagine a primitive person who didn't understand the physics of fire, seeing two candles lit from a single one, then the first one extinguished - they may be tempted to conclude that the first flame has now become two flames. Well, this is no problem because flames never say things like "I would like to keep burning" or "I wonder what my next experience would be". We, however, do say these things. But does this bit of behavior (including the neural activity that causes it) make us different in a relevant way? And if so, how?This breakdown of "I" is very interesting. Since there's lots of talk about torture here, let's take this extremely simple example: Smith is going to torture someone, one hour from now. You may try to take steps to prevent it. How much effort you are willing to put in depends, among other things, on the identity of the person Smith is going to torture. In particular, you will be very highly motivated if that person is you; or rather, the person you will be one hour from now. The reason for the high motivation is that you have strong desires for that person to continue their life unabated, and those desires hinge on the outcome of the torture. But my point is that your strong desires for your own survival are just a special case of desires for a given person's survival - in other words, you are already taking a third-person point of view to your (future) self. You know that if the person is killed during torture, they will not continue their life; if they survive it, their life will still be negatively impacted, and your desires for the person's future are thwarted.Now, if you introduce copies to this scenario, it does not seem to me that anything changes fundamentally. Your choice on what kind of scenario to accept will still hinge on your desires for the future of any persons involved. The desires themselves may be very complicated, and in fact will depend on lots of hitherto unspecified details such as the legal status, ownership rights, etc., of copies. Of course one copy will say "I pushed the button and then I got tortured", and the other copy will say "I pushed the button and woke up on the beach" - which is exactly what we would expect these two people to say. And they're both right, insofar as they're giving an accurate report of their memories. What is the metaphysical issue here?
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Mon, Jun 20, 2005 at 12:01:48AM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Russell Standish wrote: (JC) If you want to insist that What would it be like to be a bat is equivalent to the question What would the universe be like if I had been a bat rather than me?, it is very hard to see what the answer could be. Suppose you *had* been a bat rather than you (Russell Standish). How would the universe be any different than it is now? If you can answer that question, (which is the key question, to my mind), then I'll grant that the question is meaningful. No different in the 3rd person, very obviously different in the 1st person I don't really know what that means. The only way I can make sense of the question is something like, If I was a bat instead of me (Jonathan Colvin), then the universe would consist of a bat asking the question I'm asking now. That's a counterfactual, a way in which the universe would be objectively different. It wouldn't be counterfactual, because by assumption bats ask this question of themselves anyway. Hence there is no difference in the 3rd person. The 1st person experience is very different though. There are only 1st person counterfactuals. I definitely acknowledge the distinction between 1st and 3rd person. This is not the same as duality, which posits a 3rd person entity (the immaterial soul). This is, I think, the crux of the reference class issue with the DA. My (and your) reference class can not be merely conscious observers or all humans, but must be something much closer to someone (or thing) discussing or aware of the DA). I don't think this is a meaningful reference class. I can still ask the question why am I me, and not someone else without being aware of the DA. All it takes is self-awareness IMHO. I note that this reference class is certainly appropriate for you and me, and likely for anyone else reading this. This reference class certainly also invalidates the DA (although immaterial souls would rescue it). But at this point, I am, like Nick Bostrom, tempted to throw my hands up and declare the reference class issue pretty much intractable. Jonathan Colvin Incidently, I think I may have an answer to my Why am I not Chinese criticism, and the corresponding correction to Why am I not an ant seems to give the same answer as I originally proposed. I might put this in a separate posting, once I've polished my current manuscript... Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgprma9lg70i5.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Dualism and the DA (and torture once more)
Le 19-juin-05, à 02:39, Jonathan Colvin a écrit : I'm sure the one in Moscow will also answer that he feels really to be the one in Moscow. OK. But what you haven't answered is in what way the universe is any different under circumstance (A) than (B). This is because there is surely *no* difference at all. There is no 3-difference at all, but only a God can know that. There is a first person difference: it is the difference between writing in my personal diary oh I'm in Moscow and oh I'm in Washington. Note that here we can understand why the question why I am the one in W or why I am the one in M are 100% meaningless. This does not entail that the question where will I be in the next duplication is meaningless. This is the reason why it makes no sense (to me) to take the position that if I copy myself, there is a 50% chance of (A) me being observer A, and a 50% chance of (B) me being observer B. There is no difference between (A) and (B). This is because you look at the experiment only from the third person point of view. Suppose we iterate the self-duplication 64 times. Among the 2^64 copies most will acknowledge that they are living a random experiment (it can be shown that most of the 2^64 sequence of W and M (or 1 and 0) are kolmogorov-chaitin-solovay incompressible. For them, that is from their first person point of view, they are in a state of maximal indeterminacy and their best theories will be that they are confronted to a Bernouilli random experience. Of course, taking your God-like point of view you can tell them that they are under an illusion, giving that there is no 3-person difference (as God knows). Let us call that illusion the first person experience and let us try to explain it. The illusion exists, unless comp is false and the reconstituted people are zombies. This is also the reason why I choose (A) a 50% chance of torture over (B) being copied ten times, and one copy getting tortured (where it is suggested there is only a 10% chance of me getting tortured). Remember that for me this sort of reasoning always suppose no future merging or duplication and also that the copies have sufficiently diverge (and then the exact computation is most probably intractable, like in real physics). There are clearly two different possible universes under (A) (one where I get tortured, one where I don't). Under (B), there is no way I can make sense of what the 10% probability applies to. The universe is identical under situation (a) I'm person 1 who gets tortured and (b) I'm person 2-10 who doesn't. I am with you here. and if you agree with the 50% I made my point. The 10% was introduced only for treating a case where the copies did not diverge (or the comp histories going through the states of those copies. To insist that there *is* a difference surely requires some new kind of dualism. Perhaps it is a valid dualism; Not this one. Only the duality between 1 and 3 person is valid. but I think it should be accepted that theories reifying the 1st person are fundamentally dualistic. The word dualism is a little too vague. Once you agree with the 50% for a WM duplication, you accept the only sort of dualism I defend, but it is more an epistemological dualism than an ontological one. It is about *knowledge* not *being* (still less substance). This means you accept the step 3 of the Universal Dovetailing Argument (UDA): http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004Slide.pdf Explanations in english: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHAL.htm But I know what your response will be..the dualism comes from reifying the 3rd person independent universe, and if we accept only the 1st person as real, there is no dualism. It is quite a metaphysical leap, though, to discard the 3rd person universe. I'd like to know how to justify such a shift. Careful, you are the one making a big leap, here. You go from the 3th step to the 8th step in the Universal Dovetailing Argument. I don't pretend it is easy or obvious. But it is not a metaphysical leap, it is a logical conclusion, once we take the comp hyp seriously enough, and this without hiding the 1-3 distinction under the rug. It does not seem simpler by Occam, because instead of 1 universe containing many observers, we have a multiplicity of universes, each with 1 observer. We have a multiplicity of well defined computations, all statically existing in the arithmetical Platonia. It is simpler by occam (QM also presupposed those computations). Some computations can be seen as histories by internal self-referential inference inductive machine. How does this differ from solipsism? Please believe me, if comp leads to solipism, I will take it as a powerful argument against comp. But that would be currently highly premature. The logical possibility that comp makes solipsim false is due to the nuance between first person point of view (as I describe it through the duplication experiment) and
RE: Dualism and the DA
Jonathan Colvin writes: This is, I think, the crux of the reference class issue with the DA. My (and your) reference class can not be merely conscious observers or all humans, but must be something much closer to someone (or thing) discussing or aware of the DA). I note that this reference class is certainly appropriate for you and me, and likely for anyone else reading this. This reference class certainly also invalidates the DA (although immaterial souls would rescue it). But we don't use such a specific reference class in other areas of reasoning. We don't say, why do things fall to the ground, and answer it, because we are in a reference class of people who have observed things fall to the ground. If we explain an observed phenomenon merely by saying that we are in the reference class of people who have observed it, we haven't explained anything. We need to be a little more ambitious. Hal Finney
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Jun 17, 2005, at 10:17 PM, Russell Standish wrote:snipI still find it hard to understand this argument. The question "Whatis it like to be a bat?" still has meaning, but is probablyunanswerable (although Dennett, I notice considers it answerable,contra Nagel!)Dennett considers it answerable, but he thinks the answer is probably "Nothing at all".That is, it isn't "like" anything at all to be a bat, because bats can do all the tasks they need to do to get by without it being "like" anything at all for them.I still think the confusion over personal identity is due to the misplaced importance we're putting on the concept of "I". Here's what Bruno said later:"Note that here we can understand why the question "why I am the one in W" or "why I am the one in M" are 100% meaningless. This does not entail that the question where will I be in the next duplication is meaningless."I think the second question, "where will I be in the next duplication", is also meaningless. I think that if you know all the 3rd-person facts before you step into the duplicator - that there will be two doubles made of you in two different places, and both doubles wil be psychologically identical at the time of their creation such that each will say they are you - then you know everything there is to know. There is no further question of "which one will I be"? This is simply a situation which pushes the folk concept of "I" past its breaking point; we don't need to posit any kind of dualism to paper over it, we just have to revise our concept of "I".
Re: Dualism and the DA
Pete Carlton writes: I think the second question, where will I be in the next duplication, is also meaningless. I think that if you know all the 3rd-person facts before you step into the duplicator - that there will be two doubles made of you in two different places, and both doubles wil be psychologically identical at the time of their creation such that each will say they are you - then you know everything there is to know. There is no further question of which one will I be? This is simply a situation which pushes the folk concept of I past its breaking point; we don't need to posit any kind of dualism to paper over it, we just have to revise our concept of I. I agree that this view makes sense. We come up with all these mind bending and paradoxical thought experiments, and even though everyone agrees about every fact of the third-person experience, no one can agree on what it means from the first person perspective. Maybe, then, there is no fact of the matter to agree on, with regard to the first person. On the other hand, in a world where Star Trek transporters were common, it seems likely that most people would carry over their conventional views about continuity of identity to the use of this technology. Once they have gone through it a few times, and have memories of having done so, it won't seem much different from other forms of transportation. Copies seem a little more problematic. We're pretty cavalier about creating and destroying them in our thought experiments, but the social implications of copies are enormous and I suspect that people's views about the nature of copying would not be as simple as we sometimes assume. I doubt that many people would be indifferent between the choice of having a 50-50 chance of being teleported to Moscow or Washington, vs having copies made which wake up in both cities. The practical effects would be enormously different. And as I wrote before, I suspect that these practical differences are not to be swept under the rug, but point to fundamental metaphysical differences between the two situations. Hal Finney
Reference class (was dualism and the DA)
Russell Standish wrote: (JC) If you want to insist that What would it be like to be a bat is equivalent to the question What would the universe be like if I had been a bat rather than me?, it is very hard to see what the answer could be. Suppose you *had* been a bat rather than you (Russell Standish). How would the universe be any different than it is now? If you can answer that question, (which is the key question, to my mind), then I'll grant that the question is meaningful. No different in the 3rd person, very obviously different in the 1st person I don't really know what that means. The only way I can make sense of the question is something like, If I was a bat instead of me (Jonathan Colvin), then the universe would consist of a bat asking the question I'm asking now. That's a counterfactual, a way in which the universe would be objectively different. It wouldn't be counterfactual, because by assumption bats ask this question of themselves anyway. Hence there is no difference in the 3rd person. The 1st person experience is very different though. There are only 1st person counterfactuals. That's quite an assumption. *Do* all conscious things ask this question of themselves? Babies don't. Senile old people don't. I'm not sure that medieval peasants ever thought to ask this question, or pre-literate cavemen. I definitely acknowledge the distinction between 1st and 3rd person. This is not the same as duality, which posits a 3rd person entity (the immaterial soul). This is, I think, the crux of the reference class issue with the DA. My (and your) reference class can not be merely conscious observers or all humans, but must be something much closer to someone (or thing) discussing or aware of the DA). I don't think this is a meaningful reference class. I can still ask the question why am I me, and not someone else without being aware of the DA. All it takes is self-awareness IMHO. You *could* certainly. Perhaps it is important as to whether you actually *do* ask that question (and perhaps it should be in the context of the DA). I note that this reference class is certainly appropriate for you and me, and likely for anyone else reading this. This reference class certainly also invalidates the DA (although immaterial souls would rescue it). But at this point, I am, like Nick Bostrom, tempted to throw my hands up and declare the reference class issue pretty much intractable. Jonathan Colvin Incidently, I think I may have an answer to my Why am I not Chinese criticism, and the corresponding correction to Why am I not an ant seems to give the same answer as I originally proposed. I'd be interested to hear it. Here's something else you could look at...calculate the median annual income for all humans alive today (I believe it is around $4,000 /year), compare it to your own, and see if you are anyway near the median. I predict that the answer for you (and for anyone else reading this), is far from the median. This result is obviously related to the why you are not Chinese criticism, and is, I believe, the reason the DA goes astray. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Reference class (was dualism and the DA)
- Original Message - From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Russell Standish' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: 'EverythingList' everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Monday, June 20, 2005 09:52 PM Subject: Reference class (was dualism and the DA) Russell Standish wrote: (JC) If you want to insist that What would it be like to be a bat is equivalent to the question What would the universe be like if I had been a bat rather than me?, it is very hard to see what the answer could be. Suppose you *had* been a bat rather than you (Russell Standish). How would the universe be any different than it is now? If you can answer that question, (which is the key question, to my mind), then I'll grant that the question is meaningful. No different in the 3rd person, very obviously different in the 1st person I don't really know what that means. The only way I can make sense of the question is something like, If I was a bat instead of me (Jonathan Colvin), then the universe would consist of a bat asking the question I'm asking now. That's a counterfactual, a way in which the universe would be objectively different. It wouldn't be counterfactual, because by assumption bats ask this question of themselves anyway. Hence there is no difference in the 3rd person. The 1st person experience is very different though. There are only 1st person counterfactuals. That's quite an assumption. *Do* all conscious things ask this question of themselves? Babies don't. Senile old people don't. I'm not sure that medieval peasants ever thought to ask this question, or pre-literate cavemen. I definitely acknowledge the distinction between 1st and 3rd person. This is not the same as duality, which posits a 3rd person entity (the immaterial soul). This is, I think, the crux of the reference class issue with the DA. My (and your) reference class can not be merely conscious observers or all humans, but must be something much closer to someone (or thing) discussing or aware of the DA). I don't think this is a meaningful reference class. I can still ask the question why am I me, and not someone else without being aware of the DA. All it takes is self-awareness IMHO. You *could* certainly. Perhaps it is important as to whether you actually *do* ask that question (and perhaps it should be in the context of the DA). I note that this reference class is certainly appropriate for you and me, and likely for anyone else reading this. This reference class certainly also invalidates the DA (although immaterial souls would rescue it). But at this point, I am, like Nick Bostrom, tempted to throw my hands up and declare the reference class issue pretty much intractable. Jonathan Colvin Incidently, I think I may have an answer to my Why am I not Chinese criticism, and the corresponding correction to Why am I not an ant seems to give the same answer as I originally proposed. I'd be interested to hear it. Here's something else you could look at...calculate the median annual income for all humans alive today (I believe it is around $4,000 /year), compare it to your own, and see if you are anyway near the median. I predict that the answer for you (and for anyone else reading this), is far from the median. This result is obviously related to the why you are not Chinese criticism, and is, I believe, the reason the DA goes astray. Jonathan Colvin I don't think so, because most people on Earth are not Chinese. The correct refutation of the Doomsday Paradox was given by D. Dieks and involves the Self Indicating Axiom. The definition of the reference class defines the set of observers that you consider to be you. The DA involves applying Bayes's theorem and to do that correctly you have then to use the correct a priori probability which is also fixed by the choice of the reference class. The two effects cancel and there is no Doomsday Problem. This is all explained here: http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0009081 Saibal - Defeat Spammers by launching DDoS attacks on Spam-Websites: http://www.hillscapital.com/antispam/
Re: Dualism and the DA
I have just waved my magic wand, and lo! Jonathan Colvin has been changed body and mind into Russell Standish and placed in Sydney, while Russell Standish has been changed into Jonathan Colvin and placed somewhere on the coastal US. If anyone else covets a particular person's wealth or position, please email me privately, and for a very reasonable fee I can arrange a similar swap! --Stathis Papaioannou Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin _ Low rate ANZ MasterCard. Apply now! http://clk.atdmt.com/MAU/go/msnnkanz003006mau/direct/01/ Must be over 18 years.
Re: Dualism and the DA
Dear List, I cannot keep to myself remarks on TWO kinds of unreasonabilities surfaced and are still being discussed to saturation (euphemism). #1: the use of the conditional form. This, as usually applied, pertains to a select aspect of the model without (of course) taking the rest of the world into consideration which effacts/affects all changes. One cannot think of changing one aspect and disregard the result of ALL influences onto it. Maybe Job's bluecollar parents provided a firm and steady grip on his growing up giving him the discipline to become a successful person, while the affluent couple's possibilities would have led him into drugs and/or crime. Si nisi non esset, perfectus quodlibet esset. It's a mind-game. Sci (or not so sci?) - fi??? One closing idea: the world is deterministic: All that happens has its origin in intereffectiveness, we have access only to a limited cognitive circle. So those 'facts' we want to hypothetically change are determined by the OM circumstances. It is nonsense: just like the 10^100 pensimilar copies in 10^100 pensimilar universes - all according to our (human and present) understanding, design and conditions. Our own mind-limited artifact. #2: Over the millennia faith-strategists invented dualism to imply something that 'survives' us and can be praised or punished just to secure the grip of 'faith' (organizations?) on the 'faithful, aoup carrying such memes over millennia. It was not an esoteric thought: the basic reductionist thinking humanity developed with its limited models gave rise to thinking in things ie cut models, without understanding of the total interconnectedness. If we step a bit further, we find that the world is change, process, substance is reduceable into such and it is our reductionist logic that looks for material substance on traditional basis. The process, change, ie. the 'function' usually assigned to such 'substance' as being considered a separable entity (like spirit, soul, consciousness, power, whatever) and voila: we have dualism. I do not imply that the soul is the function of the body: the unit we realize as our model of a human being (or anything else) is considered as having a substrate AND a function separately. So the personalized function can(??) 'survive' the substrate's demise. Bovine excrement: there is an intrinsic unity of 'functional units' - no mind separable from the (so called) material tool: the neuronal brain (and its functions). I don't blame Descartes: in his time dualistic basis kept him from the inquisition. And we cannot judge by our present epistemic level of ongoing information at our cognitive inventory, the outcome of another (lower?) level conclusion. Ptolemy was right in his rite. Pass. I like this list, because it 'thinks' for the future. Of course sometimes it is hard to shake off the firm handcuffs in thinking by traditional terms. We all have been brainwashed into them. Please, excuse my unorthodoxy John Mikes - Original Message - From: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 'Hal Finney' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 4:34 PM Subject: RE: Dualism and the DA Hal Finney wrote: It's an interesting question as to how far we can comfortably or meaningfully take counterfactuals. At some level it is completely mundane to say things like, if I had taken a different route to work today, I wouldn't have gotten caught in that traffic jam. SNIP Computer head Steve Jobs gave a pretty good graduation speech at Stanford last week, ... SNIP Does it make sense for Jobs to say, who would I have been if that had happened? The point is that we can imagine a range of counterfactuals ... ... Those are counterfactuals regarding personal circumstance, and do not seem particularly controversial, even admitting that it is not straightforward to define a single theory of personal identity that covers all the bases. SNIP as Who would I be if my mother and father hadn't had sex?, or who would I be if they'd had sex a day later and a different egg and sperm had met?. I have to disagree with you here, and state that this sort of counterfactual seems to indeed embody a difference of kind, not just degree. We're not talking about imagining_whats_it_likeness. We are talking about me *being* someone different. Jonathan Colvin - And may I quote: Russell St. to JC Thursday, June 16, 2005 2:00 AM: (attachment): On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 10:30:11PM - Jonathan Colvin wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. - RS: These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. ... JC: As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le 17-juin-05, 19:44, Jonathan Colvin a crit : Bruno wrote: Note that the question why am I me and not my brother is strictly equivalent with why am I the one in Washington and not the one in Moscow after a WM duplication. It is strictly unanswerable. Even a God could not give an adequate explanation (assuming c.). Ok, does that not imply that it is a meaningless question? Not at all. If you want to insist that this question is meaningful, I don't see how this is possible without assuming a dualism of some sort (exactly which sort I'm trying to figure out). If the material universe is identical under situation (A) (I am copy #1 in washington) and (B) (I am copy#2 in washington), then in what way does it make sense to say that situation A OR situation B might have obtained? Just ask the one in Washington. He will tell you that he feels really be the one in washington. The experience from his personal point of view *has* given a bit of information he feels himself to be the one in washington, and not in Moscow. At this stage he can have only an intellectual (3-person) knowledge that its doppelganger has been reconstituted in Moscow. And he remember correctly by comp his past history in Brussels. It is even simpler to reason by assuming, well not comp, but the fact that the reasoner believes in comp, not as a philosopher, but as someone practicing comp everyday. He believes that, as far as he is consistent he will remain consistent (or alive with its correct memories) after a teletransportation from Brussels to Mars. An independant unknown reconstitution elsewhere will not change the fact that he survives. So he believes he will survive a duplication, in the same mundane sense that he would survive a medical operation. Only, he can by introspection realize that the reconstitution will break the 3-symmetry of the duplication. By numerical identity and 3-symmetry he knows he will no convey one bit of information to an external observer (by saying I am the one in W), but he *knows* he is the one in w, like the other konws he is the one in m. (unless he is transformed into a zombie after the duplication, but by definition of comp that should not happen). The or situation makes sense from the first person point of views. Then, by introspective anticipation the one in brussels will infer he is just maximally ignorant about where, in W or M he feel to be after the experiment will be done. This seems to be the crux of the objection to any theory which reifies 1st person phenomena. You are right, but only from the naturalist/physicalist/materialist theoretical point of view. With comp I suspect (let us say) that it is the crux of the objection to any theory which reifies the 3 person phenomena (except a part of arithmetic). The fact is that when I have a headache, or just when someone I care off has a headache, I am not sure I find even just polite the accusation of reification. If I am the one with the headache, I would consider as a lie to myself to believe I am reifying the headache. Contrarily if you tell me there are moon, galaxies, big bangs and gluons, and when I ask you the evidences, you can give me only numbers which represent relative but apparently stable relation with other numbers. This I don't take as an evidence for moons and gluons, but only as evidence that we probably share a long and non trivial comp history. But with comp, the stability of that history is in need to be explained, without reifying anything substancial, material or physical: it *is* the 1-dragon problem. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: On What would it be like to have been born someone else, how does this differ from What is it like to be a bat? Presumably Jonathon Colvin would argue that this latter question is meaningless, unless immaterial souls existed. I still find it hard to understand this argument. The question What is it like to be a bat? still has meaning, but is probably unanswerable (although Dennett, I notice considers it answerable, contra Nagel!) No... What is it like to be (or have been born) a bat? is a *very* different question than Why am I me rather than a bat?. Certainly, assuming immaterial souls or a similar identity dualism, (and that I am my soul, not my body), and that bats have souls like people, it is a meaningful question to ask why am I me rather than a bat, or to state that I could have been a bat, because my soul could have been placed in a bat rather than a human body. The universe would be objectively different under the circumstances I am Jonathan Colvin and I am a bat. If you want to insist that What would it be like to be a bat is equivalent to the question What would the universe be like if I had been a bat rather than me?, it is very hard to see what the answer could be. Suppose you *had* been a bat rather than you (Russell Standish). How would the universe be any different than it is now? If you can answer that question, (which is the key question, to my mind), then I'll grant that the question is meaningful. Jonathan Colvin
RE: Dualism and the DA (and torture once more)
Bruno wrote: Note that the question why am I me and not my brother is strictly equivalent with why am I the one in Washington and not the one in Moscow after a WM duplication. It is strictly unanswerable. Even a God could not give an adequate explanation (assuming c.). (JC) Ok, does that not imply that it is a meaningless question? Not at all. If you want to insist that this question is meaningful, I don't see how this is possible without assuming a dualism of some sort (exactly which sort I'm trying to figure out). If the material universe is identical under situation (A) (I am copy #1 in washington) and (B) (I am copy#2 in washington), then in what way does it make sense to say that situation A OR situation B might have obtained? Just ask the one in Washington. He will tell you that he feels really be the one in washington. The experience from his personal point of view *has* given a bit of information he feels himself to be the one in washington, and not in Moscow. At this stage he can have only an intellectual (3-person) knowledge that its doppelganger has been reconstituted in Moscow. And he remember correctly by comp his past history in Brussels. snip I'm sure the one in Moscow will also answer that he feels really to be the one in Moscow. But what you haven't answered is in what way the universe is any different under circumstance (A) than (B). This is because there is surely *no* difference at all. This is the reason why it makes no sense (to me) to take the position that if I copy myself, there is a 50% chance of (A) me being observer A, and a 50% chance of (B) me being observer B. There is no difference between (A) and (B). This is also the reason why I choose (A) a 50% chance of torture over (B) being copied ten times, and one copy getting tortured (where it is suggested there is only a 10% chance of me getting tortured). There are clearly two different possible universes under (A) (one where I get tortured, one where I don't). Under (B), there is no way I can make sense of what the 10% probability applies to. The universe is identical under situation (a) I'm person 1 who gets tortured and (b) I'm person 2-10 who doesn't. To insist that there *is* a difference surely requires some new kind of dualism. Perhaps it is a valid dualism; but I think it should be accepted that theories reifying the 1st person are fundamentally dualistic. But I know what your response will be..the dualism comes from reifying the 3rd person independent universe, and if we accept only the 1st person as real, there is no dualism. It is quite a metaphysical leap, though, to discard the 3rd person universe. I'd like to know how to justify such a shift. It does not seem simpler by Occam, because instead of 1 universe containing many observers, we have a multiplicity of universes, each with 1 observer. How does this differ from solipsism? How do we make sense of other observers within *our* universe? If there questions have been addressed before on the list, feel free to point me to the relevant archive section. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism and the DA (and torture once more)
Le Dimanche 19 Juin 2005 02:39, Jonathan Colvin a crit: the dualism comes from reifying the 3rd person independent universe, and if we accept only the 1st person as real, there is no dualism. It is quite a metaphysical leap, though, to discard the 3rd person universe. I'd like to know how to justify such a shift. Yes, exactly... this is what is called a monism and not dualism... if you accept only 1st person experience as real, and 3rd person phenomena as emergent of 1st person experience, it is not dualism. It is called phenomenalism. phenomenalism - The monistic view that all empirical statements (such as the laws of physics) can be placed in a one to one correspondence with statements about only the phenomenal (i.e. mental appearances). Quentin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Even when the hand is open Define fist. You don't seem to be talking about a thing, but some sort of Platonic form. That's an expressly dualist position. According to the Oxford Concise dictionary: fist: a clenched hand, esp. as used in boxing Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. Even when the mouth is turned down??? As above. Is it your position that you are the same sort of thing as a smile? That's a dualist position. I'd say I'm the same sort of thing as a mouth. ??? You're being incoherent. How can you be the same sort of thing as a smile or a mouth? What do you mean? A mouth is a thing. A smile is not. If I define myself as the body that calls itself Jonathan Colvin, that is the same sort of thing as a mouth (a material object). A smile is a different category entirely. But we are getting side-tracked here. But your response above is ambiguous. I'm not sure if you are agreeing that our appropriate reference class is *not* all humans, but disagreeing as to whether email is important, or disagreeing with the entire statement above (in which case presumably you think our appropriate refererence class for the purposes of the DA is all humans). Can you be more specific about what you disagree with? The reference class is all conscious beings. Since we know of no other conscious beings, then this is often taken to be all humans. The case of extra terrestrial intelligences certainly complicates the DA, however DA-like arguments would also imply that humans dominate to class of conscious beings. This conclusion is not empirically contradicted, but if it ever were, the DA would be refuted. Absent a good definition for conscious, this reference class seems unjustifiable. Could I have been a chimpanzee? If not, why not? Could I have been an infant who died at the age of 5? And why pick on conscious as the reference class. Why couldn't I have been a tree? Constraining the reference to class to subsets of conscious beings immediately leads to contradictions - eg why am I not a Chinese, instead of Australian - Chinese outnumber Australians by a factor of 50 (mind you a factor of 50 is not really enough to base anthropic arguments, but one could easily finesse this). Indeed. This is a further indication that there are problems with the DA. The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. Yes. Ok, at least we agree on that. Let's go from there. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. Why? Explain this particular jump of logic please? I'm not being stubborn here, I seriously do not understand how you draw this conclusion. Read the above again (to which I assume you agree, since you replied yes.) Note particularly the phrase If the body I'm occupying is contingent. How can I occupy a body without a dualistic account of identity? How could I have been in a different body, unless I am somehow separate from my body (ie. Dualism)? I have just finished Daniel Dennett's book Consciousness Explained, and gives rather good account of how this is possible. As our minds develop, first prelingually, and then as language gains hold, our self, the I you refer to, develops out of a web of thoughts, words, introspection constrained by the phylogeny of the body, and also by the environment in which my self awakened (or bootstrapped as it were). Since this must happen in all bodies with the requisite structure (ie humans, and possibly som non-humans), it can easily be otherwise. It can easily be contingent. Yet Daniel Dennett is expressly non-dualist. I'm sure he'd be most interested if you were to label him as a dualist. This is simply an account of how we gain a sense of self. I don't see the relevance to this discussion. I sincerely doubt that Dennett would find the question Why I am I me and not someone else? meaningful in any way. How could *your* self have awakened or been bootstrapped in someone else's body? Dennett expressly *denies* that we occupy our minds. ... You are dodging the question. Assuming for a second that lions and trees are both conscious, you still haven't answered the question as to how a tree could be a lion, without dualism of some sort. I think I have given several examples of such answers. And above I gave yet another answer, this time
RE: Dualism and the DA
Jonathan Colvin writes: In the process of writing this email, I did some googling, and it seems my objection has been independantly discovered (some time ago). See http://hanson.gmu.edu/nodoom.html In particular, I note the following section, which seems to mirror my argument rather precisely: It seems hard to rationalize this state space and prior outside a religious image where souls wait for God to choose their bodies. This last objection may sound trite, but I think it may be the key. The universe doesn't know or care whether we are intelligent or conscious, and I think we risk a hopeless conceptual muddle if we try to describe the state of the universe directly in terms of abstract features humans now care about. If we are going to extend our state desciptions to say where we sit in the universe (and it's not clear to me that we should) it seems best to construct a state space based on the relevant physical states involved, to use priors based on natural physical distributions over such states, and only then to notice features of interest to humans. I've looked for rebuttals of Hanson, and haven't found any. Nick references him, but comments only that Hanson also seems to be comitted to the SIA (not sure why he thinks this). There was an extensive debate between Robin Hanson and Nick Bostrom on the Extropians list in mid 1988. You can pick it up from the point where Robin came up with the rock/monkey/human/posthuman model which he describes in the web page you cite above, at this link: http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=trueconvdata=id::vae825qL-Gceu-2ueS-wFbo-Kwj0fIHLv6dh You can also try looking this earlier thread, http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=trueconvdata=id::U9mLfRBF-z8ET-BDyq-8Sz1-5UotvKx2iIS2 and focus on the postings by Nick and Robin, which led Robin to produce his formal model. I think if you look at the details however you will find it is Robin Hanson who advocates the you could have been a rock position and Nick Bostrom who insists that you could only have been other people. This seemed to be one of the foundations of their disagreement. As far as the Self Indication Axiom, it might be due to such lines as this, from Robin's essay you linked to: And even if everyone had the same random chance of developing amnesia, the mere fact that you exist suggests a larger population. After all, if doom had happend before you were born, you wouldn't be around to consider these questions. I think this is similar to the reasoning in the SIA. Hal Finney
Re: Dualism and the DA
Note that the question why am I me and not my brother is strictly equivalent with why am I the one in Washington and not the one in Moscow after a WM duplication. It is strictly unanswerable. Even a God could not give an adequate explanation (assuming c.). Bruno Le 16-juin-05, 23:02, Quentin Anciaux a crit : Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Dualism and the DA
Ok, does that not imply that it is a meaningless question? If you want to insist that this question is meaningful, I don't see how this is possible without assuming a dualism of some sort (exactly which sort I'm trying to figure out). If the material universe is identical under situation (A) (I am copy #1 in washington) and (B) (I am copy#2 in washington), then in what way does it make sense to say that situation A OR situation B might have obtained? This seems to be the crux of the objection to any theory which reifies 1st person phenomena. Jonathan Colvin Note that the question why am I me and not my brother is strictly equivalent with why am I the one in Washington and not the one in Moscow after a WM duplication. It is strictly unanswerable. Even a God could not give an adequate explanation (assuming c.). Bruno Le 16-juin-05, 23:02, Quentin Anciaux a crit : Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
RE: Dualism and the DA
Hal Finney wrote: It's an interesting question as to how far we can comfortably or meaningfully take counterfactuals. At some level it is completely mundane to say things like, if I had taken a different route to work today, I wouldn't have gotten caught in that traffic jam. We aren't thrown into a maelstrom of existential confusion as we struggle to understand what it could mean to have different memories than those we do. How could I have not gotten into that traffic jam? What would happen to those memories? Would I still be the same person? We deal with these kinds of counterfactuals all the time. They are one of our main tools for understanding the world and learning which strategies work and which don't. Then there are much more extreme counterfactuals. Apple Computer head Steve Jobs gave a pretty good graduation speech at Stanford last week, http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html. He explains that he was adopted, and his life was changed in a major way by the circumstances. His biological mother, an unwed grad student, wanted him raised by college graduates, so he was set to be adopted by a lawyer and his wife. At the last minute the lawyer decided he wanted a girl, so Jobs ended up being given to a blue collar couple, neither of whom had gone to college. They were good parents and treated him well, sacrificing so he could go to college, but after six months Jobs dropped out, seeing little value to consuming his family's entire savings. He continued to attend classes on the sly, got into computers and the rest is history. But imagine how different his life would have been if the original plan had gone through and he had been adopted by a successful lawyer, perhaps raised in an upper class household with his every wish met. He would have gone to an Ivy League college and probably done well. But it would have been a totally different life path. Does it make sense for Jobs to say, who would I have been if that had happened? Or would he have been such a totally different person that this stretches the idea of a counterfactual beyond reason? I think his telling the story demonstrates that he does think this way sometimes. Yet none of the memories or experiences that he has would have been present in this other version. At most the two versions might have shared some personality traits, but even those are often strongly influenced by upbringing - his tenacity in the face of adversity, for example, might never have become so strong in a life where everything came easily. Probably there are many people in the world who are at least as similar to Steve Jobs in personality as the person he would have been if his early life had gone that other way. The point is that we can imagine a range of counterfactuals where the difference is a matter of degree, not kind, from trivial matters all the way up to situations where we would have to consider ourselves a different person. There is no bright line to draw that I can see. So yes, if you can imagine what it would have been like to eat something else for breakfast, then you should be able to imagine what it would have been like to be born as someone else. It's the same basic technique, just applied to a greater degree. Those are counterfactuals regarding personal circumstance, and do not seem particularly controversial, even admitting that it is not straightforward to define a single theory of personal identity that covers all the bases. There's a continuous, definable identity that follows a physical/causal/genetic/mental chain all the way from when egg and sperm met up to Jobs' graduation. It does not seem problematic to alter contingent aspects of this identity-chain and yet insist that we retain the same Jobs. It is a great deal harder to see how to make sense of a counterfactual such as Who would I be if my mother and father hadn't had sex?, or who would I be if they'd had sex a day later and a different egg and sperm had met?. I have to disagree with you here, and state that this sort of counterfactual seems to indeed embody a difference of kind, not just degree. We're not talking about imagining_whats_it_likeness. We are talking about me *being* someone different. Jonathan Colvin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Hal Finney wrote: Jonathan Colvin writes: In the process of writing this email, I did some googling, and it seems my objection has been independantly discovered (some time ago). See http://hanson.gmu.edu/nodoom.html In particular, I note the following section, which seems to mirror my argument rather precisely: It seems hard to rationalize this state space and prior outside a religious image where souls wait for God to choose their bodies. This last objection may sound trite, but I think it may be the key. The universe doesn't know or care whether we are intelligent or conscious, and I think we risk a hopeless conceptual muddle if we try to describe the state of the universe directly in terms of abstract features humans now care about. If we are going to extend our state desciptions to say where we sit in the universe (and it's not clear to me that we should) it seems best to construct a state space based on the relevant physical states involved, to use priors based on natural physical distributions over such states, and only then to notice features of interest to humans. I've looked for rebuttals of Hanson, and haven't found any. Nick references him, but comments only that Hanson also seems to be comitted to the SIA (not sure why he thinks this). There was an extensive debate between Robin Hanson and Nick Bostrom on the Extropians list in mid 1988. You can pick it up from the point where Robin came up with the rock/monkey/human/posthuman model which he describes in the web page you cite above, at this link: http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=trueconvdata=id::vae825qL -Gceu-2ueS-wFbo-Kwj0fIHLv6dh You can also try looking this earlier thread, http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=trueconvdata=id::U9mLfRBF -z8ET-BDyq-8Sz1-5UotvKx2iIS2 and focus on the postings by Nick and Robin, which led Robin to produce his formal model. I think if you look at the details however you will find it is Robin Hanson who advocates the you could have been a rock position and Nick Bostrom who insists that you could only have been other people. This seemed to be one of the foundations of their disagreement. I think Robin is assuming (as I do) that the only way counterfactuals such as I could have been someone/something else make sense, absent dualism, is if we adopt a strictly physical identity theory (ie. The atoms in my body could have been a rock rather than a person). Nick then points out that if you were a rock, you wouldn't be you (it looks like he's assuming a pattern identity theory such as Morovacs'). I agree with Nick that if you were a rock, you wouldn't be you. But under pattern identity theory, if you were someone else, you wouldn't be you either. Absent some sort of identity dualism, this is not any improvement on physical identity. The last time I discussed the issue of personal identity with Nick, he agreed with me that the answer to the question why am I me and not someone else? was *not* I am a random observer, and so I'm me by chance, but it's a meaningless question; I could not have been anyone else. But that discussion was not in the context of the DA. Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Jun 17, 2005, at 10:24 AM, Hal Finney wrote: Does it make sense for Jobs to say, who would I have been if that had happened? Yes, it makes sense, but only because we know that the phrase Who would I have been, uttered by Steve Jobs, is just a convenient way for expressing a third-person proposition, What would have happened to Steve Jobs if Which in turn is also a short way of asking about the whole world, i.e., What would the world have been like if Steve Jobs had been adopted by someone else. The part of the world that's the main target of this question is the part that wears turtlenecks, makes Apple computers and calls itself Steve - so here it just gets replaced by I. But logically, by asking who would I have been, Steve's not inquiring into anything that a third-person observer could not also inquire into. The apparent problems can be solved by translating these questions into third-person terms. for example, So yes, if you can imagine what it would have been like to eat something else for breakfast, then you should be able to imagine what it would have been like to be born as someone else. For breakfast: what would have happened to the world (especially the Steve Jobs part of the world) if Steve Jobs had had something else for breakfast? For birth: what would the world be like if Steve Jobs hadn't been born, but his biological parents had had some other child? There's no sense in asking what if I was born as someone else, no more than there is asking what would Steve Jobs be like if Steve Jobs had never been born? But there is sense in asking what would be different about the world. The problems here all come from overzealous emphasis on the first person perspective. In other words, I think the mistake is made by asking the question what would it have been like, instead of the question what would the world have been like. The thing that the it refers to (a first- person perspective, presumably) is not a thing that exists in the world framed by the question.
Re: Dualism and the DA
On What would it be like to have been born someone else, how does this differ from What is it like to be a bat? Presumably Jonathon Colvin would argue that this latter question is meaningless, unless immaterial souls existed. I still find it hard to understand this argument. The question What is it like to be a bat? still has meaning, but is probably unanswerable (although Dennett, I notice considers it answerable, contra Nagel!) Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpOOE6roLB1b.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 10:30:11PM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. I disagree completely. You will need to argue your case hard and fast on this one. See below. Yah - I'm still waiting... If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin The tree, if conscious, could ask the question of why it isn't a lion. The only thing absurd about that question is that we know trees aren't conscious. That seems an absurd question to me. How could a tree be a lion? Unless the tree's consciousness is not identical with its body (trunk, I guess), this is a meaningless question. To ask that question *assumes* a dualism. It's a subtle dualism, to be sure. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? Jonathan Colvin I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 pgpPja83xbdPO.pgp Description: PGP signature
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. I disagree completely. You will need to argue your case hard and fast on this one. See below. Yah - I'm still waiting... Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. All theories that reify the observer are essentially dualistic, IMHO. If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin The tree, if conscious, could ask the question of why it isn't a lion. The only thing absurd about that question is that we know trees aren't conscious. That seems an absurd question to me. How could a tree be a lion? Unless the tree's consciousness is not identical with its body (trunk, I guess), this is a meaningless question. To ask that question *assumes* a dualism. It's a subtle dualism, to be sure. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that minds and bodies can have independent existance? Assuming dualism, its easy; simply switch the lion's mind with the tree's. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. That doesn't seem profound; it seems obvious. Even more obvious is the answer If you were an ant, you wouldn't be Russell Standish. So it is a meaningless question. Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Jonathan Colvin
Re: Dualism and the DA
On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 01:02:11AM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Even when the hand is open Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. Even when the mouth is turned down??? Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). This would be true if we are arguing about something that depended on us communicating via email. The DA makes no such argument, so therefore the existence of email, and of our communication is irrelevant. The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. Yes. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. Why? Explain this particular jump of logic please? I'm not being stubborn here, I seriously do not understand how you draw this conclusion. Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). Really? Even when you're not conscious? What about after you've died? What about after brain surgery? After being copied by Bruno Marchal's teletransporter? My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that minds and bodies can have independent existance? Assuming dualism, its easy; simply switch the lion's mind with the tree's. The question Why am I not a lion? is syntactically similar to Why I am not an ant, or Why I am not Jonathon Colvin?. The treeness (or otherwise) of the questioner is rather irrelevant. In any case, the answers to both the latter questions do not assume minds can be swapped. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? I have asked this question of myself Why I am not an ant?. The answer (by the Doomsday Argument) is that ants are not conscious. The question, and answer is quite profound. That doesn't seem profound; it seems obvious. Even more obvious is the answer If you were an ant, you wouldn't be Russell Standish. So it is a meaningless question. I _didn't_ ask the question Assuming I am Russell Standish, why am I not an ant? I asked the question of Why wasn't I an ant?. Its a different question completely. Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Jonathan Colvin This one is also easy to answer also. I'm just as likely to have been born you as born me. But I have to have been born someone. I just so happened to have been born me. This is called symmetry breaking. In the ant case it is different. It is around a million times more likely that I would have been born an ant rather than a human being. Consequently the answer is different. -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russell Standish wrote: Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. These two statements are not equivalent. You cannot say that the fist is separate from the hand. Yet the fist is not identical to the hand. Well, actually I'd say the fist *is* identical to the hand. At least, my fist seems to be identical to my hand. Even when the hand is open Define fist. You don't seem to be talking about a thing, but some sort of Platonic form. That's an expressly dualist position. Another example. You cannot say that a smile is separate from someone's mouth. Yet a smile is not identical to the mouth. Depends whether you are a Platonist (dualist) about smiles. I'd say a smiling mouth *is* identical to a mouth. Even when the mouth is turned down??? As above. Is it your position that you are the same sort of thing as a smile? That's a dualist position. I'd say I'm the same sort of thing as a mouth. Well, to explicate, the DA suffers from the issue of defining an appropriate reference set. Now, we are clearly not both random observers on the class of all observers(what are the chances of two random observers from the class of all observers meeting at this time on the same mailing list? Googleplexianly small). Neither are we both random observers from the class of humans (same argument..what are the chances that both our birth ranks are approximately the same?). For instance, an appropriate reference set for me (or anyone reading this exchange) might be people with access to email debating the DA. But this reference set nullifies the DA, since my birth rank is no longer random; it is constrained by the requirement, for example, that email exists (a pre-literate caveman could not debate the DA). This would be true if we are arguing about something that depended on us communicating via email. The DA makes no such argument, so therefore the existence of email, and of our communication is irrelevant. It depends on us communicating per se. Thus, we could not be a pre-literate caveman. In fact, the reference class of all people before the 19th century is likely excluded, since the intellectual foundations for formulating the DA were not yet present. Presumably in a thousand years the DA will no longer be controversial, so it is likely that our reference class should exclude such people as well. All these considerations (and I can think of many others as well) nullify the nave DA (that assumes our appropriate reference class is simply all humans.) But your response above is ambiguous. I'm not sure if you are agreeing that our appropriate reference class is *not* all humans, but disagreeing as to whether email is important, or disagreeing with the entire statement above (in which case presumably you think our appropriate refererence class for the purposes of the DA is all humans). Can you be more specific about what you disagree with? The only way to rescue the DA is to assume that I *could have had* a different birth rank; in other words, that I could have been someone other than me (me as in my body). If the body I'm occupying is contingent (ie. I could have been in any human body, and am in this one by pure chance), then the DA is rescued. Yes. Ok, at least we agree on that. Let's go from there. This seems to require a dualistic account of identity. Why? Explain this particular jump of logic please? I'm not being stubborn here, I seriously do not understand how you draw this conclusion. Read the above again (to which I assume you agree, since you replied yes.) Note particularly the phrase If the body I'm occupying is contingent. How can I occupy a body without a dualistic account of identity? How could I have been in a different body, unless I am somehow separate from my body (ie. Dualism)? Of course a mind is not _identical_ to a body. What an absurd thing to say. If your definition of dualism is that mind and body are not identical, then this is a poor definition indeed. It is tautologically true. Why do you say of course? I believe that I (my mind) am exactly identical to my body (its brain, to be specific). Really? Even when you're not conscious? What about after you've died? What about after brain surgery? For the purposes of this discussion, yes to all. After being copied by Bruno Marchal's teletransporter? Let's not get into that one right now. That's a whole other debate. My definition would be something along the lines of minds and bodies have independent existence - ie positing the existence of disembodied minds is dualism. Such an assumption is not required to apply the Doomsday argument. I may make such assumptions in other areas though - such as wondering why the Anthropic Principle is valid. Not dualism implies the Anthropic Principle. Then how can a tree be a lion without assuming that
Re: Dualism and the DA
Le Jeudi 16 Juin 2005 10:02, Jonathan Colvin a crit: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). Hi Jonathan, I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) Quentin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Quentin wrote: Switch the question. Why aren't you me (Jonathan Colvin)? I'm conscious (feels like I am, anyway). I think you do not see the real question, which can be formulated (using your analogy) by : Why (me as) Russell Standish is Russell Standish rather Jonathan Colvin ? I (as RS) could have been you (JC)... but it's a fact that I'm not, but the question is why I'm not, why am I me rather than you ? What force decide for me to be me ? :) My argument is that this is a meaningless question. In what way could you (as RS) have been me (as JC)? Suppose you were. How would the universe be any different than it is right now? This question is analogous to asking Why is 2 not 3?. Why is this tree not that telescope?. Why is my aunt not a wagon?. The only way I can make sense of a question like this is to adopt a dualistic position. In this case, the question makes good sense: me (my soul, consciousness, whatever), might not have been in my body; it might have been in someone else's. It is easy to forget, I think, that the SSA is a *reasoning principle*, not an ontological statement. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we should reason *as if* we are a random sample from the set of all observers in our reference class. This is NOT the same as an ontological statement to the effect that we *are* random observers, which seems hard to justify unless we assume a species of dualism. Jonathan Colvin
Dualism and the DA
On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 06:05:16PM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Since it is coming from Nick B., over-exhaustive :) I don't think anybody, Nick included, has yet come up with a convincing way to define appropriate reference classes. Absent this, the only way to rescue the DA seems to be a sort of dualism (randomly emplaced souls etc). Nooo! - the DA does not imply dualism. The souls do not need to exist anywhere else before being randomly emplaced. Cheers -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type application/pgp-signature. Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics0425 253119 () UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australiahttp://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02
Re: Dualism and the DA
Dear Jonathan, Pardon the intrusion, but in your opinion does every form of dualism require that one side of the duality has properties and behaviors that are not constrained by the other side of the duality, as examplified by the idea of randomly emplaced souls? The idea that all dualities, of say mind and body, allow that minds and bodies can have properties and behaviours that are not mutually constrained is, at best, an incoherent straw dog. Kindest regards, Stephen - Original Message - From: Russell Standish [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jonathan Colvin [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: 'Hal Finney' [EMAIL PROTECTED]; everything-list@eskimo.com Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 9:28 PM Subject: Dualism and the DA On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 06:05:16PM -0700, Jonathan Colvin wrote: Since it is coming from Nick B., over-exhaustive :) I don't think anybody, Nick included, has yet come up with a convincing way to define appropriate reference classes. Absent this, the only way to rescue the DA seems to be a sort of dualism (randomly emplaced souls etc). Nooo! - the DA does not imply dualism. The souls do not need to exist anywhere else before being randomly emplaced. Cheers
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russel Standish wrote: Since it is coming from Nick B., over-exhaustive :) I don't think anybody, Nick included, has yet come up with a convincing way to define appropriate reference classes. Absent this, the only way to rescue the DA seems to be a sort of dualism (randomly emplaced souls etc). Nooo! - the DA does not imply dualism. The souls do not need to exist anywhere else before being randomly emplaced. Ambiguous response. Are you saying that the DA requires that souls must be randomly emplaced, but that this does not require dualism, or that the DA does not require souls? It seems to me that to believe we are randomly emplaced souls, whether or not they existed elsewhere beforehand, is to perforce embrace a species of dualism. To rescue the DA (given the problem of defining a reference class), one must assume a particular stance regarding counterfactuals of personal identity; that I could have been someone else (anyone else in the reference class of observers, for example). But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Stephen Paul King wrote: Pardon the intrusion, but in your opinion does every form of dualism require that one side of the duality has properties and behaviors that are not constrained by the other side of the duality, as examplified by the idea of randomly emplaced souls? The idea that all dualities, of say mind and body, allow that minds and bodies can have properties and behaviours that are not mutually constrained is, at best, an incoherent straw dog. I don't really uderstand the question the way you've phrased it (I'm not sure what you mean by mutually constrained); I *think* you are asking whether I believe that it is necessary that any duality must have mutually exclusive properties (if not, please elaborate). I think this is implied by the very concept of dualism; if the properties of the dual entities (say mind and body, or particle and wave) are NOT mutually exclusive, then there is no dualism to talk about. If the mind and the body are identical, there is no dualism. Jonathan Colvin
RE: Dualism and the DA
Russel Standish wrote: It seems to me that to believe we are randomly emplaced souls, whether or not they existed elsewhere beforehand, is to perforce embrace a species of dualism. Exactly what species of dualism? Dualism usually means that minds and brains are distinct orthogonal things, interacting at a point - eg pineal gland. What I think of as mind is an emergent property of the interaction of large numbers of neurons coupled together. I do not think of emergent properties as dualism - but if you insist then we simply have a language game. Nope, I'm thinking of dualism as the mind (or consciousness) is separate from the body. Ie. The mind is not identical to the body. To rescue the DA (given the problem of defining a reference class), one must assume a particular stance regarding counterfactuals of personal identity; that I could have been someone else (anyone else in the reference class of observers, for example). True. But unless I am an immaterial soul or other sort of cartesian entity, this is not possible. I disagree completely. You will need to argue your case hard and fast on this one. See below. If I am simply my body, then the statement I could have been someone else is as ludicrous as pointing to a tree and saying Why is that tree, that tree? Why couldn't it have been a different tree? Why couldn't it have been a lion? Jonathan Colvin The tree, if conscious, could ask the question of why it isn't a lion. The only thing absurd about that question is that we know trees aren't conscious. That seems an absurd question to me. How could a tree be a lion? Unless the tree's consciousness is not identical with its body (trunk, I guess), this is a meaningless question. To ask that question *assumes* a dualism. It's a subtle dualism, to be sure. As a little boy once asked, Why are lions, lions? Why aren't lions ants? Jonathan Colvin
