From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Jacques Mallah writes:
The problem comes when some people consider death in this context.
I'll try to explain the insane view on this, but since I am not myself
insane I will probably not do so to the satisfaction of those that are.
I have mixed feelings about this line of reasoning, but I can offer
some arguments in favor of it.
I guess you mean in favor of FIN. How about against it too, since you
have mixed feelings?
The insane view however holds that the mind of the killed twin
somehow leaps into the surviving twin at the moment he would have been
killed. Thus, except for the effect on other people who might have known
the twins, the apparent death is of no consequence.
It's not that the mind leaps. That would imply that minds have
location, wouldn't it? And spatial limits? But that notion doesn't
work well.
Mind is not something that is localized in the universe in the way
that physical objects are. You can't pin down the location of a mind.
Where in our brains is mind located? In the glial cells? In the neurons?
The whole neuron, or just the synapse? It doesn't make sense to imagine
that you can assign a numerical value to each point in the brain which
represents its degree of mind-ness. Location is not a property of mind.
A computationalist would say that the mind is due to the functioning of
the brain, and thus is located where the parts that function are.
But this is totally irrelevant. Suffice it to say that a mind is
associated with that brain, while a different mind would be associated with
a different brain.
Hence we cannot speak of minds leaping.
I remind you that _I_ never said they leap, could leap, or that such a
thing is logically possible at all. I said only that the insane hold such a
view, which many posters on this list do. Whatever they may mean by what
they say, the effect is best described as saying they think minds leap.
It makes more sense to think of mind as a relational phenomenon, like
greater than or next to, but enormously more complicated. In that
sense, if there are two identical brains, then they both exhibit the
same relational properties. That means that the mind is the same in
both brains. It's not that there are two minds each located in a brain,
but rather that all copies of that brain implement the mind.
Nope. That make no (0) sense at all. Sure, you could _define_ a mind
to be some computation, as you seem to want, rather than being a specific
implementation of that computation. But that's a rather silly definition,
since it's a specific implementation that would be associated with conscious
thinking of a particular brain, and thus with measure.
Of course, even a twin who dies could never have the same computation as
one that lived, since HALT is obviously a significant difference in the
computation.
Further support for this model can be found by considering things from
the point of view of that mind. Let it consider the question, which
brain am I in at this time? Which location in the universe do I occupy?
There is no way for the mind to give a meaningful, unique response to
this question.
There's no way to know for sure, you mean. OK, I agree with that. You
can still guess with high confidence. In any case, there's still a fact of
the matter, regardless of whether you know that fact.
Any answer will be both wrong and right.
That makes no sense. The answer will be either wrong XOR right, for a
particular mind; but you can't know for sure which of those minds is you.
Hence you use indexical Bayesian reasoning or SSA.
In this model, if the number of brains increases or decreases, the mind
will not notice, it will not feel a change.
Surviving minds won't notice a change. Dead minds won't feel a thing,
which is the reason death sucks.
No introspection will reveal the number of implementations of itself that
exist in a universe or a multiverse.
True, although with the SSA you can make some reasonable guesses.
This is only dangerous if the belief is wrong, of course. The contrary
belief could be said to be dangerous in its way, if it were wrong as well.
(For example, it might lead to an urgent desire to build copies.)
Even supposing the logical belief to be wrong - what's so dangerous
about building copies? In any case, that would require a lot more tech than
we have.
I have repeated pointed out the obvious consequence that if that were
true, then a typical observer would find himself to be much older than the
apparent lifetime of his species would allow; the fact that you do not find
yourself so old gives their hypothesis a probability of about 0 that it is
the truth. However, they hold fast to their incomprehensible beliefs.
This is a different argument and has nothing to do with the idea of
leaping, which is mostly what I want to take issue with.
Sure it has to do with it, because it proves
