On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 10:31:16AM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote: > > Russell Standish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > If computationalism is true, then a person is instantiated by all > > equivalent computations. If you change one instantiation to something > > inequivalent, then that instantiation no longer "instantiates" the > > person. The person continues to exist, as long as there remain valid > > computations somewhere in the universe. And in almost any of the many > > worlds variants we consider in this list, that will be true. > > That's true, but even with the MWI, making an instantiation cease to > exist decreases the measure of that person. Around here we call that > "murder". The moral question still exists. I don't see the MWI as > rescuing functionalism and computationalism. > > What, after all, do these principles mean? They say that the > implementation substrate doesn't matter. You can implement a person > using neurons or tinkertoys, it's all the same. But if there is no way > in principle to tell whether a system implements a person, then this > philosophy is meaningless since its basic assumption has no meaning. > The MWI doesn't change that. > > Hal Finney >
There is no way to tell if a given system implements a person REGARDLESS of whether functionalism is true or not. The best we have is some kind of Turing test - if it walks and quacks like the only person we know (ourself), it is a person and if it doesn't then there is little benefit in assuming that it is a person. 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) Mathematics 0425 253119 (") UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---