Bruno Marchal wrote: > > Le 30-juin-06, à 21:34, Brent Meeker a écrit : > > > >>>John M: >>>Does this agreed double(?) statement not rub too close >>>on solipsism? >> >>Not if you accept that *all* our ideas of reality are models. The >>fact that they work well and are >>coherent makes me believe they are models of an external reality - not >>a personal illusion - but I >>can still doubt that they *are reality* itself. In other words I take >>them to be like scientific >>theories: provisionally accepted, but subject to refutation. > > > > You are not answering John, I think, Brent. A scientist who send a > paper to a journal does not assume her aper will be read, he just hope > for. To bet on the other's first person experience is not of the kind > "scientific" and refutable.
Sure it is. Just because something cannot be directly experienced doesn't rule it out of a scienctific model: quarks can't be observed, but their effects can. So I believe in other people's first person experience because that is a good way to predict their behavoir. I consult a model in which I use my first person experience to perdict how they will behave - this is called emphathizing - and I find it works pretty well. > > >>I have memories from when I was 5yrs old, but the source of identity I >>feel in those memories arises >>only from the fact that I remember a personal viewpoint in spactime >>and I remember emotions. > > > > I agree. > > > > >>Those >>are the same aspects of memories of last week that make them coherent >>with my model of myself as a >>being who persists over time. > > > > > All right, but at the first person level, there is a point where you > *are* the model/theory/machine, like when you embed a map of Finland > into Finland: as far as you allow "continuous" transformation of the > map (remaining embedded in Finland) there will be a "fixed point": a > point of the map which is exactly and literaly on the corresponding > locality of Finland. I don't understand the application of this analogy. When I say I have a model of the world (which includes myself) I mean I have a set of concepts and rules for manipulating them that allows me to, in a limited and provisional way to interact successfully with what I take to be an external reality. This doesn't necessarily have the same topology as the external reality, so I don't see how the fixed point theorem applies. The same would apply to my computer. It has a map of the United States coded into its memory, but it is in a binary representation distributed across several registers - a different topology than the planar surface of the United States. So while my computer has a location in the U.S. (as I have in my model of reality) there is no point in my computer memory that corresponds to the same point in the U.S. > The diagonalization procedures can be used for finding the similar > fixed point of computable transformations. > Also: when you say "yes" to a "teleporting doctor", you assume the > artificial brain is not just a model of yourself, but that it > implements genuinely, albeit in a relative numerical way, you first > person pasts/futures. No, I only bet that it will have first person experiences as I would have if I had continued in my biological form. I don't know what "implements genuinely" means - it seems to imply some extra ingredient (spirit?) that makes an implementation "genuine". Brent Meeker --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
