2010/1/15 Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com>: >> There is no real distinction between the different possibilities you [Jason >> Resch] >> mention, but evolution has programmed me to think that I am a single >> individual travelling in the forward direction through time. It's >> possible to go through life not questioning this until we consider >> duplication thought experiments, which evolution had not taken into >> account. But having this insight does not make the illusion any less >> real, nor do I have any desire to be free of it, since that would go >> against my evolutionary programming. I do try to be altruistic, but >> being selfish (caring for the needs of my future selves) comes more >> easily. > > So you think that the continuous physical processes of evolution produced > the illusion of continuity which you now see is really discrete OMs?
We could just consider whether we are the same person from day to day with an intervening period of unconsciousness (Nagel's day-person), avoiding the separate question of whether OM's are discrete or continuous. There is no reason why a race of such people with such beliefs could not evolve if there were some adaptive advantage to it, such as promotion of altruism and the good of the group. A philosophically inclined day-person might then reason thus: I feel that I will die overnight and a different person will wake up in my bed in the morning. That person will look similar to me and will share most of my memories, but it won't be me, just as I am not any of the people who came before me and whose memories I now have. However, this belief is just a contingent fact of evolution. I feel that I am the same person as I was an hour ago, but the relationship that earlier self has to me is not really different to the relationship I have to the person who will wake in my bed tomorrow. I would not be violating any logical or empirical fact if I said either that: (a) I remain the same person from day to day and the feeling that I don't survive sleep is an illusion; or (b) I do not remain the same person from moment to moment but I have the illusion that I do. If we consider duplication thought experiments (a) becomes problematic, since there might be two or more versions of me at the one time each with an equal claim to being me. Therefore, I think (b) is the best way to think about it objectively. Nevertheless, even even though I now see that the way I've always thought about myself is an illusion, it's not an illusion I can shake off, nor one I would want to shake off. Such is the strength of my evolutionary programming. -- Stathis Papaioannou
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