On 18 Feb 2013, at 17:29, Richard Ruquist wrote:
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
On 17 Feb 2013, at 18:09, Jason Resch wrote:
Thanks to everyone who replied to this post. So far Stathis and
Bruno both
answered that both cases are equivalent.
Is there anyone willing to argue against either:
1. you don't experience torture when your memory of it is wiped, or
2. you don't experience torture when your perfect duplicate is
tortured?
Those are interesting questions, but they ask for thought
experiences with
amnesia, which can quickly, too much quickly, makes you suspicious
that
personal identity is an illusion. My experience is that when people
begin to
grasp this, they can feel quite uneasy.
A related question, that I ask to you, Jason. Would you accept to
sleep in
my sleep-laboratory. I pay you 100$ or even more. But I tell you in
advance
that you will live your worst nightmare. I tell you also that I
have the
means to make you, in the morning after, completely forgetting that
nightmare.
Are you OK? Are you OK that your son or daughter makes money in
that way?
Can this be legal?
Is it equivalent with this: I duplicate you and torture the copy
for one
hour, and then I kill that copy (assuming I can)?
Is this not equivalent with a forgotten dream of torture? Are you
OK that
your daughter makes money in that way?
Bruno
There used to be a drug administered for childbirth which would allow
the mother-to-be- to experience excruciating pain as evidenced by her
behavior during the birthing process yet afterwards she would have no
memory of that pain. Doctors found that acceptable and assumed there
was no lasting trauma.
My opinion is that there is lasting trauma that has to be consciously
re-experienced to be resolved. So one may as well experience
childbirth without drugs to begin with. BTW- off-list topic??
Not really, as here we were touching on the question of personal
identity, in relation with memory.
Now, your question is very difficult, and my thought on it is that
woman should have the choice, and that nobody can coerce on her
decision. Comp + Theaetetus would lead to the idea that nobody can
solve that problem, and that only individual woman can take the
decision. The very basic idea is that no one can think at the place
of other one, especially about possible pain. A forgotten pain has
still been a lived pain, and this has to be avoided if possible.
Bruno
Jason
On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 6:58 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com>
wrote:
Consider the following thought experiment, called "The Duplicators":
At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. The aliens
will tell
you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to
conduct some
experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them.
These aliens
possess technology far in advance of our own. They have the
ability to scan
and replicate objects down to the atomic level and the aliens use
this
technology to create an atom-for-atom duplicate of yourself, which
they call
you2. The aliens thank you for your assistance and return you
unharmed back
to your home by 5:00 PM. You ask them "What about the pain
experiments?" and
they hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly off. You
read the
pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) was created
and
subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to what
humans call
torture and at the end of the experiment you2 was euthanized. You
consider
this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they tortured your
duplicate
rather than you.
Now consider the slightly different thought experiment, called "The
Restorers":
At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. Unlike the
aliens
with the duplication technology (the duplicators), these aliens
possess a
restorative technology. They can perfectly erase memories and all
other
physical traces to perfectly restore you to a previous state. The
aliens
will tell you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish
to
conduct some experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown
to them.
They then proceed to brutually torture you for many hours,
conducting test
after test on pain. Afterwards, they erase your memory of the
torture and
all traces of injury and stress from your body. When they are
finished, you
are atom-for-atom identical to how you were before the torture
began. The
aliens thank you for your assistance and return you unharmed back
to your
home by 5:00 PM. You ask them "What about the pain experiments?"
and they
hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly off. You read the
pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) was created
and
subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to what
humans call
torture and at the end of the experiment you2 was euthenized. You
consider
this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they tortured your
duplicate
rather than you.
My questions for the list:
1. Do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the
case of
the Restorers, even though you no longer remember it? If not, why
not.
2. If yes, do you consider yourself to have experienced the
torture in the
case of the Duplicators? If yes, please explain, if not, please
explain.
3. If you could choose which aliens would abduct you, is there one
you
would prefer? If you have a preference, please provide some
justification.
Thank you.
Jason
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