I'll have a pop at this because I have a problem too. I get stuck on Bruno's 'proof' at the point where the comp practitioner, about to be duplicated and sent to Washington and Moscow, is asked to estimate his chances of arriving at Moscow. Allegedly I should feel it to be 50/50 and this establishes 1st person indeterminacy.
Trouble is, as far as I have been able, I can only arrive at the 50/50 result if I deny 'comp'. That is, if I feel that there is something over and above the description of me at the required substitution level, that is nevertheless a vital part of me, that follows one or the other path. But that breaks the rules of the game. It contradicts comp. If I follow the rules of the game , if I genuinely believe comp, then I must also believe (and feel) that a later diary/memory containing the entry 'I am in Moscow not Washington' and a diary containing the entry 'I am in Washington not Moscow' both have equal claim on being my diary now. If I believe comp then I have to say that whilst there will be no diary with both entries, each one is genuinely mine. Given that, the chances of this diary now containing either entry later is 1, not 50/50. No indeterminacy. I've read some responses to similar quibbles alleging that the quibblers have confused 1-p and 3-p perspectives. Alternatively, you can argue that you can only buy into Bruno's conclusion if you covertly smuggle in to the game an illicit concept of 'I' over and above comp. Interestingly, Derek Parfit in 'Reasons and Persons' uses the very same thought experiments to tease out of the reader that they do not in fact believe anything like comp. He asks what you would feel if the teleportation goes wrong and there is a minute delay in the annihilation step. Would you be comforted by someone explaining that the 'read' went ahead well and that you will be reconstructed in Moscow, so not to worry about the impending annihilation? I think intuitively that would be of no comfort though if I really believed comp it should be. I think this illicit intuition creeps into Bruno's step and gives the impression one ought to feel indeterminacy, when by the rules of the game one should not. All the best. > Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:59:01 +1000 > From: li...@hpcoders.com.au > To: everything-list@googlegroups.com > Subject: Re: What gives philosophers a bad name? > > On Thu, Sep 26, 2013 at 08:46:25AM +1000, Russell Standish wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 12:38:47PM -0400, John Clark wrote: > > > On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Russell Standish > > > <li...@hpcoders.com.au>wrote: > > > > > > > I know not of these hundreds of posts that you speak. > > > > > > > > > > You don't?? If you haven't read any of the hundreds of posts I have > > > written about Bruno's "proof" (far more than the silly thing deserves) > > > then > > > there seems no point in writing yet another one because you won't read > > > that > > > one either. > > > > You are deliberately changing the topic. I know you have written > > hundreds of posts "about Bruno's 'proof'". I asked for one post in which > > you point out the flaws in the first 3 steps of the UDA. To which you > > responded you had written hundreds of posts in which you have stated > > these flaws. I have not seen any post by you pointing out these > > flaws. I admit I may not have read all your posts, but I suspect I > > have read most. > > > > I do remember a conversation you had with Bruno about 5 years ago when > you were discussing what a man in Helsinki would experience when > undergoing the duplicator experiment. > > I seem to recall you thought the man would experience being in both > places at once, which does violence to the notion of "survival after > copying" assumption of COMP. > > But nothing more recent - just lots of IHA, and "***" is the > meaningless sound made by certain philosopher's lips. (*** insert your > favourite term du jour here). > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders > Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
