On 14 Apr 2015, at 05:03, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 14 April 2015 at 12:18, Bruce Kellett
<bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 14 April 2015 at 11:26, Bruce Kellett
<bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>
wrote:
It's an illusion even in a dualist model, because dualism does
not
logically rule out copying. The illusion, to spell it out
further, is
that I am a unique entity persisting through time. That is what
I feel
to be "personal identity" at the visceral level, and even though
intellectually I know better, I can't shake the feeling.
It's stubborn, even if an illusion, eh? If you were duplicated,
would you
be
prepared to kill your duplicate? Who would you kill?
If it came to a fight over the last place in a lifeboat I might be
prepared to kill my duplicate and he would be prepared to kill me
(I
can say this since I know how he thinks). I would feel bad about
killing him because he can then anticipate no future experiences:
there will be no future entity that remembers being him so the
illusion of being a person persisting through time would end. I
would
not worry about destructive copying of myself or someone else
because
then the illusion would persist. This is a rough answer and it is
not
difficult to think of situations that cause problems. For example,
taking a drug such as midazolam which causes amnesia could be
seen as
equivalent to killing your copy.
Wouldn't it be easier just to commit suicide? You are still
killing the same
person on your account.
If I commit suicide the illusion of persisting through time is
destroyed. If I kill my copy or if I enter a destructive duplicator
the illusion is maintained.
So the illusion really is important, then. If you commit suicide,
you do continue through time because your duplicate survives. Or is
that different?
Yes, for idealist, and magician, the illusions are important.
"illusion" does not mean that we have to dismiss them. Sometimes I use
"dream", or "hallucination", but those word have also dismissive
connotation. With computationalism, we can say that the only non-
illusion are 0, s(0), s(s(0) ... and our consciousness of this, and
elementary relations between: all the rest is an "illusion". It is the
same as the way Einstein conceived time, an illusion, but a persistent
one. With comp, primitive matter, and primitive consciousness does not
exist, but of course, matter and consciousness exist and play a key
and most fundamental role.
Bruno
Bruce
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