On 18/07/2016 7:59 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 18 July 2016 at 17:10, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au
<mailto:bhkell...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote:
On 18/07/2016 5:00 pm, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 18 July 2016 at 15:42, Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 7/17/2016 10:04 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
The problems arise because each copy has memories of
being the original and, because of the phenomenon of
first person experience, feels that he is the one true
copy persisting through time
How would it feel any different if he weren't? He doesn't
know and neither does anyone else. So it's really
meaningless to say he feels he's the one true copy. He's
just relying on his previous prejudice that he was unique.
Yes - it's a prejudice, but an important one nonetheless. I can
be radically sceptical about the existence of the world and other
minds, but still go about life as if it matters.
But do the pronouns "I and you" have a referrent? It has been said
about Descates' 'cogito ergo sum' that Descartes cannot conclude
that he is thinking, he can only conclude that thinking is going on.
From the fact that I think, it follows only that there is a thought at
this moment, not that there is an entity that has a stream of
thoughts. The entity, the "I", is not fundamental but emergent, the
set of related thoughts. These thoughts are not necessarily connected
through sharing a physical substrate. Sharing a physical substrate is
a convenient method of producing thoughts with the right sort of
relationship to each other, but as the sort of duplication experiments
we are considering show, there can be discontinuities in time, space
and across non-interacting universes, and continuity of identity,
which is not meaningfully different to the illusion of continuity of
identity, persists.
But you haven't shown continuity of identity without some substrate to
provide coherence. You have relied on a particular notion of personal
identity that has some serious problems in the examples that have been
used. For instance, the loss of transitivity of identity throws into
question the whole notion of an identity persisting in time.
Bruce
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