On 7/18/2016 2:59 AM, 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.
Thoughts are not "at a moment". They have temporal extent and hence can
have continuity.
The entity, the "I", is not fundamental but emergent, the set of
related thoughts.
That's begging the question and assuming the physical is not
fundamental. It depends on whether you look for something that is
epistemologically primary or something that is ontologically primary.
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,
"Producing" is a funny word to use. Are you assuming there is a
"someone" who produces the thoughts - even though the "someone" is
emergent from the thoughts? The physical world is partly an inference
and partly a mode of thought hardwired by evolution.
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.
I wonder about that. It's certainly true that one can suffer a
concussion and have a gap in memory. But in that case it's a noticeable
gap. On the other hand I can't remember what I had for breakfast day
last Friday, yet I don't perceive that as a gap.
Brent
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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