On 7/28/2016 11:41 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
Why does it need to be defined? Why not recognize it is not a well
defined concept...like the end of a road. We need operational legal
definitions as to when a person is still competent to make decisions
about themselves...and those are pretty much in place. I imagine
that multiple-personality disorder has also caused some legal
problems: Is Eve White bound by the contract Eve Black signed? If
duplicating machines are ever invented then we can choose some rough
and ready legal definitions. But all this discussion of theories of
personal identity seems more about semantics and pronouns.
I think the trouble originated in the use of personal pronouns. We
have legal problems which require working definitions that do not do
too much violence to intuition in difficult cases (duplicates,
multiple personalities, recombinations, etc). Normally, personal
identity is a transitive relation and there are no problems. However,
I think it is more than a merely semantic issue to sort out the
meaning of identity and/or survival in the difficult cases such as
teletransportation and duplication. Otherwise you end up in the muddle
that characterizes the exchange between Bruno and JKC.
But I think it's just a muddle of how to talk about "the" duplicated
person. The interesting question is whether it illustrates something
essential to Bruno's further arguments. He goes to a lot of trouble to
point out that duplication and duplication with delay leave the self
intact (or at least as intact as the normal evolution of time) and he
wants to use this argue that the physical realization of computation is
otiose. That consiciousness is realized by certain computational
processes without any physics.
Brent
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