On 07 May 2017, at 02:16, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 4:22 AM, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be>
wrote:
> You are the one using pronouns in the ambiguous way. Do
you mean that "you" will see two cities
John Clark agrees with Bruno Marchal that personal pronouns are
ambiguous in a world that contains people duplicating machines
because the referent will always be unclear, but for years John
Clark has proposed is a very simple solution to this problem, just
use proper nouns.
It clearly does not work, as your answer to my recent post, which did
not use the pronouns, shows.
>> NO, I don't demand you predict anything, I'm asking for
something that should be far far easier! The experiment is over
and it is only now that I ask for the name of the one and only one
city the Helsinki man ended up seeing .
> So you ask a question which just does not make any sense.
EXACTLY! PRECISELY! The question "what one and only one city will
I see after I walk into that I duplication machine?" makes
absolutely no senses. It's gibberish.
False. as the two copies will easily confirm. It makes no sense only
because you eliminate the 1-3 distinction.
>> If your concepts were correct and well thought out you could
easily answer the question "what is the name of the one and only
one city that I am looking at right now?" with one word, but you
can't, you can't answer it before the experiment and you can't even
answer it AFTER the experiment,
> No, I can't because you ask me for one answer, where we
know that there are two answers.
EXACTLY! PRECISELY! And those two answers are Moscow AND
Washington.
Ambiguous. Do you mean "Washington" for one copy and "Moscow" for the
other, or do you mean that both will say "Moscow and Washington".
If it is the first, you confirm my point. If you meant the later, it
is nonsense.
But I'm not the one who said there was one and only one answer!
> If there was only one answer, there would be no indeterminacy
of course.
True, and there is no indeterminacy if there are 2 answers
either because the correct answer to both questions is known,
Washington and Moscow.
Ambiguous. See above.
And it's even known who will see what, The Washington man will see
Washington and the Moscow man will see Moscow. What more is there to
know?
OK, that's correct, and confirms the necessary first person
indeterminacy lived by the guy in Helsinki.
>> Just a few paragraphs above in the same post you agreed that
both are "I", and you agreed that both "I" are in two different
cities, so to expect that a single name can answer the question
"what city will I see?" is just silly, Mr. I will see both.
> None will see both.
And neither 1 nor 2 is 3, but 1+1 is 2. Mr. I is the summation of
both because both remember being the Helsinki man.
You forget that the first person experiences are incompatible.
>> THE FIRST PERSON HELSINKI EXPERIENCE HAS BEEN DUPLICATED,
and that's why both are the Helsinki "I" before the button was
pressed as you agreed above.
> But not through the eyes of one person.
But there is no longer one person there are two persons, that's
what it's call a person duplicating machine. Is it really a
mystery I stopped reading at step 3?
Not at all. You show how much irrational we need to be to do that.
Thank you for making it publicly.
> Yes, there are two answer, given that there are two
incompatible experiences lived by each copy.
EXACTLY! PRECISELY! And those two answers are Moscow AND
Washington.
That gives only one answer for each resulting first person
experiences, and so that makes the point when we answer the question
asked in Helsinki.
> "A" is lived as a "the" by each copy. using "A" xhanges
nothing
Well I'm glad you cleared that up.
>> after the duplication you can't point to a unique
individual and say "he wrote the diary" ; and if you can't do that
then it serves no purpose.
> It serves very well its purpose if you keep in mind the
question asked, which is on the personal experience, as lived
by the personal experience.
Whose personal experience? After the duplication no one
unique individual can claim authorship of the diary so the book is
nothing but a waste of perfectly good paper.
Both can, as the diary is duplicated to. That moves is only
eliminating the first person experiences.
>>> You just eliminate the first person.
>> There are two, so which "the first person" do you claim
I've eliminated?
> How could I know? You are the one asking for a unique city
I'm asking for a unique city because you claim there is one.
Yes, only one, for both copies.
You say "I" will see one and only one city so after the experiment
is over it's not unreasonable to ask what that one unique city
turned out to be. You admit such a question is ridiculous and I
agree,
The question is not ridiculous. Indeed "W or M" is the best and
provable answer (assuming Mechanism of course). But what is absurd is
asking one specific answer. It ca,n only be "washington" or "Moscow",
but both are refuted by one of the copies.
but exactly why is it ridiculous? Because the personal pronoun "I"
is ambiguous if "I" duplicating machines are used.
>> Screw "advance"! Bruno's question "what city will I see?"
can NEVER be answered because in the context of a person duplicating
machine Bruno does not know what "I" means.
> We know enough, given that the notion of first person used in
this simple duplication context have been defined in a thoroughly
transparent third person way, through the diary which is duplicated
in two diaries.
Well that was a awful lot of verbiage but it conforms with what I
said, the question "what one and only one city did I end up seeing?"
can NEVER be answered, not before the experiment and not after
either. There must be a reason for that, and the reason is the
personal pronoun in the question is ambiguous in world that contains
personal pronoun duplicating machines.
> Your answer to this has always been "the hell with the diary"
After the duplication if you can point to one and only one person
who wrote that diary then I'll stop saying "to hell with the
diary".
I will no more answer this, as I have done it many times, but you just
ignore the answer, and come nback mater with the same question/trick.
> If asked to predict how many times they will see W, they need
to use the Pascal triangle,
That would be pointless because there is no way to tell if the
pascal triangle, or anything else for that matter, had turned out to
have made a correct prediction or not.
A simple counting argument shows this to be wrong. You are denying
again the many first persons incompatible experiences that they all
live. Thus, you eliminate the 1-3 distinction.
Bruno
John K Clark
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