On 9/9/2020 12:29 AM, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
Le mer. 9 sept. 2020 à 09:14, Bruce Kellett <bhkellet...@gmail.com
<mailto:bhkellet...@gmail.com>> a écrit :
On Wed, Sep 9, 2020 at 4:50 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List
<everything-list@googlegroups.com
<mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com>> wrote:
On 9/8/2020 10:51 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Wed, 9 Sep 2020 at 14:56, Bruce Kellett
<bhkellet...@gmail.com <mailto:bhkellet...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Be a dualist if you want to. But the closest continuer
theory is a convention designed to resolve questions of
personal identity in cases of personal
duplication, absent a "soul". Arbitrary random selections
are not as satisfactory.
I'm not a dualist. I think there is no metaphysical basis for
continuity of identity, it is just a psychological construct.
Realistically (sort of) in the duplication of Bruce there will
be millions of errors in each copy. There would be no point in
trying to make them any more accurate. That would certainly
be good enough to fool his closest friends and family. So at
the molecular level there will certainly be a unique closest
continuer. But I can't see that it makes any difference.
That's just as arbitrary as denominating the first one to open
his door the REAL Bruce.
The importance of copying errors depends on the metric used to
assess closeness of continuation. If and when actual duplication
becomes possible, we can worry about the fine details of this. But
if you think in terms of AI, duplication might involve no more
than running the same program on multiple computers. Duplication
errors are then eliminated.
I think the point of taking more into account in terms of personal
identity than just psychological continuity is that psychological
continuity makes little sense when you are asleep, under
anaesthesia, or otherwise unconscious. Do you cease to be a person
when unconscious? The same person? Does your family recognize you
then or not? Since we do not doubt continuity of personal
existence even though our bodies change continuously at the
molecular level, copying errors at that level are not relevant for
bodily continuity. Our memories and emotions change every bit as
much, if not more, on these time scales. So the metric to
determine continuity of personal identity is not clear cut. It is
the sort of thing that can be sorted out if and when we can
actually duplicate persons and their bodies.
The only thing for a person to take into account if she is the same
person as yesterday, one second ago, one year ago.. is feeling she is
and is the only true thing,
But she can be mistaken about that. Suppose she feels she's the Queen
of England, but she doesn't know where the Queen was yesterday or who
the Queen spoke to a minute ago or the name of the Queen's assistant.
And suppose there's another person, who is and has been physically
distinct from her and is the Queen of England and does know all those
things. Are we to suppose her feeling trumps all that. And what
exactly is this "feeling" if it does not depend on memories?
Brent
what you're talking about could have meaning in a law court but
nowhere else... it has nothing to do with personal identity.
Quentin
Bruce
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