Re: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction]

[Günther Greindl]

Hi Stathis, Bruno, List,

>> the copy can be you in deeper and deeper senses (roughly speaking up
>> to the unspeakable "you = ONE").
>> I talk here on the first person "you". It is infinite and unnameable.
>> Here computer science can makes those term (like "unnameable") much
>> more precise.
> 
> I don't see how the copy could be me in a deeper sense than having all
> my thoughts, memories etc. It would be like saying that if I wave my
> magic wand over you you will become specially blessed, even though
> nothing will actually change either subjectively or objectively.

You must take into account Bruno's Plotinian interpretation: the One, 
the Intellect, and the Universal Soul. In this sense, you can become 
more "you" in that you penetrate false knowledge "Maya" and realize your 
true nature (the Dao, if you like, roughly the ONE in Plotinus).

@Bruno:
What I have come to wonder: you take the Löbian Machine to be the model 
of a person - say, a human. But what if the Löbian Machine is actually 
(and only) the ultimate person - the universal soul, in Plotinus' 
terminology.

This would account for the infinite (continuum!) histories (lived 
through the lives of all beings in the multiverse), the "universal soul" 
forgetting itself in a cosmic play, sort of -  but also for COMP 
immortality - immortal would be the _universal soul_, but not 
necessarily "concrete" persons (as we conceive them, which requires at 
least some continuity of memory etc)

Cheers,
Günther

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Re: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction]

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/2/23 Bruno Marchal :

>  From a logical point of view Shoemaker is right. You can say "no" for
> many reasons to the doctor.
> The copy will not even behave as you.
> The copy will behave like you, but is a phi-zombie.
> The copy behaves like you and as a soul/personality/consciousness, but
> yet is not you (and you are dead)

This last is the problematic one. If it is valid, then it is also
valid to say that I only live for a moment and continuity of identity
is only an illusion. Actually, I have no objection to this way of
speaking, but we would then just have to say that this illusion of
continuity is just as good as what we hitherto thought was real
continuity.

> The copy is you (in Parfit sense: that it is as better than you).
> And,
> the copy can be you in deeper and deeper senses (roughly speaking up
> to the unspeakable "you = ONE").
> I talk here on the first person "you". It is infinite and unnameable.
> Here computer science can makes those term (like "unnameable") much
> more precise.

I don't see how the copy could be me in a deeper sense than having all
my thoughts, memories etc. It would be like saying that if I wave my
magic wand over you you will become specially blessed, even though
nothing will actually change either subjectively or objectively.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: Personal Identity and Ethics

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/2/23 John Mikes :
> Stathis,
>
> I usually appreciate the wisdom in your posts. Now I have a retort:
>
>>"...What I find incoherent is the idea
> that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
> nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
> cannot be duplicated."<
>
> If you accept the topic (to be discussed) of the unidentifiable imaginary
> "soul", than you have to accept that "IT"(???) can be duplicated as well.
> Once we are in Wunderland we are in Wunderland.

I don't believe in the soul so perhaps someone who does can comment
(Tom Caylor?): is it that it can't be copied at all, i.e. not even God
could make a soul-copying teleporter, or is it just that it can't be
copied via physical means?

> And if "you find yourself there" you have no notion of your destoyed
> identity "here" and you  A R E the copied fake (I call it 'fake', because it
> is extracted from your 'here'-relations which constitute the essential
> content of your identity. The "there" YOU is either another one with
> relations to the "there" circumstances or a fake replica of what you were
> 'here' (and have no knowledge (memory) of it. Or is the duplicate homesick?

By that argument you could also say you are a copied fake of the John
of a year ago, since most of the matter in your body has been
replaced.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou

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Re: AUDA Page

[Günther Greindl]

Hi Bruno,

will incorporate your changes as soon as time permits :-)

Best Wishes,
Günther

Bruno Marchal wrote:
> Hi Günther,
> 
> Nice work Günther. Now my comment is longer than I wish. I really would 
> insist on one change. See (**) below.
> 
> On 16 Feb 2009, at 22:54, Günther Greindl wrote:
> 
>>
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> I finally got around to writing the AUDA references page:
>>
>> http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list/web/auda
>>
>> Comments welcome.
> 
> 
> I would separate better the introduction to (general) mathematical logic ...
> 
> Enderton (you mention it)
> Mendelson (one of the best introduction to mathematical logic)
> Perhaps the Podniek web page
> The book by Boolos and Jeffrey (and Burgess for the last edition), and 
> the book by Epstein and Carnielli
> Kleene's 1952 book on Metamathematics.
> 
> ...from the  general book on computability (but those books are really 
> needed already for the UDA, actually for the seventh step of UDA): so I 
> would put them there: I am thinking about
> 
> Cutland
> Rogers
> 
> And then come the most fundamental books on the logic of self-reference 
> and/or provability logic per se (those are books on G and G*). This is 
> part of AUDA:
> 
> First the main initial original papers : Davis 1965 (contain Gödel 1931, 
> Church, Post, Kleene, Rosser). Then the textbook on self-reference 
> (provability) logic:
> 
> Boolos 1979 
> Boolos 1993
> Smorynski 1985
> Smullyan's Forever undecided (a recreative introduction to the modal 
> logic G).
> 
> And then you can add some books on (general) modal logic (but they are 
> not needed because the book on provability logic reintroduces the modal 
> logic). You did already mentioned :
> 
> Chellas (excellent)
> But the new edition of Hugues and Creswel is an easier one, and is very 
> good too imo.
> 
> The relation between modal logic and provability is a bit like tensor 
> calculus and general relativity. Modal logic is but a tool, provabilty 
> logic (sometimes called self-reference logics) is the object of study. 
> It is part of AUDA. "AUDA" really begins with Gödel's famous 1931 paper, 
> and the very special modal logic G and G*, found by Solovay, is a 
> machinery encapsulating all the incompleteness phenomenon.
> 
> 
> (**) If you want make just one little change in the page:  in your 
> sentence "For modal logic these are further guides:"  I would make clear 
> you are referring to the modal logic G and G*, that is the logic of 
> self-reference. Or just put "provability" or "self-reference" instead of 
> modal.
> 
> I would not put the Solovay paper in "guide on modal logic". It is 
> really the seminal paper on the self-reference logics.
> 
> The modal logic G and G* are really the logic of provability or 
> self-reference on which AUDA is based.
> 
> I am aware we touch "advanced matter", which presupposes a good 
> understanding of mathematical logic, or metamathematics, something which 
> is usually well known only by professional mathematical logicians. Even 
> a genius like Penrose got Gödel's wrong. By the way, Hofstadter got 
> Gödel's right in his book "Gödel, Escher, Back". He is correct on 
> computationalism too, but he missed the "matter problem", and even the 
> universal machine, the first person indetermincay and its "reversal" 
> consequences.
> 
> I have realized that some of my students have still a problem with 
> completeness and incompleteness. In part due to the bad choice in the 
> vocabulary (yet standard).
> For example the theory PA (Peano Arithmetic) is complete in the sense of 
> Gödel 1930, and incomplete in the sense of Gödel 1931.
> 
> Completeness: (PA proves A) is equivalent with (A is true in all models 
> of PA). This makes "Dt" equivalent with "there is a reality": the basic 
> theological bet.
> Incompleteness: there are true arithmetical statement (= true in the 
> standard model of PA) which are not provable by PA.
> 
> Don't hesitate to ask any question. Of course UDA is *the* argument. 
> AUDA is far more difficult and is needed to pursue the concrete 
> derivation of the physical laws (among all hypostases). UDA shows that 
> physics is a branch of computationalist self-reference logic. AUDA 
> begins the concrete derivation of physics from the existing 
> self-reference logic (thanks to Gödel, Löb, Solovay).
> 
> Note that for a time i have believed that the hypostases were all 
> collapsing. If this would have been the case, the comp-physics would 
> have been reduced to classical logic, and what we call physics would 
> have been a sort of comp-geography. The SWE would have been a local truth.
> 
> Ask any question, we are in deep water. People like Tegmark and 
> Schmidhuber are on the right track concerning the ontology. The 
> intersection of Tegmark work and Schmidhuber's work gives the "correct" 
> minimal ontology: the mathematical elementary truth (on numbers or 
> mathematical digital machine). My (older) work derives this from comp 
> and  the

Re: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction]

[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Feb 2009, at 14:01, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> 2009/2/20 Brent Meeker  wrote:
>>
>> Review of a book that may be of interest to the list.
>>
>> Brent Meeker
>>
>>  Original Message 
>>
>> Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
>>
>> 2009-02-26 : View this Review Online
>>  : View Other NDPR Reviews
>> 
>>
>> David Shoemaker, /Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief  
>> Introduction/,
>> Broadview Press, 2009, 296pp., $26.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551118826.
>>
>> *Reviewed by Amy Kind, Claremont McKenna College*
>
> Thank-you for alerting us to this book. I'll pick out just one passage
> from the review for comment:
>
>> Though Shoemaker argues that the last three views suffer from serious
>> problems that prevent them from being plausible accounts of our  
>> identity
>> over time, he offers a different sort of argument against the Soul
>> Criterion: There are good practical reasons to "insist on a tight
>> connection between the nature of personal identity and our practical
>> concerns, and thus reject any theory of personal identity -- like the
>> Soul Criterion -- that denies this connection." (33) Even if souls
>> exist, we lack any kind of epistemic access to them; rather, we
>> reidentify individuals in terms of their bodies and/or their
>> psychologies. Thus, souls are irrelevant to the practical issues  
>> under
>> consideration, and this irrelevance is taken to justify the  
>> rejection of
>> the Soul Criterion.
>
> Predominantly on this list we use the psychological criterion of
> personal identity, originated by Locke and developed using various SF
> thought experiments by Derek Parfit.


See also Dennet and Hofstadter's Mind'I for further references.


> This criterion is assumed true if
> you are to agree to teleportation or replacement of your brain with a
> functionally equivalent electronic analogue, and is contrasted with
> non-reductionist theories involving the existence of a soul.

This "constrast" is misleading. Parfit believes in Token and tokens  
identity. He overlooked the subjective indeterminacy and the reversal  
consequence. That is why he finds natural to call his teleportation  
preserving identity a "reductionist" thesis like if it were reducing  
the notions of "souls" and consciousness to organized piece of matter.  
But the idea of betting we can survive digital substitution is really  
reductionist in the other way round. This view, (at least that is was  
the UDA is supposed to explain) leads to a reduction of matter to soul/ 
consciousness and eventually to machine-nameable and machine- 
unnameable relations.
Concerning "soul" the comp idea is even antireductionist; it prevents  
any theory (third person communicable) to give a name to it, without  
eliminating it.




> If I have
> a soul, it might not be transferred in the copying process even though
> the copy acts the same as the original. I can understand this if the
> copy is a philosophical zombie for lack of a soul, but it seems that
> according to Shoemaker's usage the soul is not identical with the mind
> or consciousness.




 From a logical point of view Shoemaker is right. You can say "no" for  
many reasons to the doctor.
The copy will not even behave as you.
The copy will behave like you, but is a phi-zombie.
The copy behaves like you and as a soul/personality/consciousness, but  
yet is not you (and you are dead)
The copy is you (in Parfit sense: that it is as better than you).
And,
the copy can be you in deeper and deeper senses (roughly speaking up  
to the unspeakable "you = ONE").
I talk here on the first person "you". It is infinite and unnameable.
Here computer science can makes those term (like "unnameable") much  
more precise.



> This leaves open the possibility that my copy might
> both behave *and* think the same way I do but still not be the same
> person. But if that is so, then as Shoemaker says, that would make the
> soul irrelevant.

The word "soul" is charged with history. I use it usually in the sense  
of the knowing first person, and assuming the comp hyp, or weaker  
hypothesis with similar self-copying quality, you cannot dispense from  
the existence of such a soul. In arithmetic this will be related to  
the fact that the theaetetical idea of defining knowledge of P by  
justification of P when P is true lead to a modality which acts like  
"pure justification" but reasons like a knower. It is the same  
arithmetical part of truth, but it is "seen" differently, necessarily  
so by incompleteness(*). Eventually this is important because it  
justifies a purely scientific (third person communicable) notion of  
soul, and matter will be generated by that soul.
Note that such a theory of soul is verifiable.

I appreciate Parfit, but he remains stuck by  its "Aristotelian  
Theology" (like so many, of course), and that is why, I guess, he  
calls "comp" (or weaker a-like) a reductionist view, where I woul

Re: Personal Identity and Ethics

[John Mikes]

Stathis,

I usually appreciate the wisdom in your posts. Now I have a retort:

>"...What I find incoherent is the idea
that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
cannot be duplicated."<

If you accept the topic (to be discussed) of the unidentifiable imaginary
"soul", than you have to accept that *"IT"(???) can be duplicated as well.*
Once we are in Wunderland we are in Wunderland.

And if "you find yourself there" you have no notion of your destoyed
identity "here" and you  *A R E* the copied fake (I call it 'fake', because
it is extracted from your 'here'-relations which constitute the essential
content of your identity. The "there" YOU is either another one with
relations to the "there" circumstances or a fake replica of what you were
'here' (and have no knowledge (memory) of it. Or is the duplicate homesick?

Wunderlandistically yours
John M


On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> 2009/2/21 Stephen Paul King :
> >
> > Hi Stathis,
> >
> >A question : Is is incorrect of me to infer that the psychological
> > criterion of personal identity discussed in Shoemaker's book and, by your
> > statement below, used by a predominance of members of this list is one
> that
> > treats conscious self-awareness as an epiphenomena arrising from a
> Classical
> > system and that it is, at least tacitly, assumed that quantum effects
> have
> > no supervenience upon any notion of Consciousness?
> >While I welcome the rejection of notion of "Souls" which are in
> > principle non-verifiable, could we be endulging in meaningless chatter
> about
> > computerizing consciousness if we do not first determen that
> consciousness
> > is a purely classical epiphenomena? After all we are repeatedly told that
> it
> > is the classical view of the Universe and all within it is a theory long
> ago
> > refuted.
>
> The psychological criterion of personal identity is, or should be,
> agnostic on the question of how consciousness is actually generated.
> It says simply that if I am destroyed here and a copy of me with the
> same psychological properties is created there, then I will suddenly
> find myself there. It is possible to accept this criterion but deny
> that the right sort of psychological properties could be duplicated in
> a computer, or by any physical means at all if there is a supernatural
> element involved in consciousness. What I find incoherent is the idea
> that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
> nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
> cannot be duplicated.
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
> >
>

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Re: Copying?

[John Mikes]

Stephen,
you've hit a nerve with *'copying':*
**
*Fundamental *questions:
*1.WHO *(what) is copying and *HOW*?
2.*INTO* what(?) is copying being done?

Then are continuing questions:
3. Does the 'COPY'  (to be considerably identical) have identical
interconnective circumstances as does the 'original'? (Interconnections,
- interrelations -influence all discernible qualia and functions)

...and the main question:

4. Occurrence occurs by *relation* (anybody a better formula how any *
function* or *activity* can be figured?) and a *'relation' to itself** *is
passive at best. How is such passive state activated into the action of a
copying?
(If we consider the intrinsic identity notion a relation with itself, it is
an additional - different - view of self-observation as an outside
observer).

I have the feeling of slipping into the 'armchair view' of the early
universe (Big Bang theories) of the "scientist" - observing the fiery globe
of the universe in his ashtray sitting at the fireplace.* "WE" look at
copying?
*
John M
On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Stephen Paul King wrote:

>  *Hi Brent and Stathis,*
>
>
> - Original Message - From: "Brent Meeker"  >
> To: 
> Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 1:35 AM
> Subject: Re: Personal Identity and Ethics
>
> snip
> >>
> > There's no inconsistency between the universe being quantum mechanical,
> > while human thought processes are essentially classical.  The classical
> > world emerges from the quantum in the limit of large action.
> >
> > Brent Meeker
>
>* Ok, my difficulty lies in the notion of "copying". If we are going to
> use a method X to derive a conclusion, does it not make sense that X must be
> sound? QM forbids the cloning or copying of states:*
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem
>
> "The no cloning theorem is a result of quantum 
> mechanicswhich forbids the 
> creation of identical copies of an arbitrary unknown
> quantum state. It was stated by 
> Wootters,
> Zurek , and 
> Dieksin
>  1982, and has profound implications in quantum
> computing  and related
> fields.
>
> The state of one system can be 
> entangledwith the state of 
> another system. For instance, one can use the Controlled
> NOT gate  and the 
> Walsh-Hadamard
> gate  to entangle two 
> qubits.
> This is not cloning. No well-defined state can be attributed to a subsystem
> of an entangled state. Cloning is a process whose end result is a separable
> state  with identical
> factors.
>
> .
>
> "No-cloning in a classical context
>
> There is a classical analogue to the quantum no-cloning theorem, which we
> might state as follows: given only the result of one flip of a (possibly
> biased) coin, we cannot simulate a second, independent toss of the same
> coin. The proof of this statement uses the linearity of classical
> probability, and has exactly the same structure as the proof of the quantum
> no-cloning theorem. Thus if we wish to claim that no-cloning is a uniquely
> quantum result, some care is necessary in stating the theorem. One way of
> restricting the result to quantum mechanics is to restrict the states to
> pure states, where a pure state is defined to be one that is not a convex
> combination  of other
> states. The classical pure states are pairwise orthogonal, but quantum pure
> states are not."
>
> *  How does a limit of large action change this? *
>
>
>  - Original Message - From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <
> stath...@gmail.com>
> To: 
> Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 1:19 AM
> Subject: Re: Personal Identity and Ethics
>
>
> > The psychological criterion of personal identity is, or should be,
> > agnostic on the question of how consciousness is actually generated.
> > It says simply that if I am destroyed here and a copy of me with the
> > same psychological properties is created there, then I will suddenly
> > find myself there. It is possible to accept this criterion but deny
> > that the right sort of psychological properties could be duplicated in
> > a computer, or by any physical means at all if there is a supernatural
> > element involved in consciousness. What I find incoherent is the idea
> > that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
> > nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
> > cannot be duplicated.
> >
> >
> > --
> > Stathis Papaioannou
>
>
>  *In the Wiki article 
> **http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem*