From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Wed May 30 2001 - 17:55:24 MDT
Emlyn wrote:
>"And only if you phrase everything of value to you (including
>your own immortality, for example) in these objective terms,
>do the linguistic and semantic problems become tractable."
>Lee, I think it's a lot of handwaving, personally. I've added the above line
>from your discussion, because it highlights what I perceive as the true
>motivation for this materialist line of reasoning... that it makes the
>problems tractable. Finding an easy (if incorrect) out is different from
>looking for truth.
Hmm. That's interesting. You're saying that the real, underlying
motive to become a materialist is that it makes problems tractable.
Not at all! Think of the thousands of hours I have spent on this
question of identity. Many times I have conceded that it would be
far, far simpler to just assume that everyone had a soul with a
specific Serial Id# generated at conception. Then all we have to
do is assume that molecular copies don't get the soul copied. That
would be simple! In fact, using the one Axiom "God Exists" makes
a lot of things simple.
No, what becomes tractable is that **if** you are a materialist,
then adopting the information theory of identity makes things
tractable.
No, I became a materialist months before I began pondering identity.
The laws of physics, and the reductionism behind them are very
appealing. I'm sorry that you aren't a materialist.
>In the pit thought experiment, Yevgeny the original is still in
>the pit, every time. There is a consciousness "attached" (I use
>that extraordinarily loosely) to Yevgeny, in the pit, which will
>stay there forever.
Doesn't this mean that if we ever could teleport (a la Star
Trek, where you are disintegrated here and reassembled there)
that you would refuse to travel by this means? If so, then
you are quite wrong. As soon as it became sufficiently cheap
and convenient, and as soon as all your friends started doing
it, your reservations would crumble away at once.
>How about this... how about if the button, when pressed,
>would make a copy of someone entirely different. Every time
>Yevgeny presses the button, a copy of Yuri is created at the
>rim of the pit.... Now, is this person actually Yevgeny?
>Clearly, I'd say he's not.
Of course he's not!
>Now... Yuri will be created on the outside of the pit, but
>with his Yevgeny's memories instead of Yuri's. Of course
>this is not an "atom for atom duplicate"...
>
>Yevgeny presses the button, and Yuri (whom he doesn't know)
>appears on the rim of the pit. From the outside, Yevgeny/Yuri
>looks down, and thinks "I got out!"... then looks at his hands,
>and inspects his body. "My body has been swapped for someone
>else's! Aarrgghh!"
Yes! That's exactly what he'd say. Now you ask, Is this person
Yevgeny or not? This is difficult to say; he has Yevgeny's
memories, but what of his attitudes or dispositions? Does his
brain work the same way? It's much like asking at what point
a beloved parent ceases being the person you knew and becomes
a vegatable. But this imponderable is not germane. If we
never had the original Yevgeny remaining in the pit, then
everyone would naturally (if they are a materialist) conclude
that Yevgeny had merely moved to the top of the pit, but had
been given a strange body. It's clearly the same person,
unless we start screwing with other parts of his brain.
>"Moral: Imagine yourself in the pit. Both of the following
>statements are true: (1) you will never get out of the pit
>(2) you will get out of the pit every time you press the button. "
>
>I disagree. I think that 1 is true, but 2 is not; someone is
>created outside of the pit, but that someone is not the same
>someone who pressed the button. Just someone who bears a
>striking resemblance.
Yes, but if you were a materialist, then you'd (presumably) agree
that there isn't any nature to a person that isn't a consequence
of the molecules.
>"You may be tempted to think that the "original one" (now coatless) is the
>only real Yevgeny---that all the others are just "mere copies". This is
>easily shown to be false. Suppose that every atom of your body were being
>replaced quickly, say hundreds of times each second, instead of slowly over
>years. You'd never know the difference. "
>
>I probably would notice the difference. How would you replace the atoms
>quickly? Not through the usual mechanisms... without magic, you have to
>severely interfere with the physical structure of my body (by adding some
>rather weird atom-swapping machinery to it... I doubt this can be done). I
>propose that this cannot in fact be achieved, through any mechanism.
Well, we don't know, now do we? Very intelligent people in the
past were often wrong about what could be done. I'm asking ***IF***
it turns out that your molecules could be swapped out quickly
and efficiently, would you just gradually fade away? At the
end would we have a soulless machine that thought it was Emlyn
and who we all thought was Emlyn? You tell me: just what is
the difference between the copy and the original?
>The rest of the discussion from your story basically says "get
>over it, you narrow minded fool"...
:-) I don't think that I was so harsh. I think that you're
just talking to yourself and being rather severe... I should
do that more often myself.
>Remember the pit... no matter how many Yevgenys you construct
>on the rim of the pit, the eventual death by hypothermia of
>the Yevgeny in the pit is still plainly a death, it's moral
>weight lessened not a whit by the existence of other Yevgenys,
>even as that number approaches infinity.
Well, in one way, I agree: the life of the Yevgeny in the
pit is just as valuable as anyone else's on Earth, and it
is a tragedy if he has to die, compounded by the
unacceptableness of suffering first.
But on the bright side, he survives elsewhere. If you were
a materialist, I'd try to persuade you that **where** he
survives doesn't matter so much.
>Max had a great paper around somewhere, which I can't find
>now... it posited the existence of a teleport machine which
>used decontruction/reconstruction on the atomic level. Except
>it turned out to be expensive to deconstruct someone atom by
>atom, so it was better to have a burly man with a large
>hammer at the "from" end to take care of unfinished business...
Never read that one. I hope that he wasn't implying that this
would prevent the original person from surviving the event.
Lee
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