From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Wed May 30 2001 - 22:30:50 MDT
Emlyn writes
>> 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.
>
>I'm not sure what the latin is for proof-by-peer-pressure, but I'd be
>surprised if it's regarded as a strong methodology.
:-) That's great! Who needs the Latin (although I concede that
it might add some dignity). "Proof-by-peer-pressure". I love it.
The point, of course, is that when you consult your intuition
about all this after you've finally gone on a lot of vacations
with your friends teleporting everywhere, "you" will dismiss your
previous doubts as philosophically old-fashioned. Instinctively
"you" will realize that you and your buddies are really the
same people that they've always been.
>I need to ask a question at this point. There is a concept that
>identical processes are the same process. I am not sure if this
>applies to objects...If I make two structurally identical diamonds,
>are they the same diamond? I am assuming a materialist would say
>they are not.
Right. The nearest thing, as you probably know, is in quantum
mechanics where objects can be absolutely identical, to the point
that when you fail to take this into consideration, paradoxes
(such as Gibbs') arise. But we don't want to go there. No---
two objects shouldn't be spoken of as the same object.
>Instead, two physical processes (?) are the same if they are
>identical... is that right?
Well (I hope that this isn't too weasily) for some purposes, yes.
If the marketing people ask you "hey, is that EXACTLY the same
process running on the new hardware" you'll say yes. But if
someone in the operating systems group asks you the same
question (which would be very silly of them, of course)
then you'd say no.
>So, if I get two computers which are structurally identical, and
>run identical programs on them, is some part of each of these a
>physical process, and thus there is only one instead of two
>instances?
Well, my opinion is that we would always say that there are two
instances. Items that differ, even if only in location or time,
surely are regarded as different instances.
Regarding personal identity, I speak of there being two or
more instances of me in the case that close duplicates exist.
Lee
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