From: J. Goard (wyattoil@foothill.net)
Date: Mon Jun 11 2001 - 22:50:35 MDT
At 07:53 PM 6/11/01 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>Here is where John and I (and a number of people) part company
>with you. You seem to think that *you* now would become one
>of *them* randomly. You seem to be saying that it might be
>the case that *you* go to Honolulu, and there is only a zombie
>(or something) in Spitsbergen. Is this what you mean by "chance
>splitting"? That your soul goes to one, but not the other?
Yes and no. I think, by the assumptions of the thought experiment, that
each resulting person must have as much subjectivity as the others, and
have equal subjective connection to the original. My position is that the
only non-contradictory account of subjectivity WRT duplication involves a
kind of metaphysical duality: from the perspective of each duplicate, the
subjectivity of the original continues into that duplicate; from the
perspective of the original, his subjectivity cannot continue into more
than one duplicate. You could think of it as multiple possible world-lines
embedded within one world-line.
I quite agree that subjectivity is essentially irrational. I can't find
any measurable attributes of J. Goard that explain why *I am* him rather
than some other person, or inhabit his psyche or whatever formulation you
choose. The ethicist James Rachels has argued, from the premise that
ethics must be grounded in reason, that any degree of egoism in a person's
value system is inherently a deviation from ethics. So if I want to
justify the value of J. Goard eating today, I'd have to find a bunch of
objective attributes about J. Goard that make him the guy to feed. The
realization I've come to is that egoism is essentially a religious belief;
the fact that I am J. Goard (or that subjectivity is in some sense
dependent upon J. Goard, that the universe is contained in J. Goard, etc.)
is "revealed" knowledge to me, that others don't and can't have access to.
I assert, not argue, against Rachels, that I care about things that are
subjectively connected to I, not about objective attributes.
I don't believe in physical, indivisible souls, but I do believe that
subjectivity has great metaphysical importance. "The universe" really
exists within subjectivity, and subjectivity is dependent upon the mental
states of J. Goard. Maybe each of us should be described as a possible
world, all sharing the same "objective reality" but differing in the locus
of awareness and the particular structure whose annihilation will
annihilate the world.
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J. Goard, jjgoard@ucdavis.edu/wyattoil@foothill.net
e-gold account #100592 (www.e-gold.com)
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The Beyond outside us is indeed swept away, and the
great undertaking of the Enlightenment complete;
but the Beyond *inside* us has become a new heaven
and calls us to renewed heaven-storming.
--Max Stirner
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