From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 01:47:58 MDT
Emlyn writes
> What I propose is that you cannot make an objective statement about what the
> experience of identity is, because it is an entirely subjective phenomenon.
That appears to be an unsinkable beginning; if "it" is experience!
> We see that there are multiple points of view on identity, from the
> materialists who view identity as a lie, to those who say that copies are
> identical, through to subjective phenomenalists who support (some might say
> reify) conscious identity as supreme, arguing that it cannot be copied by
> anything so vulgar as making a physical duplicate (absolute
> identificationists???), and then off to the side somewhere to totally
> different philosophies who deify rather than reify identity, or those who
> purport it has an immortal existence in an afterlife, or those who see it as
> the Big Lie (pace Ross) of existence and that the ultimate goal of existence
> is to shed the illusion (there is no icecream).
Good analysis.
> I also propose that whatever an individual truly believes
> about identity is the truth for that individual (individual
> defined as the thing on the inside which is forever isolated).
> There is a caveat to this, which is that this is only the case
> for those parts of the belief which are truly untestable.
Again, unsinkable, (almost to the point of being a tautology).
If I am following, then your claim rests or falls on how
extensive is the *untestable* part. That is, as your first
statement stands or falls, so does your thesis.
> This comes up particularly when talking about xoxing. Materialists don't see
> a problem with destructive copying, for instance, because they see xoxes as
> equivalent, *even subjectively* one must assume. So, for instance, Lee would
> be more than happy to be destructively teleported, because of his beliefs.
Yes, though I have a caveat here myself (see below).
[Very good description and definitions of the "subjectivist"
and "materialist" positions elided.]
> Materialists are going to be happy to be destructively copied.
> Faced with copies of themselves, materialists would be happy
> to be destroyed on being informed that they were surplus,
> because they'd know that they will live on; the others are
> also them.
This is incorrect (at least for me, but I think for all others too),
unless the word "surplus" carries a peculiarly meaning. For
my *extreme* materialist position, twice as many of me are
*exactly* twice as good. So any thought experiment in which
I agree to be disintegrated must be constructed with great
care. See my earlier posts for such constructions.
The usual construction is that a destructive-only method of
teleportation has been devised, and that it's impossible for
the original to survive.
The interesting scenarios, on the contrary, provide the
original with options to survive or not. My favorite,
for example, is my old one where
You walk into a room and discover a frozen duplicate
of you created a few minutes ago. There he is, sprawled
out in the ice as was the Frankenstein monster. On top
the cask of ice sits a briefcase containing ten million
dollars. You must choose between (A) to have your xox
and the $10M vaporized, or (B) to be vaporized yourself
with your duplicate getting to be thawed out and sent
happily on his way to the bank with his new ten million.
Only the most extreme "state-theory" followers, or extreme
materialists as you would call them, opt for choice B, like
I do, and as Robin Hanson does. We don't mind losing a few
minutes' memories, and anticipate going to the bank tomorrow
and enjoyably depositing all that money.
> What these positions have in common is that they are untestable.
> You can't construct a test to find out if identity is like
> materialists say, or like subjectivists say. Why not? Because
> it's subjective. A subjective phenomenon is owned, if you like,
> by the person that experiences it; no one else gets a say.
You've made it very clear. Although, just who is "no one else"
is part of the conundrum. I would say that my close duplicate
is not someone else.
> This is not to say that you can't change your mind. A
> materialist, faced with the disintegrator ray, might
> suddenly find that subjectivism has a certain authentic feel.
You're quite right. That's why I propose the thought experiment
above to separate the men from the boys, so to speak. And I
have had to *practice* imagining myself in that scenario and
*practice* the equanimity that I would feel looking down the
barrel of it.
> A subjectivist, on being transported, might find that the
> world doesn't seem to have come crashing down around them
> after all.
In many scenarios, evolution ultimately favors the materialist:
"Oh, c'mon Grandpa, teleport with us to Mars!"
"Now Marty, you must remember that Grandpa doesn't
believe in teleportation."
The children look at each other in complete bewilderment.
"He thinks that some part of him dies every time he is
forced to teleport, and that he's not the same person."
"You mean that Grandpa isn't the same Grandpa we had
before we were forced to leave Earth?" More incredulous
stares from the children (etc., etc.). The practical
advantages of teleportation in many scenarios would
soon make believers of all practical people.
> But the idea that you cannot, from the outside, know the "truth" of
> identity, because it is subjective, and therefore not possessed of objective
> truth, doesn't absolve you from holding a position yourself about identity.
> You still know about you; you still have to decide about teleport booths and
> anaesthetics and mad scientists with death rays for yourself. The meta
> position isn't either materialism or absolute identity by proxy; it allows
> for both, and others, on an individual by individual basis.
Yes.
> One last serious point, to support this subjective phenomenon thesis. Maybe
> materialists don't actually experience identity in the same way that
> subjective phenomenalists do? Maybe the schism is rooted in a real
> difference, which we can, unfortunately, never measure? Damien, do you
> really know if Lee fundamentally groks your references to identity?
It's an interesting possibility that there are real psychological
differences between those who would teleport and those who would
not (just as I surmised such differences between left and right,
before things turned ugly). So far as I can tell, Damien *understands*
the view of people like John Clark and myself; that physics is
everything; that when you put the clock back together, it's the
same clock even if you use a few different carbon atoms here and
there.
I *think* that I understand his reluctance to teleport, but maybe
not! I'm sorry. I'm afraid I will have to go back and re-read
his posts, because I cannot articulate it at this time. So perhaps
you're right and I don't grok it.
Lee
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