From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Oct 23 2002 - 14:51:00 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> gts wrote:
>> The person will be listing the attributes of his
>> body and personality that together make him a person distinct
>> from other persons. It is to those attributes
>> that he refers when he refers to himself as "I" or "me."
>> *Those* things are who he *is*.
>
> Sure, but I take a different moral from this than you do.
>
> Allow me to make a similar point. Suppose I indicate a barn in which
> you'll find only a horse. How many objects are there in the
> barn? Well, there's a horse. But a horse's head is also an
> object, and so is any other part of the horse. But there's
> no adequate way to count how many "parts" a horse has in any
> formally rigorous way. And that's not even considering the air!
> So instead, we count the number of things which have
> relevant properties that happen to interest us; when they
> agree in terms of those properties, we count them as one thing.
Hmm.
> You might think of this as an alternate version of Leibniz'
> Identity of Indiscernables law, which is often dragged out
> in conversations about xoxes. The "law" is: x = y iff
> for any property P, if P is relevant and
> P(x), then P(y).
Okay, in that case we might say that a coffee cup is a garbage truck, if
"the ability to contain" is the only property we deem relevant. I can
see how such thinking might be useful for some purposes, but
unfortunately it does not change the fact that a coffee cup is not a
garbage truck.
> Of course, immediately we notice that "relevance" is vague and
> context-sensitive.
Exactly.
If we do decide to go down that road then we would need to agree that
personal beliefs and attitudes are relevant in defining a person. I
think we can agree on that much. But that takes us back to my personal
inventory method of checking for identity. If while describing himself A
says he likes the Beatles best while B says he likes the Stones best,
then A is not B even if they are in every other respect identical. And
that is exactly the sort of personality difference that can arise as a
result of the differences in the experiences of the original vs. his
xox.
> Couldn't we get more technical? Yes, we
> can, if we formalize which properties are relevant to us.
>
> But I think that's impossible in the case of xoxes.
I don't think so. A true duplicate would describe himself in exactly the
same way as his original and have exactly the same idea of what is
relevant to his identity. To use Eugene's word, they would be "synched"
in every way. But complete synchronization is not possible due to the
different sensory inputs of the original and his xox.
If Lee wants to be (almost) in two places at one time then he needs to
project his sensory apparatus while maintaining his one original
brain/mind as the instrument that cognizes his perceptions. He needs
something analogous to a periscope.
-gts
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:44 MST