From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Oct 28 2002 - 23:53:38 MST
gts writes
> Lee Corbin wrote to Michael F Dickey:
>
> (This is quoted from another thread.)
>
> > Most importantly, however, if your location suddenly
> > changes and so you start having "different experiences"
> > it does *not* alter your identity.
>
> You are playing fast and loose with the word "identity," in this thread and
> others. You treat the concept of identity superficially, as if one's
> identity were little more than a name and social security number.
IN the context of the discussion, it should have been
apparent to you that I was discussing the notion well-
known to moral philosophers, (e.g. Derek Parfit, "Reasons
and Persons") of *personal identity*. I could name two
other books that also refer to this concept, and you might
want to check out Max More's Phd. thesis, "The Diachronic
Self".
I am *hardly* referring to nominal identity, as you seem to
be implying. Indeed, I am interested in the *very* notion
of what one is interested in having *survive*, as several
other posters appear to understand very well.
> But your identity extends far beyond your basic stats, Lee.
> It is far more than the name on your driver's license.
No kidding.
> It appears you have concocted an entire system of thought based on a false
> distinction between identity and self, not realizing or not acknowledging
> that these two terms do not exist independently.
It appears that you don't know what you are talking about.
I get the feeling that this subject matter is quite new
to you, yet you barge in with the same sense of authority
that (quite rightly) characterized your views on neural
research earlier in the threads on altruism.
Moreover, your overly aggressive dismissals, e.g., "such
rot", "preposterous", serve to convey an unusual-for-you
impatience and jumping to conclusions. If I didn't think
that people like Mike Perry and Robin Hanson utterly
agreed with me, and several others like Max More and
Derek Parfit probably agree with me, then I'd wonder
indeed if it wasn't going to turn out to be possible
that I was as deluded as you say.
Your own quick-tempered and abrupt reasoning fails to
impress me. Because the thought-experiments lead to
perplexing results, you immediately take the easy way
out and try to *define* your way clear. Here you
immediately conclude that one is not the same person
from day to day, or even millisecond to millisecond.
I think that you should admit that if a year ago
someone had attempted to persuade you of that, you
simply would not have listened a minute to "such
rot".
Gordon, we are verging on a new era where things that
have been true for 40,000 years---for example, the
one-to-one relationship between experience and memory
acquisition---are not necessarily true any longer, or
certainly won't. Please don't paint yourself into
corners with your odd definitions and peculiar axioms.
> Your false reasoning has lead you to promulgate the ridiculous conclusion
> that in the scenarios you describe, SELF = OTHER. That conclusion is clearly
> false by any sane and workable definitions of the words "self" and "other."
Well, what is at stake is the evolutionarily new situation
of hypothetical duplicating machinery, applied to soulless
entities made up of atoms, a concept also that we are not
prepared for. Why it shouldn't be a surprise that your
knee-jerk intuitions aren't adequate.
I avoid simplistic equations like yours above, (or axioms
about humanity that have the words "every" and "all" in
them), and I would advise that you do the same. I'm merely
claiming that in *some* ways, one's duplicate---were we to
have the machinery to create one---is one's self, while
admitting that in other ways it is not. (It's just that
the ways in which we *are* our duplicates are more
important, in addition to being novel.)
As is every animal, we are familiar with the ways that our
duplicates are *not* our selves, and I'm drawing attention
to some ways in which they *are* ourselves. If it turned
out that someone had duplicated the entire city block
where you think you are, and you have been really for the
last few minutes out in the desert (complete with electricity),
then you should rest assured that if your block out there in
the desert is to be annihilated by H-bomb in the next moments,
gts will still live, and *you* will wake up tomorrow morning
in bed regardless.
Yes---I know that problems remain---I don't call it the
Identity Paradox for nothing. I merely say that we have
not *yet* become totally comfortable about how to articulate
some of these truths, nor can any of us, despite looking as
hard as possible into the future, state that we know how
all these things will be discussed in the indefinite
years to come.
> As I've stated, your argument fails because the conclusion
> invalidates the premise, i.e., reductio ad absurdum.
Nah. If all your opponents were always guilty of making
some elementary logical error, or being preposterous, or
of committing the gross errors of which you frequently
accuse them, then you'd have a major mystery on your
hands as to how gts managed to get so damn much smarter
than all the authors of those books, and all those other
correspondents.
Lee
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