From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Nov 02 2002 - 22:07:50 MST
gts writes
> > Suppose that your sense of self derives from physics.
>
> I do.
>
> > That is, what you feel and experience is only molecules in motion
> > and the progression through various states of a physical device.
> > If that is true, then you would have the same sense of self that
> > you had in the past when that particular state got additional run
> > time. (It did, of course, or else you wouldn't be here.)
>
> I don't believe that is so. I am the person who died, not the
> backup who is resurrected.
We were talking about your "sense of self". If it's just a
physical configuration, or processing, then it might indeed
be the same regardless of whether it's you or your duplicate.
You have pointed out that in the case of simple teleportation
one survives because no differences obtain. So here we must
ask, What constitutes one's sense of self. Obviously, this is
a very deep question, neurologically speaking, but I think that
it's a map from memories, mostly, to some kind of combining
engine. Of course, one's mood changes from moment to moment,
and while I'd say that I'm not defined by my moods, you probably
would say that if a backup was in a different mood than you had
been at the moment of tragedy, then that's even more reason not
to consider him the same person.
In any case, logically, one's sense of self (or we should say
senses of self, since there is at least one for every mood)
may or may not be the same as your backups. It wouldn't matter
to me what mood my backup was in, because my mood swings aren't
so terrible or so long.
> You have agreed that a religious conversion in the interval between my
> backup and my dying "last-breath" constitutes a sufficiently large
> personality change to justify the denial of the equality of the backup
> identity and the last-breath identity.
Well, understand that I said that it was *possible*. I was not speaking
of "death-bed conversions" notorious for their expediency. I simply
grant that on rare occasions perhaps one does entirely change in a few
moments. But these, by all accounts, are exceedingly rare.
> I say further that for purposes of determining the equality of
> identities, smaller personality changes are no less relevant
> than larger personality changes; that is, that the distinction
> between small personality changes and large personality changes
> is purely arbitrary.
Well, they're arbitrarily *small* too!
> You replied.
>
> > I think that they're objective
>
> Sure, personality changes are objective as well as subjective. They can be
> measured objectively, as in a test of pizza affinity, or as in a test of
> religious beliefs.
Actually, we cannot measure them at present. No way. But you and
I do agree that they are objective, nonetheless.
> > Many people will probably note that Lee's new PC system is
> > similar to LINUX in some ways, but not in others. It will
> > be a matter of degree. But if there is a high degree of
> > similarity, I shall rightly be accused of plagiarism.
>
> And who is going to determine what constitutes a "high degree of similarity"
> between one personality and the next? Clearly it is entirely a judgment call
> based on arbitrary criteria.
Just as we cannot measure differences in OS's with any mathematical
accuracy doesn't mean that such differences aren't quite objective.
The situation is entirely similar (!) to that of whether a lizard
is more similar to a twig or to a snake. Some will say, "Oh, but
that can be answered by DNA!". Well, one might respond, what makes
DNA the arbiter? The universe has a great many measuring devices,
most of them living beings. Whether it's an insect or a human,
the *real* difference between a lizard and a snake is measured to
be greater than between a lizard and a twig.
The criteria you call "arbitrary" aren't really so. As realists,
we conjecture that properties inhere in objects and are not fictions
of perceivers. Differences between, say, Mr. Putin and Mr. Bush
are very real, and the difference between Mr. Bush and Mr. Bush's
recent backup are objectively miniscule in comparison.
> You agree that your argument fails for large personality changes but are so
> far reluctant to agree that it fails for small personality changes. Again,
> who is to decide the distinction between large and small, and on what
> criteria? Please answer.
Often indeed small differences are unmeasurable at the present
time. Nanotechnology will be able to measure many differences
by accounting for locations of atoms that we must be blind to
now. I'm asking you to have faith that there is a *big* difference
between large and small differences. Of course, you really do think
that differences between, say, a star and a grasshopper is much,
much greater than between two grasshoppers, and don't you think
that the difference is objective? People of good sense have always
understood it to be so. Even higher animals act as though they
believe it to be so.
> Also I would like you to address my recent post in which I describe the
> persistence of identity with a film analogy, or my other recent post in
> which I describe persistence of identity with a whirlpool analogy.
I agree that over a very long time, a person is like a whirlpool;
disparate constituents come and go, and the pattern also changes.
But to the degree that the pattern does not change, then I think
it equally true that a whirlpool and a person retain identity
over time.
> I believe that if you could only briefly see what I and most
> psychologists see -- that non-nominal identity is DYNAMIC
> and not STATIC -- then you would understand that you are asking
> the wrong questions about the survival of identity. Your desire
> to provide for the survival of an identity you falsely perceive
> as static is leading you to reach controversial and nonsensical
> conclusions.
Come now, at most points in history very close-minded people
dismissed as "nonsensical" all the basic improvements in our
ways of seeing things. You give yourself away with remarks
like these. You're going to be *extremely* intolerant in a
few more decades at your present rate.
There are *lots* of things about a person that are DYNAMIC,
probably including memories, maybe even DNA as a certain person
kept claiming in a recent thread. It doesn't matter. Let's
say that there are 10^13 different fine-gradations of parameters
of my personality through which I cycle. As any usual person,
I "identify" with all of them, and consider it very strained,
to say the least to maintain that I am a different person than
yesterday.
Lee
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