From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Nov 12 2002 - 00:23:19 MST
I have given my best arguments as to why it's sensible to
adopt the view that in a strong sense duplicates are selves
(level seven). The original post "Seven Levels of Identity"
http://www.extropy.org/exi-lists/extropians/0210/16300.html
describes what each level means.
It's very encouraging that at least three other people
here have come to the same conclusion, more than I've
simultaneously encountered before.
Of course, given the difficulties of what one means by terms,
and what one's concepts are of "self", "person", and so on,
it's impossible to prove that any view is the correct one.
It could be consistently denied that one is the same person after
teleporting, for example, and it's ridiculous to suppose that
any provably rigorous counter-argument exists. One might even,
for yet another example, consistently maintain that one is not
even the same person from second to second.
Nonetheless, because vibrant philosophy prescribes choices
(besides offering explanations), it's possible for a number
of people at the same level to investigate their own
judgments and intentions for action under a number of
scenarios, in a search for consistent prescription.
I would very much appreciate a discussion of issues by those
who are also at level seven, or who are willing to (temporarily
at least) make the assumptions necessary to be at level seven.
Therefore, I request that in this thread these assumptions
not be questioned (in an open forum such as this you can start
other threads to challenge such assumptions).
Here, again, is a description of level seven:
7. Logically, but not necessarily emotionally, anticipates all
experiences of all duplicates past or future, near or far.
By subscribing to "the faith of a physicist", the subject believes
that any physical object at any coordinates whatsoever is the same
person that he or she is, provided only that the physical process
running in the object resembles him or her closely enough.
That is, you're at level seven if you believe level seven to be
logically correct, no matter how uncomfortable you're made by
various thought experiments. You must also be able to affirm
"I wish that, in all the relevant scenarios I know of, I could
behave as though I were *not* uncomfortable with level seven."
(I myself certainly admit to being uncomfortable with level
seven, but consider that there is no alternative.)
If you were Yevgeni, in my story "The Pit and the Duplicate",
http://www.leecorbin.com/PitAndDuplicate.html, and the alien
Itself placed you in the pit, how many times would you press
the button? What would you expect to happen when you did?
Also, what do you think of the maxim, "Any memory superset
of me is me"?
Lee
P.S. Once again, if you'd like to address these questions
but aren't at level seven, please start another thread with
words such as "In a related thread, lcorbin asks....".
Thanks.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:03 MST