From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Tue Jun 12 2001 - 00:55:07 MDT
J. Gourd writes
> At 07:53 PM 6/11/01 -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> >Here is where John and I (and a number of people) part company
> >with you. You seem to think that *you* now would become one
> >of *them* randomly. You seem to be saying that it might be
> >the case that *you* go to Honolulu, and there is only a zombie
> >(or something) in Spitsbergen. Is this what you mean by "chance
> >splitting"? That your soul goes to one, but not the other?
>
> Yes and no. I think, by the assumptions of the
> thought experiment, that each resulting person must
> have as much subjectivity as the others, and
> have equal subjective connection to the original.
Of course they have equal subjectivity; but I don't believe
in this "subjectivity connection" to the original. Sounds
spooky and rather non-physical to me. (Oh! You agree. see below)
> My position is that the only non-contradictory account of
> subjectivity WRT duplication involves a kind of metaphysical
> duality: from the perspective of each duplicate, the
> subjectivity of the original continues into that duplicate;
> from the perspective of the original, his subjectivity cannot
> continue into more than one duplicate. You could think of
> it as multiple possible world-lines embedded within one world-line.
Well, perhaps this is some sort of natural view. But I
suggest that it has no basis in fact. I might know someone
who believes that his subjectivity is a continuation of
Napoleon's. We must have criteria to dismiss nonsense.
Don't you think physics---and its emphasis on physical *state*
---to be a pretty good thing on which to base our beliefs?
> I quite agree that subjectivity is essentially irrational.
> I can't find any measurable attributes of J. Goard that
> explain why *I am* him rather than some other person, or
> inhabit his psyche or whatever formulation you choose.
Okay, then if thine "I" offend thee, pluck it out!
Defer instead to the objective view: J. Goard is a
fuzzy set of configurations in person space. Your
life is a trajectory through this space. You are
wont to define "Me" at any moment as a fuzzy sphere
centered on where you are now. This works, I maintain,
and is consistent.
Lee Corbin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:05 MST