From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Wed Oct 23 2002 - 17:52:49 MDT
gts wrote:
> > 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.
I'd find a context in which "being a container" is the only relevant
property positively perverse! :)
Nonetheless, I can think of a variety of circumstances in which we might
say that a garbage truck is a coffee cup, and vice versa. I might have a
very small garbage truck (more of a toy, really) that I could use for
drinking coffee. (I'd wash it first.) Alternately, if the coffee cup had
wheels and an engine of some kind, we might use it for transporting
garbage.
The point of this is just in certain situations we can ignore rather
significant differences. If my counterexamples seem unintuitive, it's
because it follows from a completely unintuitive premise: that all that we
should care to examine is the existence of instantiations of "being a
container."
> > 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.
This is a double-use of the word "relevant." We have to differentiate
between the personal beliefs and attitudes which inform the context of our
language, and personal beliefs and attitudes that we might talk *about*
within our language. The former, I agree, will always have some bearing,
but the latter may not be relevant at all for the purposes of counting.
We can draw the distinction out more clearly with an example. You don't
believe in personal continuity over time, so we'll speak in your language
for a moment. Consider Lee, who *does* believe that he's the same guy he
was yesterday. Is his belief relevant in figuring out whether he really
IS the same guy he was yesterday? No; at least, not in a language in
which persons are defined to be different people across time (due to a
metaphysical commitment to temporal parts or whatever). Just because he
thinks he persists doesn't mean he really does.
Now consider the scenario from within a language more like Lee's, in which
people *do* persist over time (at least under ordinary circumstances).
You believe that you don't. But is that relevant in figuring out whether
you really do persist over time? Again, no, not in this language; in this
language, it's the "same person" at different times, as a point of
definition, regardless of what you think about the matter.
Of course, on a meta-level, *our* personal beliefs and attributes
determine which language we'll choose, but within the language, facts
about personal beliefs and attributes generally have considerably less
bearing on the situation.
Hence, an individual's personal beliefs and attitudes might *not* be
relevant for the purposes of counting in many cases. Not to harp on the
time example, but most people find drastic changes in personality over
time compatible with the idea of a constant identity. Some of them might
accept the claim "he's a different person now" as a "mere" metaphor, but
that's about as far as they'll go with it. It isn't automatically the
case that a person's attitudes are relevant for counting simply because
languages are informed by contexts.
> > 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.
All this says is that the duplicates would agree as to whether they were
the same person; they'd find the same properties relevant, whatever those
properties might be. This is obvious. :)
What makes it impossible to formalize isn't the fact that there's more
than one xox and therefore more than one standard of relevance, but the
obvious fact that people disagree about what's relevant in this picture.
John Clark thinks that only scientific indiscernability is relevant;
that's fine, but it's a mere stake in the ground. Relevance could be
staked out another way, and still be very plausible to many (most?) of us.
> But complete synchronization is not possible due to the different
> sensory inputs of the original and his xox.
Synchronization doesn't need to be "complete" if it's incomplete in
irrelevant ways.
<don't answer these questions>
You may charge that the synchronization would be incomplete in some
*important* way, but why should I take that seriously? I'm perfectly
happy to say in Lee's terms [but only in that context] that trivial
*mis*synchronizations would even be possible, and personal identity could
*still* be maintained across duplicates.
Why should I care about trivial synch failures if I don't care about
trivial changes to my own person over time?
</don't answer these questions>
The questions have answers within your context, but the puzzle is
presenting them in a way that makes them compelling in a context in which
your criteria don't matter. It's a Sisyphean task that I don't encourage
you to follow up on.
Some people in some contexts will call duplicates the same person. In a
manner of speaking, they are. In another manner of speaking, they aren't.
We can formalize on a language, but we have no special reason to pick one
over the other, and we can do all required moral reasoning without making
such a leap, so I suggest that we not do so at all.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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