From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Oct 31 2002 - 00:13:04 MST
Michael writes
> Briefly, Consider this thought experiment.
This is the right approach! Ultimately we may only IMHO
get anywhere by addressing many possible contingencies.
> I walk into a scanner, I am copied, me and my copy walk out.
> My copy can not see what I see, and I can not see what he sees.
Now just from physics, at the instant of duplication, there
are no important differences between the two of you. Neither
has something that the other is missing. In addition to it
being totally dark inside the chamber the original may also
have been moved a few feet by space-warp so that neither
has the slightest bit of different information. Anywhere.
> If he can not see what I see, he can not be a continuation
> of my subjective experiences.
Why do you suppose that your subjective experience only occurs
in one particular one of them? Is our physics incomplete in
some way? Or do you have an unconscious belief in soul that
you haven't yet fully expurgated?
> If this is the result of the
> experiment, that he can not see what I see, then I ask 'why' is that the
> case. He has the same pattern as me. The only difference I see is that he
> has different atoms. But we know that any individual atom has no unique
> property over another atom, *except* its location. The atoms he is made up
> of are part of his pattern, the atoms I am made up of are part of my
> pattern. So far so good. But why is he not a subjective continuation of
> me? His pattern is made of atoms, and so is mine? Well my pattern was made
> of the same atoms at the previous instant that they are made of this
> instant. His atoms, in the previous instant, were a homogenous pile of
> CHNOPS and a few minerals.
Why exactly does the history of an atom matter? You have agreed that
if just one of your atoms was instantly replaced by reservoir atom,
that would be okay with you. How do you think that you would feel
if 10^15 of them were exchanged? What about 10^24? (That's supposed
to be about 1cc's worth.) And I'm still amazed that you would feel
sorry for the rest of us if you found out that we were being replaced
every millisecond in a picosecond long operation which swapped out
all our atoms!
> If the result is that he does not see what I see
> and thus is not a subjective continuation, then given the factors I just
> mentioned, the *only* explanation present for this is to maintain subjective
> continuity one requires the same pattern and the same atoms. (that is, the
> vast majority of the pattern remains from one instant to the next, and the
> vast majority of atoms remains from one instant to the next) Given that,
> please point out what you consider to be logically invalid in this argument.
Okay, see above.
> This is, of course, on the condition that said experiment turns out the way
> I guess it would, I have no reason to suspect logically otherwise.
For the more difficult case, you should adopt my alterations to your
experiment in which the original is shifted a few feet, the room is
blacked out, and both the original and the copy find themselves
symmetrically facing the door.
Lee
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