--
On Tue, 25 Aug 1998 00:52:19 -0400 "John Clark" <jonkc@worldnet.att.net>
writes:
>Randall R Randall <rrandall6@juno.com> wrote:
>
>>If you assume that all the copies are the same person,
>>then they aren't having a *last* thought, but only a few
>>that are unrelated to the next,
>
>But they are only the same person if they have the same thoughts
>and in your example the thoughts of the two were not the same,
>in fact they could not have been more different.
So how many neurons must be in different states to constitute having a "different" person? If *any* change is sufficient, then the person who inhabited this body half a second ago is dead. I certainly am not having the same thoughts now as I was an hour ago, yet am I not the same person? If I am still the person that had those thoughts, then it seems to follow that small changes in thought patterns do not a different person make.
>>This seems to me to be a pretty clear reversal, since you
>>have previously argued that the copies in a situation like
>>this are all manifestations of one
>
>But these are not copies and I'm not talking about subtitles
>here, the mental state of the two are astronomically different.
It seems to me that *any* mental state that a person is capable of reaching in less than a day must be fairly similar to those she had a day ago. The bare surface of current thought may seem radically different, but that alone is not enough to make a different person, is it?
>Joe Jenkins <joe_jenkins@yahoo.com>
>
>>One of the fundamental premises of uploading is accepting
>>the idea that your identity is preserved if an emulation of
>>all relevant physical processes of your mind is preserved.
>
>It's the only fundamental premises of uploading, and it must be
>true unless we have a soul undetectable by the scientific
>method.
I would say that continuity of experience is also important here, though.
--digsig
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