From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Jun 30 2003 - 22:33:41 MDT
Brett writes
> > > I will grant that to me and everyone relating to you the
> > > duplicate will be satisfactory. I am more "selfish" when
> > > it comes to me.
> >
> > Absolutely! This is the *crux* of the real philosophical
> > problem! We ought to posit the existence of a Most Selfish
> > Individual, and ask to what well-informed decisions he
> > would come.
>
> There may be merit in that. I may actually know this guy :-)
> Let me take a shot at describing him.
>
> The Most Selfish Individual's well-informed decision can only
> be as good as his knowledge base. He is presumably rational
> and open to learning better survival options...
> Any 'leap of faith' this Most Selfish Individual takes will be
> as *small* and late as he can make them.
This, of course, is also true of a wider class of beings who
want to know the truth.
> > But we are talking about a survival-oriented, selfish view of
> > what is "in it" for an individual.
>
> *I* perceive the world from a stand-point that is necessarily
> self-centred. *My* senses collect data and *my* brain interprets
> it as information. My "self", a process which I understand emerges
> along with consciousness has amongst its attributes a desire for
> "self" preservation. It's a pretty strong desire and my worldview
> rightly or wrong informs *my* self about what seem to be more
> and less optimal ways to pursue that desire.
All that is very true.
> Personally, I don't find altruism a particularly useful concept,
> except as a shorthand, and I'm not sure it has anything to do
> with *my* desire for self preservation one way or the other.
I and many others *do* find it an exceedingly useful concept,
and it is important for everyone to acknowledge the genetic
origins of their altruism, and most importantly, decide whether
to jettison via memetic engineering or genetic engineering those
tendencies. I fervently hope that people embrace their altruism.
However you and I agree completely: it ought have NOTHING to do
with the philosophical questions of personal identity, and is
often a red herring. Yes, certain others will, because they
wish to evolve a wider definition and meaning for "self", do
foray into these waters; but (1) it goes against the behavior
and thinking of most people and (2) the resolution of any purely
philosophic problem seems easier (or perhaps I'm just not interested
in it).
So shall we agree that in this thread, there will be no further
talk of altruism? About that fascinating topic, and even its
relation to concepts of "self", perhaps indeed other people should
start other discussions.
> > Suppose that there existed a machine that could decompose
> > you into your constituent elements within a microsecond.
> >
> > Then suppose that a few microseconds later, it reconstitutes
> > you. Now suppose that this entire process happens hundreds
> > of times per second...
> >
> > And this is NOT the place to inquire after the actual physical
> > plausibility of such a device. Yes, our notions of who and
> > what we are do depend on our basic understandings of physics,
> > but not on [a certain conceptually insignificant technical
> > breakthrough].
>
> Ok. Stipulations noted. If I was to discover that this had in fact
> been happening my worldview would necessarily change. I might
> conclude that continuity cannot be a necessary precondition for
> self-hood, as I have come to experience it, because I hadn't ever
> had continuity, I'd have been mistaken. But I think I've missed
> your point as I think I am repeating something I said earlier here.
Yes, this experiment is suggestive only. It is certainly not an
exercise in deductive reasoning to go from its possibility-in-principle
to a conclusion that YOU MUST ALLOW THAT THIS IS HAPPENING TO YOU RIGHT
NOW.
However, we might further imagine that you lived in a population
one-half of which underwent this operation one hundred times per
second. At this point, your intuition might suggest that since
everyone acted as if they were conscious, and were the same person,
then perhaps it was true.
We routinely avoid solipsism by extending this notion to other people
(even though we feel no pain when they are pinched), and also go so
far as to extend it to animals.
But what is important is the *story*, the *explanation* behind the
scenes. If it's not at all compelling, then the above thought
experiment has little point. The story is that when you examine
the *physics* associated with this operation happening to someone
else, then you wonder just what could be the difference between
the various 1/100 second versions. In what sense are they different
people? How is it possible that a person associated with one of them
vanishes the next instant?
The only way that I have been able to figure out how it might
be possible for another person to flash into existence for 1/100th
of a second, and then to vanish forever into non-existence, is if
indeed there is someone overhead Who is stamping out souls, and
assigning them to these copies. But we reject this (most of us).
Instead, it seems far more likely that our minds are contaminated
with lingering notions of a soul, and that this is responsible for
our uneasiness at the prospect, say, of being teleported, or
disassembled and reassembled.
> > ... the question is once an adult level of sentience is achieved
> > > can you capture the recursion counters in the wetware? A
> > > snapshot of the conscious process and memories and restore
> > > it either onto an identical wetware substrate or a different set
> > > of firmware on an upload. I don't know.
> >
> > Why not? [why couldn't these "recursion counters" be captured]
>
> Because I don't *know* enough about how my consciousness
> and the experience of self-hood manifests to assume that it can
> persist completely decoupled from a matter substrate for any
> length of time.
No one that I know of imagines that it can persist without
a material substrate, except non-materialists.
> My current thinking is no substrate means no conscious
> processing (or unconscious processing either). No
> consciousness process means no self concept process. In short
> I assume that no brain means a discontinuation of me because it
> seems prudent to do so.
Yes, certainly.
> Is this the scenario where life and consciousness spring
> back into the new structure at the instant of its reassembly
> because they were an inherent part of it? In my experience
> brains grow they aren't top down or bottom up assembled.
Yes, life and consciousness "springs back" into the new
structure because they were only derivative processes to
begin with. They arise as a result of certain kinds of
processing.
> How do you bring about that instant in wetware when all
> the pieces come together at once? This would require
> an extraordinary feat not just of construction but of
> coordinating the synchronous assembly of perishable
> components in real time and bringing them together in that
> instant that is the deadline. Doesn't seem "easy".
;-) I meant easy in the philosophical sense. Since
we are mechanical devices, the same applies to us as
to any other machine that you disassemble. When a
heart ceases to beat, indeed, a jolt may be necessary
to get it once again into the state wherein it begins
to operate all by itself. An ideal brain brought to
a complete state of readiness one day may require a
similar jolt (perhaps merely along sensory nerves) to
get it going again. But I believe that neurons can be
prepared in states such that they fire spontaneously.
So one hardly need fear that one's brain would just "sit"
there if one were uploaded, copied, or teleported. In
fact, the usual philosophical questions are pursued by
even adding in that all the original atoms are given
their original velocities as well. Thus the brain
resumes its activity in a way that is physically completely
equivalent to the original. It is disturbed less by this
operation (in principle) than it is by an annoying phone call.
Lee
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