[extropy-chat] Survival tangent (was Just curious, it's not natural!)

[Jef Allbright]

Heartland wrote:

> Jef Allbright:
> So you're saying
>
> (1)  "Values, beliefs and memories (VBM) are not necessarily unique 
> (they're quite commonly shared) therefore they do not uniquely define 
> a person."
>
> (2)  Therefore, to say that a person is defined by their VBM is 
> tantamount to saying that each person is all persons.
>
> (3)  This is clearly absurd, therefore the unique essence of a thing 
> must be defined elsewise.
>
> Is this a correct summary of your statements?

(2) should be, "Therefore, to say that a person is defined by their VBMs
implies that a person can survive as long as these same VBMs distributed
among other people's heads survive."

So you appear to be saying that it follows from (1) that a set of
values, beliefs and memories distributed throughout a set of persons is
equivalent to a set of values, beliefs, and memories associated with a
single person.  Again this would be the fallacy of the undistributed
middle.  

While I know of many who have asserted that one is effectively defined
or distinguished by ones values, beliefs and memories, I know of no one
(other than you) who has said that this implies values, beliefs and
memories could be independently distributed as you say. So what are you
arguing against here?  A->B does not mean B->A  and no on other than
yourself has said that this is implied.


> My response:
>
> (1)  Note that this is logically consistent with what many of us have 
> been saying; that there can be a gradient of personal identity and 
> that there can be duplicates of personal identity.

> But that's just like saying that 1 can also mean 2 or that "blue sky"
can sometimes be red. The words imply certain conditions you must follow
when assigning the referents. If you violate these conditions you're
just end up using a wrong referent for a word and, consequently, should
be using a different word. So, for example, there's no such thing as
"duplicates of personal identity" or a "gradient of personal identity"
just like there's no such thing as "two originals" or "23% of being
pregnant."

No, the point is that we can find other statements that are both
contextually related and logically consistent with the first statement.
The example I gave was relevant to the discussion since it is generally
a part of the package of understanding which you are trying to refute.

> (2)  Non sequitur.  Fallacy of the undistributed middle leading to 
> affirming the consequent (a form of circular reasoning). A->B does not

> imply B->A. Also, same comments as (1).

> Let's really get into this, Jef. Before I acknowledge my fault please
state precisely what your A and B are.

Slawomir, A and B are symbols representing antecedent and consequent in
the form of a syllogism.  The particulars don't matter if the form is
logically invalid.
In this particular case, A->B corresponds to the statement "any person
is defined by values, beliefs and memories".  This does not imply the
statement B->A corresponding to "any values, beliefs and memories define
a person" because not all values, beliefs and memories are associated
with any given person.  It's not symmetrical.

> (3)  Non sequitur.  Affirming the consequent (circular).  Where is it
> logically shown that all persons must have unique identity?

> Again. I've always assumed that, by definition, "identity" can have at
most one 
referent.  Are you really saying that we can stretch the meaning of this
word to 
include more than one thing?

HOW MANY PEOPLE HOW MANY TIMES HAVE SAID EXACTLY THAT TO YOU ON THIS
LIST?

Slawomir, THAT IS THE KEY POINT.  You repeatedly make the logical error
of affirming the consequent.  Your reasoning is circular and thus proves
nothing, regardless or whether you're right or wrong about what you
believe.

It appears that you don't understand and don't care to gain
understanding of this point. A few weeks ago I said I would make the
effort to respond to you as long as you seemed to reciprocate.  As you
know, I scanned and filtered my email archives and gave you about 168kB
of your own statements (since April) with the first several pages marked
up for your examination.  I've posted careful criticism of recent
examples and I've given you google search phrases in case you actually
wanted to study the points that have been offered to you. 

What's especially ironic about this is that if you were ever able to get
past the hurdle of logical argument, we would have found that there's
still no way to prove whether you're right about the "specialness of a
unique trajectory through space-time of the physical constituents of the
mind-producing process" because it can't be proved absolutely within the
context of our subjective experience.  But we might have agreed on a
model of what we do and don't know, and we might have applied Occam's
razor to find the simplest explanation that fits our observations.

I can't justify spending any more time on this. I'm done.

- Jef