[extropy-chat] Detectives and red herrings (was Survival tangent)

[Lee Corbin]

Slawomir wrote

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Heartland" <velvethum at hotmail.com>
To: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>; "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2006 7:34 PM

> At this meta-level the philosophers of personal identity implicitly or explicitly
> answer this single fundamental question: "What defines a person?"
> <snip>
> Philosophers searching for the essence of what a person really is follow the 
> reductive process that initially goes something like this:
> 
> Things->Body->Brain
> 
> But then, someone like Lee Corbin comes along and claims this is not enough and
> extends the process:
> 
> Things->Body->Brain->Pattern->VBMs
> 
> But then, Jef Allbright comes along and says this is not enough/correct and decides
> to extend this process further still until it looks like this:
> 
> Things->Body->Brain->Pattern->VBMs->Agency

Mind you, apparently Jef is still working on his statement, which a number of
us are eager to hear, unless I missed it.

> Meanwhile, I look at both of these reductive processes and can't help but comment:
> "You've already missed a crucial exit and are heading for an inevitable dead end."
> Here's my version of the reductive process:
> 
> Things->Body->Brain->Mind->Process->Presence
> 
> At this moment you, dear reader, are probably asking yourself: "What the hell is
> Presence?" Well, the short version is that it's an "instance of awareness,
> perception, sensation, etc". I might provide more details if there's enough
> demand. I know from experience that these ideas are quite hard to
> convey since it requires the reader that he think in 4-D *and* abandon the habit of
> thinking that Person=VMBs, among other things. The most important thing to realize
> is that Presence supervenes on the physical. I want to make sure this is clear
> right from the start to counter knee-jerk accusations of promoting existence of
> "souls". There are no souls, okay? (That goes especially for you, John K Clark.)

I'm sorry to say so, but I am wary of investing time in a new
abstract theory about all this.  The right road is to undertake
simple thought experiments.  This is because real philosophy
is *prescriptive*.  It should tell us what to do.  The elaborate
theories, in my opinion, come later, are merely descriptive,
and are of secondary importance.

Are you sure that you are satisfied with your answers to 
some of our scenarios?  I had the feeling---probably wrong
since there have been so many emails---that we didn't get
to the bottom of the scenarios involving you being replaced
by a copy in the middle of the night on each night for the
preceding three years.

Now, accepting that this is the case---we have videotape
proof that this has been going on---you then go to bed tonight
with great, great trepidation?   I guess you do, because by
your lights you are about to die.

But guess what:  tomorrow you wake up after all---(or, that is,
your copy does).  But this goes on day in and day out, day in
and day out, week after week, month after month, and year
after year.  Very soon you do *not* go to bed each night 
scared to death that you're going to die.  You find that you
have other problems in life.  The whole being-copied thing
(despite the video proof) comes to feel a bit academic.

Eventually you'd be willing to have an extra replacement
occur in an afternoon nap, in exchange for say, $100,000,
money that you might need to have an important medical
operation performed a few weeks hence, or to save a cousin's
life.

Your intuition would soon change, and even these video-taped
records of you being replaced each night by a duplicate would
fade into a kind of irrelevancy.

When you thought about what happened yesterday, your
intuition would scream at you "THAT HAPPENED TO *ME*,
NOT TO SOMEONE ELSE". You would not be able resist
this intuition for long.

The end result is that you'd become a patternist.

Lee