[extropy-chat] Agency as Prime Determinant of Personal Identity

[Lee Corbin]

This is part II of my response to Jef's Sunday Nov 5 piece,  
http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2006-November/030329.html ,

Jef presents seven scenarios there. First, about scenario 3.
Here is an excerpt:

> #3 ...one copy will have blue skin and will also not feel hunger or
> boredom, and incidentally it will die within a short time.  From the
> patternist point of view there are two different persons physically,
> functionally, and in terms of values.

I'm sorry to be bringing this up at this late date, but it's quite
important to recognize the *primacy* of memories in the
patternist view.  The author Mike Perry, in his book "Forever
For All", who believes as firmly as do I in the information theory
of identity, puts quite a premium on memories as do I.

Our moods can change, but we are still the same people. The change
in a few superficial values or beliefs doesn't make one into someone
else (in the patternist view).  Even if the beliefs and values undergo
rather drastic change, we say something like "you have renounced
God", or "you have become so ruthless in the last years".  I used
to reiterate *memories* and *behavior dispositions* as vital to the
patternist view.  But VBM is close enough, IMO, so long as the
primacy of memories is understood.

In the case of #3, there is still just one person, who admittedly
has changed some;  perhaps he's as close to you as "the you of
a few years" ago was.

> #4 With the intention of contributing to the worthwhile social cause of
> asteroid mining, but not being able to send my firstborn son, I step
> into the duplicator box.  I send my duplicate off as a free agent to
> contribute to the cause, knowing that he will get a good pension and I
> probably won't ever see him again. The patternist view would insist that
> I was sending myself.  The agency point of view would say I was sending
> a different person with an extremely strong resemblance, carrying my
> knowledge and skills.

But he still remembers being you, mainly because he has all your
memories.  Suppose that after mining for a year, he learns that 
the original on Earth died, and he must return to take up Jef's
role.  This would then devolve to being nothing but a long vacation
or work-assignment in another country.  It happens to people all the
time. They don't believe---and rightly so---that they're different people
when they come back, or when they're gone away.  Do you really
think that the patternist view here is wrong?

> #5 Ten years after sending said free agent to the asteroid mines, he
> returns, informs me that he was converted to patternist thinking while
> away, and now claims equal share of my property, my projects and my
> wife.  A patternist might claim (I remember Lee claiming this) that he
> would in fact be me, and I should be happy to have doubled my runtime
> and gladly find a way to share.

Yes, it's still you, but only up to some percentage. Clearly
he and the original have started to diverge. Would people tend
to say "Oh, he's a almost entirely a different person now" or
"He's still Jef, but wow, what a lot of strange behavior".

> #6 A few days later, I learn that the real reason he returned from the
> asteroid mines is that he had been accused of a plot to blow up an
> asteroid belonging to the Bush family and had therefore been charged
> with terrorism under penalty of death.  Under patternist thinking,
> should I turn myself in, or under agent-based thinking, should I tell
> him he's in big trouble and might consider making a large political
> contribution while in hiding?

In my opinion, you'd never resort to terrorism or violence.
So, again, it's a matter of degree. When you listen to him,
perhaps he makes sense, or perhaps he really has gone off
the deep end. You might think "he's still, like 60% me" or
"he's only, like, about 20% me". Of course these numbers
are only a poor attempt to render your feelings. Objectively
speaking, there are differences here that are *real*, but we
cannot at this time have a truly objective measure of them.

Only you can answer your own question there---and even you
probably have not provided yourself enough information.

> #7 Remember Alice?  Under patternist thinking according to Lee, she died
> at some point even though someone continued on with her property, her
> relationships, and her name.  Under agent-based personal identity,
> there's no question that we should see the 86 year old woman as a late
> instantiation of the entity known to all, including herself, as Alice.
> Furthermore, fifty years later, we would gladly interact with her
> variants and doubles exactly as if they were Alice in various alternate
> forms and places.

I repeat my earlier correction (sorry). Under the patternist
view, there was no *particular* point; it's completely gradual.

As for me, I have great difficulty as would most people, in
thinking of the 6 year old Alice and the 86 year old as one and
the same person. They simply have too little in common. Or
in scientific language, the similarity of structure is too sparse.

But I don't really follow your "agency based" view in this
example. Is it really true that they perform the same role
in society?  Please elaborate.  Also, what if the 86 year
old immersed herself for a few weeks doing asteroid mining,
and spending all her spare time learning Japanese. When 
she returns, how likely is it that she'll say to the 6
year old version of herself, "Well my dear, you and I are
the same person, of course, but while I was gone I was
someone else entirely."  The six year old will be baffled
by even the claim---I think---that they are the same person
at all.  And be totally lost by this latest claim.

Apologies for the places where I've not understood your
views.

Lee