[ExI] The Anticipation Dilemma (Personal Identity Paradox)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 15/07/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

> Evolution made a rough approximation:  don't identify with
> anything outside your skin in the sense of anticipating actually
> feeling their pain.  The patternist view of identity suggests
> that this "bio-unit is all important" bias should be replaced
> with a "this pattern is all important".  But the present day
> feelings of anticipation cannot, so far as I know, be consistently
> worked into providing guidance between choice A and choice
> B in these unusal cases (as you say).  You are probably right
> about there being no perfect heuristic;  but anticipation is *so*
> overwhelmingly powerful as a guide to action that it poses a
> real problem.

If you can discard this strong feeling of anticipation as a motivator,
what's to stop you also discarding the desire to survive at all?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou