[extropy-chat] What should survive and why?.

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, May 02, 2007 at 08:33:07PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>    One of the problems in this debate is that the terminology can seem to
>    imply the conclusion which is at issue in the first place. This is
>    where I find the concept of the observer moment useful. An observer
>    moment, or OM, unambiguously specifies an instance of conscious
>    experience. Even if all hell breaks loose with duplications, we can

It's hardly a moment, though. "Conscious experience", whatever that means.
implies a trajectory segment long enough for higher-order processes to
happen, which puts it into some 100 ms country.

>    always point to Stathis no. 347b at 20:01:04 hrs on 2nd May 2007 in
>    Melbourne, Australia, and everyone will know what we mean regardless
>    of their view on personal identity. This terminology does not imply

We don't know, because there's no way for us to observe that. It would
take a heavily instrumented individual to make even crude measurements
upon that trajectory slice.

>    that OM's have any special ontological status of their own, nor that,
>    for example, Stathis no. 347b is or isn't the "same person" as Stathis

If personhood refers to isomorphisms in the person pattern, of course 
such trajectory segments can belong to the same person. If you define
personhood by static frames, then every single trajectrory frame
is a brand new person (an even more extreme view than Slawomir's).

>    no. 347b one second later, or Stathis 356a at the same time in the
>    adjacent room. How the OM's are related to form individuals, and what
>    death means in terms of the existence of non-existence of certain
>    OM's, is then the problem of personal identity, restated more
>    cumbersomely but also more precisely.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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