[ExI] The Upload Game

[Michael Miller]

Lee said: 

>I would call the uploading view (where what happens to the
>original is philosophically immaterial) to be the "objective" view.
>But I understand your 'externalist', I think: doesn't it simply
>amount to "objective"?

the only reason i didn't use the term objective is because it tends to be loaded with a certain truth-value judgment. I think the term may mislead us here, because we are merely talking about what a person looks like from the outside or from the inside. I don't think we should place either one on a higher pedestal.

>Wait.  What about your best friend?  Can you look at two
>copies of him and say that they are the same person?
>Recall that they act completely the same, and if named
>"Fred", each resembles the other Fred even more closely
>than he resembles the Fred of last week. (So therefore
>if each really is the same person as Fred of last week, it's
>obvious---to me, at any rate---that they are the same
>person as each other. But too many people simply find
>this conclusion unacceptable, despite the logic.)

Sure. And I accept that two different things, to all external criteria, can both be Michael Miller. But I can't have an external view on myself. If I can have an external view on something, then it is no longer "me" in the sense of being one with my subjectivity. This is where the two definitions of self part company: Whether we define self as being the feeling of 'me' from the inside, or the pattern of 'me' from the outside. I think we'd be wrong to disregard either definition, but bear in mind that however we choose to use the word 'self', it is not an object that we are defining, so we cannot come to a right or wrong definition...we are merely articulating how we prefer to use the word.

>> - not for any reason of a soul etc., but because "I" implies
>> a subjective perspectival quality; 

>Only on *one* meaning of "I".  

Yes. But it's one that is just as valid as any other. I think the unique sensation of being *this* person is one that we cannot divorce from the definition of "I". And this sensation is only available from the inside. If I am pointing to something else, then it does not share my own selfness in that way (although to everyone else, both of us may well do). Thus, we can be the same person, but we cannot be the same "I". Because if I say "I see..." I am not talking about the other. Whereas if I talk about qualities of Michael Miller, it will probably include both of us.

>Naturally, I'd just press you to practice the *objective*
>or 'externalist' point of view. It would hardly be the first
>time in your life that your subjectivity has mislead you.
>Why, subjectively, the Earth isn't even moving!

Yes...but, it is also through our subjective apparatus that we reach every conclusion, whether misled or not :)







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