[ExI] Uploading and selfhood

[Jef Allbright]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 7:28 PM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

> Jef writes
>
>  > Personal identity is always only a function of perceived agency
>  > **by an observer**, regardless of the physical, functional or
>  > ontological status of the entity on whose behalf it acts, and even
>  > when the observer is the agent itself.
>
>  It's a good thing that the subordinate clause "and even when the
>  observer is the agent itself" is added, or one would evidently
>  not survive the destruction of all the world's people and animals
>  except oneself.

You're again highlighting that your interest in this topic is driven
and framed by concern for personal survival.

My interest in this topic is "merely" related to increasingly coherent
conceptualizing, an essential piece of the well-equipped
epistemological toolkit.  Until a few years ago, I had seen it also as
an opportunity to study the potential of otherwise excellent Western
thinkers to escape the Cartesian singularity of self, but that
experiment has been relegated, like my ventures as an eight-year-old
attempting to prod Xians into a broader view, to a dim corner under a
flickering neon sign with the words "Prospects for Increasingly
Rational Decision-Making over an Increasing Context of Self."  [Even
for the 18kV neon sign transformer it's too big a chunk for the
available charge.]


>  But if personal identity is, as you write, only a function of perceived
>  agency by some observer, then what about this following case?

Perhaps it might help if we reword (somewhat clumsily but possibly to
good effect) the above to "But if (perception of) personal identity
is, as you write, only a function of agency as perceived by some
observer..." it might help you see the point which you are
consistently undershooting.  Just a bit higher escape velocity, Lee,
and you'll be able to look back and see the planet, er, the self, from
a context both broader and more coherent.


>  Suppose that there exists today a certain person who has rather
>  low status for various reasons.  One of these reasons is that he
>  is convinced beyond any doubt that he is the Emperor Napoleon
>  of the nineteenth century.  When it's objected to him that it is
>  not possible for Napoleon, born 1769 (as he well knows) to
>  alive in the year 2008, he makes various denials of one kind
>  or another. (It's partly because of the incoherence---just from
>  our point of view, mind you---of his answers that his status is
>  so low, and that he's receiving help in a mental institution.)
>
>  Now then.  A terrible plague manages to kill off everyone but
>  him, as well as all Earth's animals. There is---it seems to me---
>  but one of your "observers" remaining, and that is this individual
>  himself.  Would you say that since "Personal identity is always
>  only a function of perceived agency by an observer....even
>  when the observer is the agent itself", that the fact of the matter
>  is this:
>
>      The Emperor Napoleon (1769- ), formerly of France, but
>      now living in a certain city in the U.S., turned out to be the
>      last living human on Earth?
>

Lee, once again you're mixing your ontology with my epistemology, and
it's not a good flavor combination.

Your thought experiments characteristically convey the presumption of
an omniscient observer.  My point to you has always been that reality
can't be in your model -- because your model is in reality.  If there
is only a single actor in your model, and that actor outputs "I am
Napolean", then there is nothing in your model to suggest otherwise.

But in "reality" no model exists in isolation, leading to my
characteristic use of "increasingly" and emphasis of the importance of
context.

- Jef
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