[ExI] essentialism and/or continuity

Damien Broderick thespike at satx.rr.com
Sat May 22 18:26:17 UTC 2010


On 5/22/2010 12:44 PM, Stefano Vaj wrote:

> On 20 May 2010 19:22, Damien Broderick<thespike at satx.rr.com>  wrote:
>> Not at all sure that "essentialist" is the right word to describe someone
>> like me. "Continuist" or something, maybe, if there is such a philosophical
>> category.

> let me understand your stance better: do you demand that any
> arbitrarily low degree of material continuity is never broken at any
> instant (as in Moravec-style uploading or in the seven-year cycle of
> biological replacement of human molecules), but accept for the rest a
> definition of identity which might allow for the entire replacement of
> the "substratum" provided that such continuity is conserved

In brief, yes.

> And even in such case, would you really consider teleport as "death"?

Only if it destroys the original. Otherwise it's a kind of high-fidelity 
copying or cloning. (I discussed this in THE SPIKE and we should 
probably not go on with it now any further for fear of igniting a 
tedious "Yes it is" "No it's not" endless thread.)

I might as well add, though, that this is my provisional conclusion. If 
it turns out that there *is* something like a "soul" that flits from 
body to body and that comprises the core of continuing identity, I'd 
probably change my opinion. Or if there's a sort of resonance archive 
maintained outside the body that constantly interacts with the brain (as 
in my novel THE DREAMING and several of Spider Robinson's sf novels), 
that would also modify my view. Parapsychological claims do seem to 
support such a possibility, but I remain unconvinced. Note that I am not 
talking about religious doctrines or dogmas, except to whatever extent 
such traditions happen to encapsulate experiences that more rigorous 
methods (especially repeatable and highly theorized scientific 
empiricism) have so far failed to incorporate, or declined to investigate.

Damien Broderick




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