[ExI] essentialism and/or continuity

[Emlyn]

On 25 May 2010 17:20, Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 24, 2010 at 6:25 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 24 May 2010 20:58, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 24 May 2010 10:01, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Your body (including your brain) is made up of different matter
>>>> compared to a few months ago, but you still feel you are the same
>>>> person. The soul has magically flitted from one body to another.
>>>
>>> To play the devil's advocate, everybody would feel he or she is the
>>> "same person" absolutely in any circumstance.
>>
>> Not under any circumstances. I don't feel I am the same person as you,
>> but I feel that I am the same person as my self of a year ago. I also
>> would not feel I was the same person as an exact copy in the room with
>> me, and I would not feel I was the same person as my self of a year
>> ago if I could go back in time and meet him. It's difficult to come up
>> with a consistent philosophical account of selves.
>
> ### Yay, we got ourselves a bona fide identity thread, for the first
> time this year it seems!
>
> Indeed, there seem to be no limit on the number of various ways to
> identify self - the Fregoli syndrome and its myriad versions (e.g. see
> here http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1188301/?tool=pmcentrez&page=1)
>  are just a sampling of what the self-identification circuitry in the
> parietal, frontal and temporal cortices can mis-identify. It's no
> surprise, since the circuits are an evolutionary kludge - and of
> course, there are no "objective" standards of self vs. non-self, aside
> from perhaps the notion that certain ways of constructing
> self-identity are deleterious for the survival of the brain doing the
> construction, so they tend to be uncommon.
>
> Rafal

Identity is arbitrary and malleable, yep I'll buy that.

I think it's good that we write these endless identity threads. Post
uploading, the sense of what identity is will have changed so much,
that these written records might be the only way the uploads can
figure out how humanity used to feel about the self.

-- 
Emlyn

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