[ExI] Open Individualism
Ben Zaiboc
ben at zaiboc.net
Mon Jan 8 15:21:43 UTC 2024
On 07/01/2024 00:21, Jason Resch wrote:
>>> If you step into a star trek style transporter, but some error
causes
>>> 5 identical copies of yourself to beam down, which one do you
become?
>>>
>>> A) none of them
>>> B) one of them
>>> C) all of them
>>"Which one do you become?" is not a sensible or meaningful question.
...
> Let's say someone comes to your door with the following proposition:
> He will pay you $1,000,000 to scan you, destroy you (kill you,
painlessly), then create a perfect replica of you to take over your life
from that point forward. Do you take him up on his offer?
No.
> Here, you need a theory of personal identity to decide whether or not
you are killed, or whether or not you are paid a million dollars to be a
test subject in using the first teletransporter.
> Faced with this proposition, you can't avoid the issue by saying it's
a meaningless question.
That's right. but it's not the same question. In the original question,
you get into a transporter, which disassembles your body and recreates
it somewhere else (and accidentally creates more than one). In your
second question, you are non-destructively duplicated, leaving your
original body intact, which is then murdered. I know there are people
who regard destructive duplication as the same thing, but I don't. Maybe
you can translate that into a 'theory of identity'. I won't try to. I'll
just say that the crucial thing is the timing. Destructive scanning
instantaneously (subjectively, anyway) translates the subject into the
new form/s. Non-destructive scanning leaves the subject intact, with
their own ongoing experiences. So non-destructive scanning plus
subsequent destruction of the subject equals murder, destructive
scanning does not (which raises the interesting question of what about
if the subject is rendered unconscious before the procedure?).
...
> Do you consider any questions that asks: "What do you expect to
experience in the next moment?" to be meaningless?
No. I consider questions that refer to a singular 'you' in the context
of multiple duplication to be meaningless. A bit like sending an
interactive novel to 5 different people, then asking "what happens
next?", and expecting just one answer.
>> The same thing applies to someone who is duplicated multiple
times. Each
resultant person is the same in the sense that they can correctly claim
to have been the original in the past, and they are all different from
each other because they are now separate minds that have different
experiences since the duplication. They will probably retain the same
basic personality traits, and will probably express them in different
ways, depending on their individual circumstances. They will each be an
independent person, with the same past as all the others, up to the
point of divergence.
> But does your consciousness survive? That's what people are concerned
with.
I don't see why that question occurs to you. Of course it survives, in
multiple instances. How could it not? If it didn't, there would have
been no duplication.
If you sent a story to 20 different people, you don't ask yourself "does
that story still exist?", even if you had deleted the copy on your own
computer, you wouldn't doubt that the story still exists.
>> If you insist on the wording "which one do you become?", I'd have to
answer A and C. Which kind of illustrates that it's a silly question.
> I think your answer shows the silliness of the conventional view of
personal identity. Your answer indicates a preference for either empty
individualism or open individualism, which are both logically more
tenable, but empty individualism is non workable as a decision theory
since it allows no expectations and makes behaviors like saving for
retirement (or any future planning) pointless.
I think my answer shows the silliness of the question. Or perhaps, the
fact that we're not used to thinking in terms of multiple selves. I
normally use the example of an amoeba dividing to illustrate this. When
an amoeba divides into two daughter amoebas, by replicating all its
organelles and splitting into two, which one is the original amoeba? The
question doesn't mean anything, does it? The original becomes two. The
question "Which one do you become?" is the same. Conventional experience
doesn't apply, because people have never done this before. When (as I
hope will happen) it becomes possible, we'll have to change the way we
think about personal identity, and it will cause many people
considerable problems. Doubtless it will spawn new 'Theories of Identity'!
Ask yourself this question: If you are duplicated, creating two new
people, and only one of them is 'you', then who the hell is the other one???
>>> The "2024-you" is also different in many ways (different place,
different atoms, different experience), from the "2023-you".
>>> But we also, as a matter of general practice, believe/assume that
despite these difference, they are experienced by the same person.
>> I'd agree with both these things: Different, and also the same,
depending on which factors you're considering.
> That's good. I would then add that person identity theories attempt
to specify which factors ought to be considered.
I assume here you mean 'in each case', as they are different.
>>> Personal identity theories attempt to answer the question of what,
and how much, can change while retaining the identity of a person.
>> The answer to that depends on what your definition of 'identity'
is, so
it's a circular question. You could create a philosophical field
called,
say, Fish Identity Theory, that attempts to answer whether Sardines are
animals or fish. There is no definitive answer to a question like this,
without any other context (the most realistic answer, of course, is
"both"). Insisting on one or the other is really more of an invitation
to have a pointless argument than a genuine question.
> What differentiates concerns of personal identity from taxonomy is
that there are definite hard answers to the questions or concerns: i.e.
will you, or will you not experience this particular conscious experience?
> It makes no difference to the fish what we call it, but it surely
makes a difference to you, whether the transporter kills you (ends your
consciousness permanently), or takes you to Paris.
You are assuming that 'you' means the same thing before and after the
procedure. My point is that there is more than one 'you' afterward, each
fully entitled to be called 'you'. We are not used to thinking in these
terms, which is what I think causes these misunderstandings. This is why
the question "what happens to you?" doesn't work, because people tend to
baulk at the answer "you are duplicated". People then ask "ok, but which
one is REALLY you??", which I hope you can see, is a silly question.
The key thing to wrap our heads around, I think, is that 'you' doesn't
have to be unique. And I do appreciate, this is hard. I struggled with
it for quite a while. But the conclusion I came to in the end, is that
assuming that there can only be one unique 'you' is a form of dualism.
And I reject dualism completely. If the same mental pattern is
duplicated, then by necessity, the same person becomes two, or more
people, in every way. This is the same as copying a CD or a DVD. A
pattern of information is duplicated. There are now 500 spreadsheets, or
30,000 Beethoven's fifth Symphonies. The question "Which one is the real
one?" is meaningless. They are all the real one, all identical
duplicates of the original single one.
>>> Empty individualism says any change at all, no matter how small,
constitutes a new person. Closed individualism, says you can only
change
so much while being the same person. Open individualism says
there's no
limit to how much can change and yet still remain the same person --
that all variations of material composition of the body or
psychological
content of the experience, are mere contingencies.
>> Ok, so there you have three different views on the matter.
That's all
you can say. You certainly can't say if one is 'righter' than the
others, without further qualifying context.
> Only one of these theories can be correct.
I disagree. Each different theory is looking at a different aspect,
which is why I used the taxonomy examples.
> Your last two answers are consistent, in that they recognize
time/space interchangeability. That is, there's no fundamental
difference between the same person existing in two times, vs. the same
person existing in two places.
There is a considerable difference. the first is commonplace, the second
has never yet happened.
>>And I'm still no closer to understanding what 'Open Individualism'
actually means. "One numerically identical subject, who is everyone at
all times, in the past, present and future" is a sentence that makes no
sense. What does 'One numerically identical...' mean? 'Identical' is a
comparison, so you have to have at least two things, for them to be
identical to one another in any respect. 'One identical thing' is
meaningless. Can we replace that with "one person", for clarity, or
doesn't that work?. The rest just reads as gobbledigook. Can it be
boiled down to "one person, who is all people"? At least that sentence
is coherent. As for what it means...
> Boiled down to one sentence, it is the idea that: "There is only one
person."
Ok, well that is demonstrably not true. There are at least two people,
you and me (ok, I know about me, but... (and that's a different
discussion!))
>>Your definition above is different, though. You refer to how much
someone can change and still be thought of as the same. The Wiki
definition talks about everyone already being the same.
> When I was talking about change, I was referring to changing the
material composition of the body and the content of experience, while
remaining the same person.
The only thing left then is memory. If that remains the same, then I'd
say, yes, same person. If not, then there is no basis for considering
them to be the same person.
> If anything about the body or experience is free to be changed while
not destroying the person, then there is only one person.
Fine, but what has that got to do with the Wiki definition, which
encompasses all people, not just one?
Someone in New Zealand, born 200 years ago, has a different body,
experiences and memories to me. We are definitely not 'the same person'.
As far as I can see, this idea of 'Open Individualism' seems to be
claiming that we are. Or have I got that wrong?
Ben
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