<div dir="auto"><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 9:31 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
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On 20/01/2024 15:11, Jason Resch wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
where does one person begin and end? If someone steps into a
transporter that destroys their body and reconstructs it
elsewhere, do we draw a terminating border at one end and say the
person died here, and a new separate person began elsewhere? Or do
we draw the borders such that there is a continuous link bridging
then, such that it is all the same person, and the experiences of
the person who emerges on the other side of the teleporter, *are*
experiences that will be had by the person who stepped into the
transporter?</blockquote>
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Depends on what you need, and what point of view you adopt. There is
no single correct answer (which is not to say that there are no
answers).<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">It matters to the person stepping into the transporter, does it not? Are you saying there is no scientifically establishable answer to this question? Could not an experimentalist undergo the teleportation to (hopefully) personally confirm his theory that his consciousness survives?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
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<div> <br>
'The experiences' is just a label that we use in our
heads so we can think about these things (remembering
that the thoughts don't have to be true or accurate, or
even make any kind of sense). It would be more accurate
to say 'I experience', 'you experience'. Saying 'you <i>have</i>
experience X' tempts us to think of X as a thing that is
possessed (and could therefore also be possessed by
someone else). It's not.</div>
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<div dir="auto">I agree they aren't swappable or tradable like
playing cards. There is a tight kinky between each experience
and a particular mind state.</div>
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</blockquote>
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Not sure what a 'tight kinky' is. Presumably a typo, but I'm not
sure what you meant to write. A tight link?<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Yes "tight link".</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
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I suppose you could say that, being careful to recognise that the
experience does not exist on its own, and is then 'linked' to the
mind. The experience is produced by the mind, so talking about a
'link' is unnecessary and potentially misleading.<br>
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<blockquote type="cite">
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<div dir="auto">That said, we acknowledge that for a given
person (here I mean the common sense understanding of the
term), has a life which spans and includes many different mind
states, and many different experiences.</div>
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</div>
<div dir="auto">It is this many-to-one relationship that creates
the problem of assignment.</div>
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I don't know what that last sentence means. What do you mean by
'assignment'. Assignment of what?<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Experiences-to-person. Or using your terminology: mind_states-to-person.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
Again, I take issue with the language used as well. A person doesn't
really 'have' a life which includes many different mind-states. I'd
rather say a person consists of many different mind-states. If those
didn't exist, there would be no person.<br>
<br>
This is the same difficulty caused by the common habit of referring
to 'our minds'. We don't <i>have</i> minds (which implies a
duality), we <i>are</i> minds.<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">If each of us are minds, and each mind can have many states, which set of possible mind states can one be or become?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Is there any theoretical or fundamental limit?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
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<div dir="auto">To do so, we must be able to define the
boundaries of a person's life:</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Is it a matter of their body being maintained?</div>
<div dir="auto">Is it a matter of their brain being maintained?</div>
<div dir="auto">Is it a matter of their psychology and
personality being preserved?</div>
<div dir="auto">Is it a matter of their memories being
preserved?</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">If so to what extent? How much perturbation can
be tolerated before we say, "that's no longer the same, or
that person is dead" ?</div>
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</blockquote>
<br>
This is a philosophical question, with different answers depending
on your assumptions.<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">You can leave them as a philosophical questions, or as I prefer to do, you can turn them into a hard empirical questions, with definite yes/no answers, by asking and testing things like:</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Does my conscious survive radical brain surgery?</div><div dir="auto">Does my conscious survive gradual replacement of material?</div><div dir="auto">Does my conscious survive instantaneous replacement of material (e.g. in a teleporter)?</div><div dir="auto">Does my conscious survive the accumulation of memories over a lifetime?</div><div dir="auto">Does my conscious survive loss of memories in the decline of senility?</div><div dir="auto">Does my conscious survive about changes in memory content (e.g. partial amnesia, implantation of false memories (as in Total Recall))?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
To me, the mind is the important thing, and the mind is an embodied
dynamic pattern of information. How much can that pattern change,
and still claim to be 'the same person'? I don't have any single
fixed answer. But you could take the attitude that I'm the same
person that I was since I was born (because of a common genome,
continuity of physical body, etc. My mind didn't even exist then,
really, so I don't subscribe to that view. I'd say that I didn't
exist yet), or you could say that I'm a different person each day,
or even from moment to moment. I don't really care.</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">You can say you don't care, but then ask yourself: why save for retirement all your life if you are only to give all that money away to some old rich guy in the future who isn't you? -- (at least it won't be you if you really believed you're a different person each day).</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div> If I feel that
I'm the same person, then I am.</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Yes, this is how I defined survival, by the subjective feeling that ones consciousness has continued into another moment.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div> There's a sense in which I am the
same person that I was a few decades ago, and a sense in which I'm a
different person to who I was when I started writing this email.</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Note that here you are using two different definitions of person. What philosophers of personal identity attempt is to clearly define each and then test whether those definitions are consistent/valid in all situations.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
Again, no single 'correct' answer. There are as many answers as you
can think up different ways of looking at it.<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">If you examine deeply what certain answers imply, I believe you will find the number of possibly correct answers, is a very small set.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
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I can't say for sure, but I suspect that the experience of [anything
you like] is different as my mind changes over time. That each
experience is unique not only to a mind, but to a mind at a specific
time. It could be that someone's experience of eating a cheese
sandwich on a rainy afternoon in March 2019 is different to the same
person's experience of the same thing in the same place, on a rainy
afternoon in March 2029. Actually, thinking about it, I'd be
surprised if this wasn't true.<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">An uploaded mind cannot access the true time outside the simulation. If you run the mind simulation twice at two different times, there's no room for the mind to know anything was different between the two runs, unless you introduce something metaphysical.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">But if your point is that brains are messy things and always changing, I see and agree with that point.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
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...<br>
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<div> <br>
So the way I see it, this whole concept of 'theories of
personal identity' is built on a misconception of the
nature of 'experiences'.<br>
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<div dir="auto">To this I would say, and I hope it clarifies,
that personal identity isn't so much trying to answer "should
put this frog in that bucket or this one?", but rather, it is
about trying to define the borders of the buckets themselves.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
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My point was that the frogs in buckets analogy doesn't apply.<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Earlier, you said:</div><div dir="auto">"a person consists of many different mind-states"</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">So then, why cannot we label the collection of mind-states which a particular person consists of?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
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<div dir="auto">
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">What circumstances are necessary for a person to
arise, survive, or die, etc.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">There are easy, conventional answers to such
questions, based on the presence or maintenance of some
attribute.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">But I think if you seriously consider the
problems that arise in those cases you will understand the
difficulties of the conventional view and it's inability to
handle a host of situations.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">In the end, belief in the necessity of some
attribute that is needed for "you to be you" is both unfounded
and uneccessary. It's a purely metaphysical assumption which
Occam would remind us to dispense with.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
You're assuming that being able to use different attributes,
according to what you find important, is equivalent to not using
any. The fact that there may be 10 different paths to get from where
you are to where you want to go, doesn't mean that you don't need
any path at all. Some attribute <i>is</i> necessary, </div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The only attribute that is necessary is the "immediacy of experience" -- the feeling that it is *I* who is having the experience". You can remove everything else and people will believe they have survived to live in that moment.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Note that this attribute is equally present in all experiences. All experiences feel like it is I who is having them.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>but there are
many choices, depending on your point of view and what you want to
achieve. The conventional view (that there is one correct answer)
just needs to be widened to acknowledge that there are many correct
answers, all valid, that do cover a host of situations.<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">They only seem valid, until you investigate them more deeply. If you say memory is important, why don't we have funerals form people when they get concussed and forget the past 15 minutes? If you say material is important, why don't we have funerals for people every 7 years when all their atoms are replaced? If you say continuity of a mind process is necessary, why don't we have funerals when someone gets general anesthesia and we shut down that process?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">The answer is, because all generally acknowledge and feel that our consciousness survives all these things. Our consciousness can survive material replacement of our body and brain, it survives gain and loss of memories, and it survives discontinuities like general anesthesia and comas. None of these can therefore be the critical attribute for a person's survival.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
Consider planetary motion. What gives the correct answer, Kepler's
laws or Relativity?<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Here you compare two theories which provide the same predictions.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Different theories of personal identity offer different answers to the same question. For example:</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Teleporter survival:</div><div dir="auto">Bodily continuity - no</div><div dir="auto">Psychological continuity - yes</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Memory loss survival:</div><div dir="auto">Bodily continuity - yes</div><div dir="auto">Psychological continuity - no</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Faulty transporter survival:</div><div dir="auto">Bodily continuity - no</div><div dir="auto">Psychological continuity - no</div><div dir="auto">Open individualism - yes</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
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I still don't see any reason to assume that there's some kind of
mental connection between myself and that Maori dude 200 years ago.
Or anybody else.<br></div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">It's not a mental connection. It's an identity of personhood.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">If you don't see it yet, you need to go through the thought experiments, and give them serious thought. This isn't an idea that can just be told and accepted, you need to understand why the problems within other theories leave no other option.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I list out some thought experiments that can help one get to this realization in this chapter:</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AJhXBFhAE4Xpu6WxD_C4bbW5yFs-pz1R/view?usp=drivesdk">https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AJhXBFhAE4Xpu6WxD_C4bbW5yFs-pz1R/view?usp=drivesdk</a></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Jason </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
Ben<br>
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