<div dir="ltr">Arnold Zuboff, the academic who first published on the idea of open individualism, which he calls "universalism" provided the following argument for why universalism is preferable to both the usual view, as well as "empty individualism" or what Zuboff calls "super-insulating buddhism". To accompany this argument, he also provides two documents that go into further detail (which are linked <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Upyq9_iiDCpTXbg9ePi-6MQLkbdP6f6m/view?usp=sharing">here</a> and <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/17T8HAus6yjlBYPCwgtrT2z7j7U485MEA/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=109779696990142678208&rtpof=true&sd=true">here</a>).<div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt">PARSIMONY<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:14pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">10. What do the two views have going for them?<u></u><u></u></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">I believe that the usual view has nothing at all to be said for it. Once the two views are laid out together, there is not even one argument I can think of that would favour the usual view. (There are, however, powerful and, indeed, decisive arguments for the truth of universalism. You will see most of those I’ve thought of presented in this work.)<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">But what certainly does <i>seem</i> to tell in favour of the usual view is the powerful impression we all have that can seem to be simply of its truth—the impression, which we are predicted to have by universalism, that the extent of my experience is limited by the identity of a single thing. I have described this impression as hiding the truth of universalism. But it does more than that: It hides even the very possibility that there could be any rival to the usual view.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Yet, since the impression itself is predicted within universalism, it cannot have any value at all as evidence for deciding between universalism and the usual view.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">11. The rising of the sun<u></u><u></u></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The powerful initial impression that the sun is revolving once daily around the earth, which gave us the terms ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’, is exactly what the opposing view that the earth is rotating once daily would predict and can be no evidence at all in deciding between those views.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Wittgenstein once asked a friend why it was initially assumed that the sun went around the earth. When the friend replied that it just looks that way, Wittgenstein then asked what it would look like if it looked as though the earth was rotating. The impression, he was pointing out with his second question, is not in itself really of the truth of one of those views or the other.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">This ignores, however, that before the impression could strike one as other than that of a motion of the sun, further sophistication was required—the knowledge that the earth was spherical, that we were stuck to it by gravity pulling us towards its centre and that we would not be feeling its rotation.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">And before I can see the confined impression I have of the immediacy of my experience as the impression of merely a lack of integration of experience that is all mine and not an impression of a limitation of what I am, I need, among other things, to disabuse myself of that illusory thought that makes brain bisection paradoxical—the thought that I can’t be someone who is at this objective moment of time experiencing anything different from this content. I need the insight that I called ‘the irrelevance of objective simultaneity’. Thinking that objectively simultaneous contents of experience could not be mine without them being integrated is very much like thinking that the spinning of the earth could not be occurring without my feeling it. Both are naïve conflations of what is objectively true with what is subjectively felt. <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Anyway, the sunrise impression becomes neutral with further knowledge. It turns out to be no evidence at all to decide between either view about the sun and the earth. And, of course, once it is accepted that we are attracted to the centre of a rotating spherical planet there is nothing at all left to be said for the theory that our impression of the sun’s rising is caused by an actual rising of the sun rather than the spinning of the earth.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">12. Ockham’s razor<u></u><u></u></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">But it is even worse than that for the usual view of what I am. The usual view is not really giving us one of two explanations of the impression that initially inspired belief in it, as would be the view that the sun actually rises if the earth were flat and motionless.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">This worse problem for the usual view is that the lack of integration of mental contents is just as much there in the usual view as it is in universalism to explain the impression of my supposedly being only one thing. My <i>actually</i> being only one thing—the claim that is distinctive of the usual view—is therefore doing no work within the usual view itself to explain the impression that is being pointed to as the great evidence for it.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">It is as though a spinning of the earth was somehow already present and fully accounting for the impression of the sunrise even in the original theory of the sunrise.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">The impression in a brain hemisphere of at this moment of objective time being someone with only the experience of a concert or only the experience of studying need not <i>even in the ordinary view</i> be caused by actually being only the person experiencing the one or the other. For the very same impression would even in the ordinary view have been caused anyway by the failure of integration across the hemispheres.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Note carefully the contrast with the old sunrise theory: In that old theory it would indeed have had to be the sun actually rising that gave such an impression with the earth being flat and stationary. The sun’s actual motion of rising would be doing that work within that theory. The actual motion of the sun would be needed within that theory to explain the evidence—the impression of a sunrise.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Ockham’s razor is the requirement of rational theory-making that no elements should be present in the theory that are not called for by the evidence. Evidence only supports that which is needed to explain it.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">And so, this idle claim, that I actually am only one thing, ought to be cut out of even the usual view by Ockham’s razor, which would leave us with the simpler view, universalism.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">Experience being mine is explained by immediacy, and the impression of limitation comes merely through the lack of integration of the contents of my experience. No further explanation is required or even possible. A distinction of persons would be redundant.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">13. An electronic corpus callosum</span></b><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><br><br>It may help to make clearer how lack of integration and not the distinctness of conscious things is all that is really behind the usual view's distinction between me and you, if we imagine a science fiction 'electronic corpus callosum', as we'll call it, being installed in the brains of the two of us. This clever device can integrate the activities of both our brains through radio transmission. All experiences involving either of us will be received and related together as equally first-person (as happens in the integration of our hemispheres).<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif">(I’m not expecting it to be easy to imagine in detail how the experiences of two whole human bodies could be made to go along with each other as do the experiences processed in two brain hemispheres connected by a natural corpus callosum. But we shall roughly imagine that somehow or other the sensations and control of, for example, four hands would be brought together within something like the same perspective much as are the sensations and control of two hands in the normal case. I cannot see any principle standing in the way of this.)<br><br>How could the identities of the previously independent organisms have any relevance to the identity of the resulting experiencer now that the boundaries of integration of experiential content have been so thoroughly breached? The organisms would still be distinct, but they would both be the single me that was you.<br><br>And this helps to show that it was the lack of experiential integration and not the distinctness of experiencing organisms that was really doing the work in suggesting a distinctness of persons even within the usual view itself.<br><br>Note that then dropping the electronic connection would be like brain bisection and that all the experience would still be mine though it would falsely seem to be split into mine and yours. (That is, each side of the experiential content would seem to itself to be mine with the other being yours.)<br><br>Next let's just develop this gadget into a grand electronic corpus callosum integrating the experience of all conscious beings. All the content would be equally mine, and with full integration it would be known throughout to be mine. None of the organisms would deserve any singling out as me because of their distinctness as organisms. And if, as in brain bisection, the connection is dropped, it would all still be mine while falsely seeming to belong to distinct subjects of experience.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:14.95px"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:18pt">1. Super-insulating Buddhism</span><span style="font-size:18pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">Is universalism really the only easy game in town? Very much so.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">There is a sort of view that departs from the usual view by going in the opposite direction from universalism. The usual view imposes insulating boundaries on who I am that confine me within the life of a single human being. The rival view we shall now consider confines me to a much smaller momentary existence that does not extend beyond the present moment of a human being. And it thus makes my far more pinpointed existence even more improbable than that I have on the usual view.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In a Buddhistic view any psychological process would be forging on through a succession of non-continuous experiencers. At any point in this process there would be an experiencer with its momentary pains and pleasures, but it could have no non-illusory self-interest in any further accumulation of experience as this would not belong to it—since not that subject but only other momentary subjects would exist in any further experience. The experience would belong to no continuing subject. Neither self-interest nor other-interest (interest, that is, for the self-interests of others) would be appropriate.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But notice that this radical and bleak view does not escape either the conceptual or the statistical difficulties of the usual view of the person. For each such momentary subject would have its own identity conditions involving both a token and a type. There would arise the question of whether this momentary subject would have existed if its identity conditions had been divided or had been different by degree. And the improbability for itself of existing of any of the momentary subjects would make such a hypothesis statistically untenable just as it did the usual view of the person. For in every moment of the ongoing mental process an inference would be supported that from this momentary perspective the existence of this momentary subject would be overwhelmingly improbable by contrast with the existence of the universal subject in universalism.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a name="m_7454332646915178854__Hlk49605909"></a><a name="m_7454332646915178854__Hlk48735696"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:18pt">4. A</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:18pt"> Humean </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:18pt">bundle of perceptions</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif"><u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal">If the world contained nothing but a Humean bundle of perceptions, with no thing as a subject possessing them, then those unpossessed perceptions, purely on account of their inherent immediacy, would be mine and I would therein be present in that world in the centrally important way.<br><br>What would I then be? I wouldn't be the perceptions themselves. I'd be a fictional something from which the lines of vision were seeming to lead. And even though nothing was really there in that world but the perceptions, I would have full self-interest in diminishing any pains in the bundle and be present in the world—merely because an experience was mine.<br><br>And if instead it was true that some sort of thing actually was there, from which the lines of vision were leading, then that thing would be me, we could say, but that would be at bottom incidental to my proper existence and my personal experiential fate.<br><br>Furthermore, if that very same thing had been there but without any potential of having experience that was mine, it could not in any way have been me.<u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size:18pt">5. Naturalism (Derek Parfit’s view)</span><u></u><u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Consider a philosophical view about personal identity that I shall call ‘naturalism’.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The naturalist sees that in the usual view there is an uneasy union of the complex conditions of a particular body or mind with the simple conditions of a subject of experience.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The naturalist sees the complex conditions as in themselves natural and unproblematic but doesn’t see, as does the universalist, that the indivisibility and all-or-nothing presence of the subject of experience are also natural and unproblematic because they are simply features of the natural quality of immediacy that permeates all experience and determines personal identity.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The naturalist believes rather that only the positing of a supernatural simple substance could satisfy these seemingly non-natural properties of a person in the usual view and therefore proposes to purge the usual view’s person of its non-natural component. And thus, for the naturalist, the person—or what is left of the person—is <i>merely</i> a complex natural process. A philosopher who, like Derek Parfit, thinks that what matters most in this is a <i>mental</i> process, rather than the physical process of the body, could be called a ‘<i>psychological</i> naturalist’.[1]<u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Parfit readily admits that he is running counter to the usual view by denying that a person’s existence is an all or nothing affair. If a person’s existence, as Parfit claims, is determined by the reach of connected memories and intentions, then this naturalistic identity, as Parfit admits, may change by degree.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Hence, if a year from now a person carrying on from me has only a certain fraction of the memories and intentions I have now, that person would be only by that same fraction’s worth identifiable with me now. And the strength of my appropriate self-interested concern with that person’s fate presumably ought to be measured as this same fraction.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">One great problem with this view is that it seems we must on <i>any</i> view consider a person to be one and the same in all the integrated memories and intentions existing <i>at a single time</i>. Thus, if some person existing a year from now is to be identified <i>partially</i> with me because some of that person’s memories and intentions carry on from mine now, since it must be one and the same person in all the integrated memories and intentions <i>at that time</i>, that person must also be identified <i>wholly</i> with me.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">That person couldn’t be me in thinking something that would be familiar to me now and at the same time be someone else in having an accompanying thought that would not now be familiar to me. It seems rather, contrary to Parfit’s contention, that either all or none of those thoughts in the later stage will have to be mine.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Parfit tries to deal with cases of human fission, like brain bisection, by dropping any claim that the resulting branches of a split are identical to the original person and speaking instead of a “survival” of the person in both branches. This would be like a plant surviving in all the plants that grew from its cuttings though it would not have been identical with any of them.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But when we try to think of the significance of such survivals to the original subject of experience, we find that the key question of future self-interest is every bit as puzzling as when we were struggling with the question of identity.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">If one of your survivals was going to be dragged to a torture chamber and the other escorted to a wonderful party, how ought you now to anticipate such survivals? Will one, both or none of these two lines of experience be immediate for you like your experience now? Surely only the answer to this question can give us the proper basis for judgments of self-interest. And this is the ineradicable question of the identity of the subject of experience.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But Parfit claims that what is properly <i>important</i> to me is not personal identity but rather merely the survival of my memories and intentions. Let’s look at this claim.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Imagine I learned that all the pattern of brain traces on which my memories and intentions depended would be recorded just as they were in the last moment of mental soundness before my death and later imposed on what had been somebody else’s brain in place of its previous such patterns. That future person would then think just like me that ‘this is me, <span class="gmail-il">Arnold</span> Zuboff’. But would that person be right in thinking that? Would this then actually be me or would it be somebody else with memories just like mine, a sort of engineered clairvoyant?<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Notice that it <i>could</i> be important to me that my knowledge and intentions be carried forward even if I think I am no longer to be in the world. Since that future person will at least be a bearer of my projects, the continuance of them in someone else could be important to me as might be the carrying out of provisions in my last will and testament.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But the way in which my self-interest could be <i>relevantly</i> involved in this case would have to be based on the additional factor of whether this future person would<i> </i>be<i> me</i>.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">For example, imagine that I could at some time prior to that death, whose finality for me we are now trying to determine, hide away some of my wealth where only that future person with my memory traces would know where to find it. But, let us say, it would be a lot of trouble for me to do this hiding of my wealth.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">If I think of that future person as being <i>me</i>, I have the <i>relevant</i> kind of self-interested reason for going to that trouble—that the future benefit will, like the present trouble, be <i>mine</i>. The two experiential contents, of trouble and benefit, will both come to <i>me</i> and the trouble for me may thus be over-balanced by the benefit for me. (Of course, by the way, universalism says I should have precisely such concern for all experience.)<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">If I think of that future person as another, however, any self-interested concern that may remain cannot be of this relevant sort. I could be pleased with the thought that this person will use that wealth to further causes in which I am interested whether that person will be me or someone else. But I cannot myself look forward to the pleasures that the wealth may bring that person in the self-interested manner relevant to the issue of personal identity if I do not believe that I will <i>be</i> that person. These are vitally different ways in which a future can be important to me, but only the latter is connected directly with the judgment about personal identity.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"> <u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Now, intentions and memories and the carrying forward of projects are important only because there are persons, subjects of experience and self-interest, by whom they are experienced and for whom they have consequences. If I care about others, I care about the self-interests of others.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Furthermore, many things can be important to a subject of self-interest or someone else concerned about that subject independent of continued possession of any such memories or projects. It may be a goal of such a project to provide comfort for such a subject at a time when current memories and intentions will be lost, as in senility. If I became a victim of nightmares in which the view of myself and the world was violently altered, it could be of enormous importance to me or one concerned about me that the terrors in those discontinuous episodes be lessened if that is possible.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Carrying through with projects is important and being in the world as a subject of experience is important; but that doesn’t make them the same thing. And in a certain respect the more basic of the two is being a person in the world. For projects without persons are meaningless.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Does it make any sense for Parfit to be calling ‘persons’ those beings whose identities or survivals are conceived of by him as determined only by the identities or survivals of their psychological processes?<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">We’ve already seen that the divisibility and changing by degree of such a process would make an essential connection between it and a proper subject of self-interest paradoxical. Perhaps the most consistent position like Parfit’s would recognize itself as a straightforward rejection of both continuing persons and continuing self-interest altogether (and Parfit gestures sometimes at something like this radical solution). The view would be that there really exist only natural processes, that these processes embody an illusion that there are also, associated with them, continuing indivisible, all-or-nothing subjects of experience and that only these illusory, non-existent persons could be the proper subjects of self-interest (or other-interest).<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">This bleak view, it seems to me, turns out to be equivalent to the super-insulating Buddhistic view that I described earlier. There would, after all, still be consciousness accompanying the process (insofar as it was consciously carried on). There would therefore at each momentary stage of the process be at any rate a momentary subject of experience and self-interest, which would, for example, be that which was hurt if there was pain. But there would be no such subject of experience and self-interest somehow stretched out through the continued existence of the process.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Anyway, whether Parfit tries still to identify a person with a continuing process or lets the person fragment into momentary subjects of experience, the improbability for itself of existing, either of the process-‘person’ or of any of its momentary subjects, would make such a hypothesis statistically untenable just as it did the unreconstructed usual view of a person. For every moment an inference would be supported that the existence of <i>this</i> momentary subject, or <i>this</i> process-person, was from its perspective immensely improbable and should be given up in favour of the existence of the universalist subject of experience.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><u></u> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">[1] Here I am only addressing Parfit’s position in his early paper ‘Personal Identity’.</p></div></div></blockquote></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Jason</div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 4:16 PM Jason Resch <<a href="mailto:jasonresch@gmail.com">jasonresch@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 22, 2024 at 3:21 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div>
<br>
<div>On 21/01/2024 16:02, Jason Resch wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div><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" target="_blank">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:
</div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div>
On 20/01/2024 15:11, Jason Resch wrote:
<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>
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).
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, of course. And if the person stepping into the transporter
thinks that his consciousness depends on the atoms of his brain (or
an immaterial 'soul' that is lost, etc.), the person stepping out of
the other end will believe that he is not the same person. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>They might choose to label the previous copy a former self, but someone who is consciously experiencing something cannot believe that they are dead/not experiencing something. The consciousness, based on everything it knows and feels, would necessarily feel as though their consciousness survived the procedure, regardless of what they might say about their previous body.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>There is
a character in Charlie Stross' Accelerando in exactly this position.
No-one can convince him of their view that he is the same person,
despite his continuity of memory, etc. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>That is interesting.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>Can we say he's wrong? Only
by asserting that a different way of looking at things is the
'correct' one. Can he say that they are wrong? Ditto. Yes, you can
demonstrate that a mind survives replacement of the atoms in the
brain (or does it? Maybe it's a mind that's to similar to the
original that no-one else notices), but in the end, you have to
choose a framework and follow it through.<br>
<br>
Someone else may think that they are only partially the same person.<br>
<br>
Most would probably think that they are the same person (why would
you undergo the procedure otherwise, unless it was forced on you?)<br>
<br>
So, different points of view, different answers.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>But all survivors of teleporters believe "I am alive and conscious", which is to me, the only meaningful definition of "survival." In other words, it would be inconsistent for the survivor to say "I am dead!" or "I am no longer conscious" -- unless the procedure did turn them into a zombie of some kind, but this would presumably require some form of dualism.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="auto">...
<div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote" dir="auto"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"> <div> '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>
</blockquote></div></div> <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>
</div></blockquote>
Not sure what a 'tight kinky' is. Presumably a typo, but I'm not
sure what you meant to write. A tight link?
</div><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">Yes "tight link".</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
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.
<blockquote type="cite"><div dir="auto"> <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>
<div dir="auto">It is this many-to-one relationship that creates the problem of assignment. </div></div></blockquote>
I don't know what that last sentence means. What do you mean by
'assignment'. Assignment of what?
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">Experiences-to-person. Or using your terminology: mind_states-to-person.</div></pre>
</blockquote>
I thought we'd agreed on the unique nature of experiences. You can't
'assign' an experience to the thing that generates it. They are
inextricably and uniquely linked, and no other person can experience
the same thing. So there is no 'problem of assignment'. That is
meaningless.<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);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.
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.
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
The set of mind-states that are available to that mind. It will
vary, depending on things like personal history, the details of
neural structure, chemistry, all kinds of things. I'd say that it's
impossible to predict, in practice.<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto">Is there any theoretical or fundamental limit?</div></pre>
</blockquote>
I have no idea how you'd determine that. There must be limits,
though. No human will ever know what it's like to be a Bat, to take
one famous example.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I don't see why we could not gradually morph someone's brain into that of a bat, using advanced nanotechnology, for example.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div> But I also think that nobody except Jonh Smith
will experience the same things as him upon eating the same sandwich
on the same day in the same place. So I'd say that one limit is that
you can only experience your own unique experiences, not anyone
else's.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If there are no fundamental limits on how John Smith's brain can be perturbed over time, there's no limit to what experiences John Smith is capable of.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="auto">...</div></blockquote></div></blockquote></div></div></pre>
</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="auto">How much perturbation can be tolerated before we say, "that's no longer the same, or that person is dead" ?
</div>
</blockquote> This is a philosophical question, with different answers depending
on your assumptions.
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</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">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
No you can't, as I keep saying. Those questions can have different
answers, depending on who's asking them and what their point of view
is.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>As I've said repeatedly, such questions are always asked/interpreted from the perspective/POV of the person undergoing the procedure, who receives empirical confirmation afterwards.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
The thing you don't seem to acknowledge is that these are subjective
matters, not objective ones. They have to be, as we are dealing with
the very phenomenon at the heart of subjectivity.
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div> 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">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
Precisely. If that's what I believe, that's perfectly correct.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Find me the person who believes that, and decides not to save for retirement because of that belief (that is, anyone who truly believes, and lives their life according to the belief, that they are only a single-thought moment). I doubt such people exist. Neither decision theory, nor science itself, can operate if you remove the concept of future expectation.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div> If I feel that I'm the same person, then I am.</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</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">
</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);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">
</div><div dir="auto">Note that here you are using two different definitions of person.</div></pre>
</blockquote>
Exactly! And two different people can hold two different definitions
to be true. They are both correct.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Assuming neither one leads to inconsistencies, or makes untestable/unfounded assumptions.</div><div><br></div><div>I'll reiterate, the inconsistencies do not appear in the definitions themselves. The definitions can be written down and they all seem perfectly fine. The issues arise when we attempt to use these different definitions to answer questions with objective answers (e.g. do I survive this or not)?</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"> What philosophers of personal identity attempt is to clearly define each and
then test whether those definitions are consistent/valid in all
situations.</div></pre>
</blockquote>
You're basically proposing to 'test' people's points of view. This
is like trying to decide which is right, the guy who says "that car
is blue" or the one who says "that car is turquoise".<br>
Which is the 'correct' interpretation of the story of Bambi, is it
about cruelty or sadness?<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>These aren't testing points of view. They are tests of the logical consistency of theories. As well as evaluating them on probabilistic grounds, and for unfounded metaphysical assumptions (e.g. Occam's razor). The only time subjectivity enters the picture is in the experiments to test whether one's consciousness subjectively survives (e.g. a teleporter, a surgery, a mind upload, or any other procedure).</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
Of course, this is why we call it 'philosophy'. If there were any
objectively testable and definite answers, we'd call it 'science'.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If you believe there are no objective tests favoring one theory vs. another, am I correct that you believe open individualism is a possibility you can neither prove nor disprove?</div><div>If not, then you must think it makes some different predictions from the others which we could objectively test. What would those tests be?</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);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.
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
Again with the 'correct'. There is no 'correct'!<br>
Consider this: What is happening on planet X of star Y in the
Andromeda galaxy, RIGHT NOW? (i.e. at the exact moment that you are
reading this).<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>For the Andromeda case, I would say we exist in an infinite number of subjectively indistinguishable possibilities, each consistent with everything we know.</div><div><br></div><div>"It is impossible for any observer to deduce with certainty on the basis of her observations and memory which world she is a part of. That is, there are always many different worlds for which being contained in them is compatible with everything she knows, but which imply different predictions for future observations."<br>-- Markus Müller in “<a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01826v1.pdf" target="_blank">Could the physical world be emergent instead of fundamental, and why should we ask?</a>” (2017)<br></div><div><br></div><div>But the indeterminacy of the far away and unmeasurable, is different from your supposition that different theories of personal identity could all be right. As I showed below, different theories of personal identity provide different answers to the same questions regarding the same situation. Therefore they cannot all be objectively correct. If there is such a thing as objective truth and an objective reality, then at least some of these theories must be wrong (at least in such cases where they give different answers).</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
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.
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</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">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
My point is that experiences are unique. Not only to the minds
generating them, but quite probably to each instance of 'the same'
experience (meaning that they aren't in fact the same at all. The
uniqueness is absolute). This means there is no such thing as two
people having the same experience, or a common pool of experiences
that can be 'had' by a number of different people.<br>
<br>
Which brings me back to:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote" dir="auto"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
So the way I see it, this whole concept of 'theories of
personal identity' is built on a misconception of the
nature of 'experiences'.
</div></blockquote></div></div> <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>
My point was that the frogs in buckets analogy doesn't apply.
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">Earlier, you said: "a person consists of many different mind-states"</div><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">So then, why cannot we label the collection of mind-states which a particular person consists of?</div></pre>
</blockquote>
We can, and do. We label it "a person".<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="auto"> <div dir="auto">What circumstances are necessary for a person to arise, survive, or die, etc.</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">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">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>
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">
</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">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
All of <i>your</i> experiences. And all of mine feel like mine.
This is hardly a revelation.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>If you think about this a little more deeply, you may discover that all experiences, as felt by all beings, feel like "mine".</div><div><br></div><div>This is really saying nothing more than all beings consider them to exist in the time "now", or the place "here." There is a relativity involved, that generates the illusion of a selection (that some time is privileged to be now), or that some organisim's neurology is privileged to be "you".<br></div><div><br></div><div>This passage, from Nagel in "<a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/NAGP-2" target="_blank">Physicalism</a>" (1965) may help to dispel this illusion by shedding some more light on the issue:</div><div><br></div><div>"Consider everything that can be said about the world without employing any token reflexive<br>expressions. This will include the description of all its physical contents and their states, activities<br>and attributes. It will also include a description of all the persons in the world and their histories,<br>memories, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, intentions, and so forth. I can thus describe without<br>token-reflexives the entire world and everything that is happening in it–and this will include a<br>description of Thomas Nagel and what he is thinking and feeling. But there seems to remain one<br>thing which I cannot say in this fashion–namely, which of the various persons in the world I am.<br>Even when everything that can be said in the specified manner has been said, and the world has in a<br>sense been completely described, there seems to remain one fact which has not been expressed, and<br>that is the fact that I am Thomas Nagel. This is not, of course, the fact ordinarily conveyed by those<br>words, when they are used to inform someone else who the speaker is–for that could easily be<br>expressed otherwise. It is rather the fact that I am the subject of these experiences; this body is my<br>body; the subject or center of my world is this person."<br></div><div><br></div><div>This passage shows that when we examine it, we find no physical fact or reason to account for the idea that consciousness is limited to a single perspective of a single biological creature which is you.</div><div>You could equally be present in all the conscious beings, and each instance would suffer the illusion that it is only one biological creature (as that is the only thing each can remember).</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);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.
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</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">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
Because we don't all agree on the same criteria for survival?<br>
I expect that if everyone agreed that 15 minutes of amnesia
qualifies as death, then we would hold funerals (and probably
celebrate the birth of a new person on the 16th minute).<br>
The definition of death changes as time goes by, and we learn more
and our technology advances, which just widens our choices. Some
people regard those who are cryogenically suspended to be
irrevocably dead, and some don't, for example.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I agree it changes. It changes as new technology expands the scope of recoverable situations. If we can build an ultimate healing technology, which can heal someone of any wound, even an explosion that blasted them into a 1,000 pieces, then we would understand death to only be the result of irrecoverable data loss. So long as we had the information necessary to restore a person using this healing technology, then any injury would be survivable. We could then ask: what if we had the information, but not all the original parts. Could we use any old spare atoms to heal the person, and restore them to life? Would it be the same person? Technological improvements will necessarily lead us to expand and revise the notion of personhood, just as it has and will continue to expand the scope of survivability, and the border between life and death.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
Consider planetary motion. What gives the correct answer, Kepler's
laws or Relativity?
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">Here you compare two theories which provide the same predictions.</div></pre>
</blockquote>
For many things, but not all.<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">Different theories of personal identity offer different answers to the same question. For example:</div><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">Teleporter survival:</div><div dir="auto">Bodily continuity - no</div><div dir="auto">Psychological continuity - yes</div><div dir="auto">
</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">
</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></pre>
</blockquote>
So if the transporter is faulty and no body materialises, so of
course no brain, and therefore no mind, you're saying that the
individual nevertheless 'survives'??<br>
So basically, nobody has ever died?<br>
Pictures, please.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The faulty transporter is an example where there is a new body, but some memories are lost or inserted (changed). So it combines the aspects of teleporter survival, and memory loss survival. Each continuity theory would find something necessary was lost, and therefore conclude that the person did not survive.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre><div dir="auto"><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
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.
</div></blockquote></div></div><div dir="auto">
</div><div dir="auto">It's not a mental connection. It's an identity of personhood.</div></pre>
</blockquote>
There's no such thing (between two individuals). You are the only
thing that is identical to you.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think this may be inconsistent with your agreement above that a person is a collection of mind-states. Each mind state is different. How then do we decide to put them into a particular collection which we call "one person?"</div><div>What is it about the mind states that makes them belong to one person and not another?</div><div><br></div><div>Jason</div></div></div>
</blockquote></div>