[ExI] Uploading and selfhood

[Lee Corbin]

Jef writes

> My interest in this topic is "merely" related to increasingly coherent
> conceptualizing, an essential piece of the well-equipped
> epistemological toolkit.  Until a few years ago, I had seen it also as
> an opportunity to study the potential of otherwise excellent Western
> thinkers to escape the Cartesian singularity of self, but that
> experiment has been relegated, like my ventures as an eight-year-old
> attempting to prod Xians into a broader view, to a dim corner under a
> flickering neon sign with the words "Prospects for Increasingly
> Rational Decision-Making over an Increasing Context of Self."  [Even
> for the 18kV neon sign transformer it's too big a chunk for the
> available charge.]

Yep, it must be pretty frustrating.  Good luck.

> Perhaps it might help if we reword (somewhat clumsily but possibly to
> good effect) the above to

>      "But if (perception of) personal identity
>       is [...] only a function of agency as perceived
>       by some observer..."

That still leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Oh, and by the way,
I do plead guilty to being focused upon personal *survival*. But,
you see, what I really want to understand are the necessary and
sufficient conditions that you endorse for the continued existence
of a *person*----that is what the question of personal identity
amounts to. Your slightly modified definition or characterization
I have offset above fails to explain just when a "personal identity"
ceases to be, even by degree.

We were closer back in the days when you'd agree that a 6 year
old Alice was not the same person as the 86 year old Alice. But
it seems to me that you are becoming increasingly vague and
obscure.

> it might help you see the point which you are consistently
> undershooting.  Just a bit higher escape velocity, Lee,
> and you'll be able to look back and see the planet, er, the self, from
> a context both broader and more coherent.

Heh, heh, yes.  I know.  I need to just "aim higher", be more aware
of context, blah, blah, blah.  In the meantime you seem utterly unable
to give straightforward answers to utterly simple questions, such as

>>  Suppose that there exists today a certain person who has rather
>>  low status for various reasons.  One of these reasons is that he
>>  is convinced beyond any doubt that he is the Emperor Napoleon
>>  of the nineteenth century.  When it's objected to him that it is
>>  not possible for Napoleon, born 1769 (as he well knows) to
>>  alive in the year 2008, he makes various denials of one kind
>>  or another. (It's partly because of the incoherence---just from
>>  our point of view, mind you---of his answers that his status is
>>  so low, and that he's receiving help in a mental institution.)
>>
>>  Now then.  A terrible plague manages to kill off everyone but
>>  him, as well as all Earth's animals. There is---it seems to me---
>>  but one of your "observers" remaining, and that is this individual
>>  himself.  Would you say that since "Personal identity is always
>>  only a function of perceived agency by an observer....even
>>  when the observer is the agent itself", that the fact of the matter
>>  is this:
>>
>>      The Emperor Napoleon (1769- ), formerly of France, but
>>      now living in a certain city in the U.S., turned out to be the
>>      last living human on Earth?

Well, is that true or false?  Don't you find it strange that 99.9%
of Earth's present day people would have absolutely no problem
answering this question?  Perhaps you and Stefano should have
a contest to see who can be the more evasive. I don't know who
I'd bet on. 

> Lee, once again you're mixing your ontology with my
> epistemology, and it's not a good flavor combination.

Well, your mixture has seemed to leave you incapable of straight-talk.

> Your thought experiments characteristically convey the presumption of
> an omniscient observer.  My point to you has always been that reality
> can't be in your model -- because your model is in reality.

We *know* that you are not a realist, and that you want to dismiss 
out of hand the entire realist school of philosophy.  I am, at least,
more generous to nominalists and whatever you are---though I
really cannot imagine that you could or would have the modesty
to subscribe to some school of thought, except that of the "Jef
Albright Increasingly Lucid and Clear School".

> If there is only a single actor in your model, and that actor
> outputs "I am Napolean [Napoleon]", then there is nothing
> in your model to suggest otherwise.

Oh, I may have spoken too soon.  So in that particular hypothetical
scenario it is *true* that Napoleon (1769- ), formerly of France, but
now living in a certain city in the U.S., turned out to be the last living
human on Earth. 

I think that your talk of "models", epistemology, and ontology is
preventing you from making yourself clear to other people, thus
decreasing your perceived agency.

Lee

> But in "reality" no model exists in isolation, leading to my
> characteristic use of "increasingly" and emphasis of the
> importance of context.