Yes; insufficient recollection to tell; and definitely not.. I have the same very basic intent and presence as I had from very early.. Without a doubt at least all the way back to about 5 years old. In fact I remember seeing a poster with 1987 written on it, and it bringing up to my attention that my memory sort of blurred beyond that date. But other than that, most of the change in all that time has been mostly peripheral.TallDave wrote:Think of it this way: are you the same person you were at four years of age? At birth? Or have you developed heuristics over that time that are very different from the ones you had then?
In fact, this is off one of my travel notebooks from about 5 years back: "Beyond and above all the doubt remains this clear and distinct certainty: "I" ". The "I" has a page of its own, empty space all around it. At the time I'd tried to write something more eloquent, but somehow there was nothing to add to it, nor substract to or replace it with. The evolution in heuristics is always accessory to the one fixed intent.
When I run into the more serious girlfriends I've had.. They say the same thing - "time's gone by but you haven't changed at all"
I think I agree..I think we would all object to a reboot from an earlier time. It would be a progressively worse form of murder the more of our accumulated identity was taken from us.
That's why I don't understand how overnight discontinuity is different from that between any other moment. I've never experienced such a jump. And a memory defect could do as much, without changing who you are, provided the memory is just out of reach, somehow.When you start thinking about this, you quickly realize there is no moment besides right now that you were entirely the you of now.
You can be a very similar copy, esp. if you're close in time, but never the same.
I'm not forced at all.. Unless I'm mistaken this discussion started on the premise of extending one's life. Not merely to perpetuate the pattern that's unique to us. I think I'm starting to see what you guys mean... And it doesn't interest me as a life extension method. I don't see the point at all, for that purpose.Once you accept that, you're forced to accept that a "not-quite-you" in a different place is no different than the "not-quite-you" in another time. You just have less in common.
It's not disturbing to me. It's not about maintaining my physical form.. The form is maintained or even multiplied.. That's not the crux of it. The purpose for me is to continue living. Having some duplicate does nothing for that goal unless like I said earlier, I'm also experiencing what that duplicate lives.. Like e.g. Dr. Manhattan's multiples in The Watchmen.People tend to find this disturbing and don't want to accept it because of how we're programmed. An organism that didn't have a strong compulsion to maintain its current physical form would not have survived long, evolutionarily speaking.
Joe,
I'm sorry, it's just that I see too much that could escape us to make any clear cut conclusions outside of each of our personal experience. The same way that lead e.g. Descartes or Locke to regress to a point of sure footing before starting to build their discourse.JoeStrout wrote:That's true, but I'm not sure where you got the idea that I would say that. You are almost exactly the same person you were this morning.
If I understand what you mean, I still don't agree; maybe because we aren't arguing about the same thing. I don't care about my particular pattern of matter or energy being continued if I'm not there to "remember" it. It seems like the only interest is narcissistic, with all due respect.. Or at least as far as I'm (or a duplicate of me is) concerned.That's because you're not using one. You're using the memory theory of identity, which I consider a little coarse (there is more to who we are than just what we remember — there are aptitudes and personality traits and so on too), but is basically sound.I don't see a crutch at all.
The crutch I've referred to is the idea that you survive if your brain is gradually replaced, while maintaining some sort of continuity, but not if it is replaced all at once, or with a procedure that interrupts continuity.
Nope. And I don't see a way to test this hypothesis either. It's like I illustrated in the simple graph and in the room full of me's analogy. The only moment all of those me's and I would be the same person would be at T=0. Any time after that instant, each of us is starting a new experience from different points in space. From that moment on each of us would be less and less like each other, even if we had a common stem on the tree of time. Those guys aren't me, and not one of all of us is another.But your theory doesn't say anything at all about continuity; you are the person who remembers doing everything you did. So, if we had the technology, we could take you completely apart, and reassemble you entirely anew at another place or time, and you'd be the same person — you would survive this procedure — because you'd still remember everything you've done.
In the case of the relay-race pattern "life extension", it's a one way street.. I could possibly come to consider everything in my remembered past to be "me", but not the future. And with some thought, it'd be come undeniable to me that I'm only who I remember to be for the duration of time which I've actualy played, i.e. each blue segment in that graph.
Alright, now I'm repeating myself.
I'm definitely ready to upload.. I don't care about this or that physical body or interstellar probe, but I don't see a good reason to go the discontinuous way. And I have to admit that I see it as wrong.. For a copy of me to continue after the original me. It would be robbing that "me" of a genuine identity. It would also be misleading people that he is me, the same way grannies are (in my eyes) fooled when they're given a clone of their previous pet.Good for you — you're ready to upload, and well ahead most people, who haven't yet thought about personal identity deeply enough and still get by pretty much identifying people by their physical bodies.
I'm sorry.. I disagree again. To mention another reason this time: there's no way to be at two different places at the same time and still be the same person, unless you are somehow of one same mind for two bodies / one mind seeing thru two bodies at the same time. I'd said this earlier and you disagreed; I still see it that way.True, because (by my theory) they don't have the same mental structure, or (by your and Locke's theory) they don't have the same memories.Betruger wrote:Twins don't consider themselves one another.
I didn't express myself correctly. I meant that they are indeed perfect copies of me at T=0, but from then on it's all divergence, they aren't me anymore.Whoops — the terminology is precise, when it's used precisely.Betruger wrote:There needs to be more precise terminology. I see that the "T1 and T3" persons are indeed different, but their identity is the same.
Hmm, I was all with you above, but now you're not making much sense — or at least, not being consistent with what you said before. If we fill a room with exact duplicates of you, they all remember everything you did. Therefore, by your original reasoning, they are all you. I would agree with that, and I'm not sure why you're trying to back away from it now and say that only one of them is you.Betruger wrote:[Re. transporter copies...]
No, I do think this case is more philosophical than pragmatic.. Like the logical paradox of motion vs immobility / Parmenides vs Heraclitus. IIRC they were at a dead-end that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all drove right thru by adopting better premises.You give up too easily. This doesn't really have much to do with consciousness, and philosophical debates can be resolved, when people apply themselves with rigor. Mathematics is supernatural too, yet mathematicians routinely resolve debates there. Philosophy is the same, just a little less rigorous.Betruger wrote:I think this debate is not going to be resolved because what consciousness is, is as good as supernatural, as far as empiricaly poking and prodding is concerned. There's no debating that sort of thing.
Here we're arguing two points that I think are really distinct. I see that a duplicate would never be a true replacement if there was any overlap with the precursor. The only way to be genuine to the precursor, and thus truly continue its existence, is to take his place. That excludes the precursor surviving the arrival of the replacement. So the replacement would all but stand by the precursor's deathbed.
Second, I disagree that the replacement really is a continuation. Now that I type this, I remember that I'd spent a semester thinking about this, memory as the glue of identity. I need to try and remember what conclusions I'd come to. I'm pretty sure there's something useful there because it was at the same time as I'd read books by Barbour, where time is just an illusion (and continuity isn't required as you say here), and Deutsche's 'Fabric of reality', and somehow I still came out of understanding them with some perspective that leads me today to side with the continuity/memory model of identity.
So I've gone in circles. I'll come back with more succint replies if I have anything new to add.. Sorry for the redundant post.
What I am sure of though, is that I see no good enough reason not to play it safe and go for continuity. I don't see any loss in going that way.. But you've definitely made me see a lack of lucidity in my understanding of all this though, and I'm really thankful for that. I'm going to shed some light, there.
Respectfuly,
m.