Whyyyy, Boy, you just wise up and listen here; I was just like you not that long ago. Ain't nobody even the same person from day to day or instant to instant - let alone year to year. Sh*t. Don't give me that high nose stuff. Two years from now you could be Miley Cyrus. So take that back up North and stuff it under your mattress.

FYP. I am looking forward to your response to my earlier post.

It might make it easier if you consider that the sun is still the sun even though it lost a bit of mass between our posts. We don't worry much about whether it will continue to play its role in warming us even though it is on a pretty severe weight loss plan. The proper questions to ask are for what reason do we call it "the sun" instead of calling it "the sun as it exists in precisely this moment."

Anyway, that's where it's from.


Which edition is that in? You must have a different edition than me as I fail to see on that page where it says "there's really no sense in which you are the same person over time (what chezlaw argued for in that thread)".


If you're now claiming that the difference between "no sense" and "no metaphysical sense" is a nitty peripheral objection that no one would contest, then great, we agree. Everything is a metaphysical sense, including the legal sense. Pretty sure that's what I've been saying. Glad you've come around.


Eminent domain just means that the house changed ownership. The concept of ownership didn't go away.

In fact, even if it did go away, it doesn't mean that it isn't a fundamental property objects. Is being a solid a fundamental property of objects? What happens if I melt it?


Does time exist metaphysically? Time is not only relative, but current thinking is that it is an emergent property and not fundamental at all. Kind of like the law.

I did metaphysically change, because my brain changed and made me feel uncomfortable, because of that the ownership changed. The house will also gradually change relatively to what it would have been because I'm not owning it/not there any more.


And about the copying. Even if you and your copy are the same persons the instant you come out of the copying machine, you will instantly gradually evolve to become different persons as you go out in the world, you will have unique things happening to you, and create different memories.

I do believe you, in a Sonnet 138 kind of way.

No, it's nitty to insist I should have written "no metaphysical sense" vs writing "no sense" because the context was sufficiently clear that I was talking about the metaphysical considerations. It's peripheral because you can accept the metaphysical claim that personal identity is an illusion without denying that it's useful to treat people (under the law, in a relationship) as the same person.

"Everything is a metaphysical sense" is nuts. "My favorite Beatle is Paul" is not a metaphysical sense. "Durant scored 30 last night" is not a metaphysical sense. "Wash your hands after you go to the bathroom" is not a metaphysical sense.

Please post the complete entry on metaphysics from the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, maybe this Baker guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

My argument was that if ownership is a property of objects, then if ownership changes, then something about the properties of the objects must change. But when you sell your house, it doesn't change, and you don't change, so ownership is not a property of those objects.

But the law has a concept of absolute time (we have many laws older than relativity) therefore absolute time exists metaphysically according to your reasoning.

Rivers don't possess a subjective viewpoint, if you drain the San Joaquin completely and then refill it with new water, it's not going to wonder whether it survived the process.

It regains its status as the San Joaquin river. That includes all the necessary facts involved in being a river and the identifying facts that makes it the specific named river.

It would be the same for a smrk2. One of the necessary facts about a smrk2 is that he has smrk2's subjective viewpoint that includes memories in his head about past events and a concern for future events.

I mean seriously, from the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics to this, smrk2 can only take so much.

How is it the same? It might be a necessary fact that for smrk2's subjective viewpoint to persist he must have the same memories (although this seems false if we consider people with amnesia), but it's not a sufficient fact, for if there were a copy of smrk2, it would have the same goddamn memories, and it would not have a numerically identical subjective viewpoint. Rivers don't have this problem.

If smrk2 weren't so pissed off all the time, would he be the same person?

The ownership changed because the court ruled it so. You didn't get uncomfortable and then the ownership changed, the ownership changed and then you got uncomfortable. If you got uncomfortable and then decided to sell the house, the ownership only changes once you actually go through the commercial/legal process of selling your house.

I'm not pissed off at all, but haven't we all been a tiny bit exasperated trying to explain some dilemma that btm pretends he can solve in the space of a footnote?

should be 'and it would not be numerically identical to smrk2's subjective viewpoint'. It would obviously be numerically identical to itself.

The brain is all data, like all matter it has been shaped/positioned into information. You can copy it theoretically, but because electromagnetic energy is involved in its shape (working as a stimulus) then it suggests you will not be able to perfectly replicate the electromagnetic energy that would be needed to copy/prouduce the formation of matter/information. This is due to analogue data being impossible to perfectly replicate. (for us mortals at least) You can be close (enough) to a perfect replica though and perfect replicas may happen by chance if given an infinite amount of attempts.

Add: IMO not sure if right, but the brain is a concentrated influence of EM energy more than regular matter

been leaning your way on this, but you have a way about being exasperated that would be hard to duplicated.

I think its important to note, that in a sense there is no original. Both copies before you "now" are different than the Bruce who got into the machine.

Bruce who got into the machine is no more one of these copies than he is the other.

I wasn't trying to give a full account of how the brain works to maintain a personal identity and the idea of the subjective viewpoint having some amount of continuity. For the amnesiac, they don't have the same personal identity and subjective viewpoint as they once had in a real and important manner. We that know the amnesiac know their identity. "Let me introduce you to Uncle Jimmy. He hit his head and lost his memory."

In the case of "smrk2" and his copy "smrk2" it would be problem of their personal limits in epistemology due to lack of knowledge of all the facts, not a problem of ontology. One would be incorrect about the continuity part of his personal identity. Both would definitely correctly notice that "other smrk2 is not me" with little difficulty if you put them in a room together.

Hey! I pointed you in the right direction when I said you were being a mereological essentialist.

Absolutely everything changes over time. It isn't any more an illusion that the sun is the sun(t+1) in an important way than it is an illusion that just because I moved a bit further along toward death doesn't mean I am no longer Brian.

It might be useful to notice that I change over time to avoid putting on pants that are too small. I'm still part of the ongoing narrative, just with bigger pants.

Ummmm. I would love to hear where you were taught this. It is all just regular matter.

It would be technically unfeasible to replicate a brain perfectly because of practical reasons of getting everything (just normal atoms and molecules) in exactly the right place at the right time. Heck, we can't even make cars perfectly consistently and their parts don't tend to go through annoyingly fast chemical reactions as we are building them.

Honestly I can't expand further without getting into semantic pitfalls at every corner. Not been taught anything of it. I am noob.

We are saying the same conclusion here except I have provided explanation to a slightly deeper plateau towards 'why not practical' : ' just not practical'.

Not only would not be able to put them in right place or time, but would no be able to record right place and time (and even 'material type' is not necessarily digital/solvable on the deeps level) , or force which results in 'right place right time'. Concentrating on replicating the force that creates a state is more practical than looking at where a state is and trying to arrange that. It has to be one event (at some apex of a fractal) - and the original force/stimulus which created the information is the best. We know that energy does not run out, it just transforms. I do not talk more about this as I do not have the language or knowledge of this stuff past a game theory model I have subjectively defined. (Interesting though if a human could replicate an identical force say throwing a ball)

edit: ah, but as for EM energy/brain comment it is clear that there is lots of EM energy through our nervous system and that impacts on brain structure - the brain is so responsive to em stimulus opposed to say a rock. A brain can actually ****ing i don't know its crazy what happens with brain and em energy. Its all a (partial) recording of EM presence. An infinitely more complex structure than say magnetive waves on iron filings (with em energy and synapses/neurones)

Now, I am concerned that my joke diagnosis is correct.

On the other hand, you are probably just high as a kite. Once, on acid, I discovered the cure to cancer. The trick, as I cleverly figured out, is to kill the cancer cells while not killing the noncancerous cells.

The difference is that at least my understanding had some grounding in reality. It would work. It just didn't add much to cancer research.* They already knew that killing the cancer cells and not killing the non-cancerous cells was a bit important.

Your **** is just off the charts in having no relationship to reality. If you were here, I'd hit you with a horseshoe magnet to set you straight. If I didn't have one I'd just hit you with a horseshoe and tell you it was magnetized.

*the really clever people are giggling at me.

Didn't know you cared.


Why is that? Because this is a philosophy thread, and therefore it is to be assumed that "no sense" would automatically not apply to any sense which might actually be relevant to people?


The same person as whom?


Well that's hard to say since it's hard to define. LOL. What kind of definition laments it's own difficulty in definition? I'd love to see a mathematical definition like: "An ideal is a subset I of elements in a ring R that forms an additive group and has the property that, whenever x belongs to R and y belongs to I, then xy and yx belong to I, BUT IT'S HARD TO DEFINE." How can it be hard to define? Either it's already defined, in which case it's easy to define, or it's undefined, in which case you have no right to talk about it until it is defined. When you talk about things that are undefined, you literally don't know what you're talking about. People can agree or disagree with you depending on whether their arbitrary definition matches yours. This leads to inconsistencies which allow you to state or prove anything. This doesn't seem to bother philosophers because philosophy is mickey mouse.


Your house does change. It's ownership changes.


The law applies to velocities much lower than light in a fixed frame of reference in which absolute time exits physically. When you are sentenced to prison for 20 years, a particular reference frame is assumed.

I do believe your post before mine is just as guilty of stating the obvious... And it needed to be said considering the prior conversation on the ability to exactly copy yourself. The brain is even more impossible to copy than normal matter due to an extrapolated effect of EM energy stimuli which I attempted to describe. When talking about reality we are constricted to concrete terms, but of course when it comes to EM energy or anything analogue for that matter we can't do so and have to speak abstractly. So it's not suppose to be about 'reality' there. I did warn that I am total noob in talking about these things using correct language, so explaining these abstract ideas would be very difficult past my original post which I thought was easily comprehensible.

You use a 'horse shoe magnet straightening up' thought process but do not understand mine... Conclusion is that the cap on copying a self exactly is not possible. I'm out this thread. Ciao.

Btw acid is not even wroth a single try, too brain damaging... very stupid of you. (Also your mockery is very weak zzzzzzzzzz)

I think there are several people ITT that really get it.

As I said, 3D printing is the very, very early start, but the concept is still:
-Gather the information
-Store the information
-Build, based on the stored information.

And, this isn't just "copies" or teleportation.

I mean, if we can "gather" information, we can gather it about more than people. We can gather it about places, regions etc.

Time travel occurs not in the way we think of it now, but by simply having all of the information (atoms, and their bonds, etc.) of a specific region. Had we been collection information since, say, 1950, we could literally go back to when JFK was shot, and watch it up close, and see how it really transpired (just to use an example).

I think the Information Gathering, and Storage part will happen long before the building part.

I have a few posts in a row, I apologize, but I had to reply to this one..

I think you're certainly right in 2014. You're right in 2100 for that matter.

Hence, A couple hundred years out...and of course, I couldn't possibly know what will happen.

I once had a dream that I was another person, literally that I was someone else. For a few moments in my dream I was deeply confused about my identity, yet it seems to me that I retained my subjective viewpoint during the experience. Similarly I think I would survive most kinds of memory loss, mostly the ones that aren't fatal.

That you are alive or dead, is that a matter of epistemology or a problem of ontology? Say you are cloned and then killed. This could become a problem of epistemology; your copy might mistakenly think it's the original and reason incorrectly that it was never killed. But it's also a problem of ontology, because you are dead, ducy?

I'll re-emphasize that the sun doesn't have a subjective viewpoint. I don't really care what view to take about the identity of the sun or a river. Calling it one and the same sun over time may just be a useful linguistic convention that otherwise doesn't change what exists, whether it's many changing things or one thing that changes. But having a subjective viewpoint is a unique property of being a person, and it's the difference between being alive and dead. It's an edge case that seems to require a different analysis, but you're insisting that it's all the same.

Here's another scenario for some of you regarding identity....

So, we're much further along with this set of devices, and long distance travel has taken place. Not in the form of light speed, etc., but we've gotten far enough out that we THINK we've found another peaceful lifeform that we've communicated with on another planet. We haven't visited that planet, it's just our reach has allowed us to find another one through communication.

They are roughly the same technological rank as we are, maybe a little ahead, and already have the type of device on their planet (this goes into the cap on certain types of innovations, and assumes that intelligent beings eventually arrive at the same caps which is a huge assumption).

So, we beam the information from our planet of a copy of you to their planet, and they quickly build you there. You spend some time there, they copy you again, and beam it back to us, and we build you again here.

You relay all of your experiences on the other planet. Were you really there?

(In this example, originals are extinguished for each copy, so there's ever only 1 of you.)