Sometimes you just take the risk that people will discern what is being talked about and then clarify it later if it becomes an issue. I tried to state chezlaw's view about personal identity. His view was that it is an illusion, and this is a metaphysical claim. I'm nearly certain that he also thinks it does not cripple our social and legal institutions to think that personal identity is an illusion, so I'm sure he recognizes that there's a practical sense in which we are the same people.

At any rate, how is it not relevant to people to ask what makes them the same people over time in a discussion about a potential technology which can copy/replace/augment people?

Can you define Rock and Roll?

What's inconsistent about saying "according to this definition, abc" and "according to that defintion, xyz"?

If that's where you want to plant your flag so be it. When I think of a house, I think of a physical object with physical properties and nothing more. Sounds ridiculous to me that a physical object could change when it's not physically interacted with.

So I can't serve out my sentence in a space prison travelling close to the speed of light? The judge didn't mention that.

I suspect there are easier ways of doing it.

For instance I believe sometime this century machine learning will be able to train virtual machines to be indistinguishable from given individuals. Same output from same input. This will be as much to do with increases in data collection as machine learning advances. With various monitoring equipment giving the training process second by second audio, video and medical data for the whole of an individuals life. (Medical insurance companies making constant medical monitoring compulsory, being able to lip read etc. form ubiquitous CCTV, all commercial transactions video and taped by law etc.)

The virtual machines won't be conscious of course, but that won't be detectable to anyone else without access to the code. I think Zoe in Caprica is right on the mark here.

Semantics.

So we can go back in time by watching old news programs, if we reproduce everything exactly how it was the first time we watched them?

No. Your identical twin was. You died when you were extinguished.

Red herrings, this is irrelevant.

Although I guess you can use semantics to make anything true.

If our social and legal institutions believed that personal identity is an illusion, then our society and legal institutions would grind to a screeching halt. That makes those notions very real.

Physicists say that centrifugal force is an illusion experienced by an observer in a non-inertial rotating frame of reference. That observer feels and can measure a force moving him to the outside, while the physicist knows that the only force is pushing him to the inside. But that observer has the capacity to understand his feelings and measurements using the physicist's model. You need to show me how the legal and social institutions can continue to function under an assumption that there is no personal identity from moment to moment before I grant you that it is a valid model.


Someday we may be able to teleport people by making copies of them at another location. The question as to whether they are the same person is very interesting, but it isn't one that will ever be answered by philosophers. We already have people that are nearly identical copies of living people, yet they are inanimate objects. They are called people who died 1 second ago. They go from living people with their full personalities to a hunk of meat in a moment, and we have no ****ing idea why. I think we should figure that out before we start worrying about making copies of people from scratch, don't you think?


Yes.


Nothing. According to the definition that metaphysics pertains to the state of things and their relationship to the world that encompasses them, I can claim that everything is metaphysical.


It changed the way it exists in our minds. That's a metaphysical existence, not a physical one. Metaphysical means beyond physical. If the change had to be physical, then you wouldn't need the 'meta'. You might as well just say 'physical'.


If you are to suffer 20 years of incarceration, it would have to be specified that it's 20 years in the spaceship's frame of reference. If it were in our frame of reference, it could be over in seconds for you. On the other hand, this opens the door to a very novel class of punishments. In just a few seconds your family, friends, and the entire world you know will be gone. I can hardly imagine a more fitting punishment for one who has destroyed the lives of others.

Same body/brain was doing the subjective viewpoint thing that it does. I think that is where we normally draw the line.

That body was a bit confused on its personal identity. Smrk2 thinking he is Bob is interesting, but not really relevant. He is still the same guy in the same story, just acting a bit weird.

Mereologically, you just aren't the functioning smrk2 at the point that you die. You are failing to do the things that smrk2s do, which makes you not a smrk2. A perfect substitute for smrk2 would fail to be the smrk2 (the original) for numerical identification reasons even if he is qualitatively sufficient to be a smrk2.

I like thinking of the case of you being copied and killed.* If I offered you the option of having you killed and replaced with a perfect acceptable replacement who would get a million dollars for your trouble, you'd not take it. The reason why isn't a philosophical problem; it is a survival problem.

A camera pointed a certain direction has a subjective point of view; what light it collects is based on where it is and which direction it is pointing. It just doesn't care about that viewpoint, and frankly we don't care whether it is replaced or not because it would be functionally (for our viewing pleasure) equivalent. It simply doesn't matter to anyone.

If I said I was going to kill you in your sleep so you wouldn't know and replace you with a perfect copy who would not know the difference, you would mind. I imagine that if I said I was going to do the same to your dog, cat or lover, you'd mind.

If I did any of those things without letting you in on it, no one would be bothered at all. We effectively do that sort of things with farm animals each year because we just don't care about Bessy and she doesn't complain about it since we don't tell her.

It is just the way people are. We have a narrative sense of our lives (even if the narrative is broken, we know that there is a narrative by looking at the other narratives). We, generally, have a sense of continuity of existence that is sensible and wouldn't make sense with even the finest ersatz smrk2s. We don't like part of that narrative to be "and then he was killed and replaced" or "and then he was tricked into thinking he was the real smrk2."

*I said that a bit awkwardly. I like considering the case. I don't like the idea of implementing it.

Also, smrk2, something about anticipation, experience and remembrance.

So how then is chezlaw able to successfully interact with social and legal institutions when he believes that personal identity is an illusion? Did chezlaw grind to a screeching halt?*

* maybe he did, he hasn't been around lately

You simply pass laws that apply to people who are very very similar to earlier people. You do that because not doing it could lead to anarchy. To approximate, the model is any person with a brain very very similar to yours is you under the law.

The difference is that it's hard to imagine empirical criteria for testing whether it's the same person. It doesn't look like an empirical issue at all, so if it will never be answered by philosophers then it may never be answered. At least with death we can potentially point to very specific regions of the brain and say that they're no longer active, but what could we point to to test if you're the same person once you have been teleported?

Ok I won't ask you to define it, but Maroon 5 is definitely not Rock and Roll right?

If you can claim that everything is metaphysical, then you have a pretty useless definition of metaphysics and we shouldn't use it, isn't that obvious?

It did nothing of the kind. You may have changed your mind about how you think about the house, but the house didn't change, and it didn't bring about any change.

By using the useful definition and not the useless one.


Over the course of a lifetime, my brain changes quite a bit. How does my bank know that there might not be someone at time t2 that is more similar to me at t1 than I am? How would they measure this? It's the continuity of myself over time that defines me. I can change, but slowly and incrementally.


The same way we can tell now that you're the same person from one day to the next and not someone completely different.


Should we get rid of the word 'universe' because it refers to everything? Maybe we should get rid of the word 'everything'.


You're under the illusion that the house is something that exists externally to your mind. All you know of the house are the sensory impressions that it made on your brain, the memories that you have of the house, and the attributes that you ascribe to it. That defines the metaphysical existence of the house, and yes that absolutely did change.

Glad to hear you agree it's some kind of problem, but why is it not a philosophical problem?

We're sputtering along here. Yes nobody would notice if you killed me in my sleep and replaced me with my copy. Qualitative identity != numerical identity; we supposed this was the case ages ago. Now what? Are we any closer to saying what it takes for one and the same person to survive any of the various teleportation scenarios?

It doesn't need to know anything. All it needs is a policy that it will treat all very very similar brains as belonging to one person. If somehow someone at t2 is more similar to you at t1 than you are at t4034 then it will treat it as you, and if you have a problem with that, then maybe you should switch banks.

Back to the 'same way' stuff. We can tell if a person is qualitatively the same. We can't tell in the same way if he's numerically the same.

No it wasn't. You took the first clause (not even the whole sentence) from the wikipedia page and ignored the rest. Sorry that I don't believe your go-to resource for philosophical definitions is the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. Even if it were, it's highly unlikely that a reputable encyclopedia of anything would have a definition for metaphysics as terse as yours. Link the whole page, the entire passage/section where you got it.

Swell. What will be your sensory impressions of the jail cell when you get arrested for trespassing because you ascribed ownership to a house that you didn't own?

That's not how it works. It doesn't compare me to everyone else on earth to determine who is the most similar to me at time t1. It recognizes me as the continuity of the person I was last week, and the week before, and so on. If someone showed up who was more like me 20 years ago than me, but less like who I was last week, then they will not treat him as me.


What does that mean, 'numerically the same'?


I suggest you look where Wikipedia got that definition. Then notice that the part after the comma didn't come from the same source, and isn't part of a definition at all. A definition doesn't contain the phrase "it's hard to define". So in fact that's 2 encyclopedias which contain the definition that I gave.

Anyway, as I added, your point about a definition that includes everything being useless is clearly false, otherwise we'd have to conclude that the words 'universe' and 'everything' are useless too.


None, because I won't ascribe ownership to a house that I don't own.

I don't think there are any philosophical facts that are in dispute. Everyone knows that people (and everything else) inevitably change(s) over time. Depending on our purposes, they are best considered as whole objects, not as just a collection of specific parts. If we aren't going to consider something that has changed as having the same identity, then there really aren't whole objects to think about at all.

That you would be upset over me replacing your cat (or you) and not if I replaced an apple is a psychology problem, not a philosophy problem. A functionally equivalent apple wouldn't be a problem, right? Replacing Fluffy with a perfectly acceptable (other than being a replacement) replacement Fluffy would not.

If we did the same to an apple, would it be the same apple? If we just "teleported" it through time in the normal manner, I'd say that the answer is yes as long as it is still apple-y. If we deconstruct it and reconstruct it, I'd say no. That would be a new apple.

I'm not getting into any teleportation devices, but I'd not mind getting out of one. I really don't want a functionally equivalent me replacing me. However, I'd eat a teleported apple knowing that it is just functionally equivalent to the one that was teleported.

It doesn't literally compare you, it supposes that a brain in the same body at the time you open an account will be very very similar to the brain in the same body at any time after, and brains in other bodies will never be very very similar to your brain.

Something that is one and the same, one thing rather than two (or more).

Which two encyclopedias again? You don't know what Baker's Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics actually says, you just have a wikipedia paraphrase. As for SEP, take this chance and actually read the article on metaphysics, and it will explain better than I can apparently where the word comes from, what it has meant in philosophical history, and what it means now when philosophers talk about it.

The universe is a pretty useless word. The 'universe' is 'everything that exists', it doesn't get much more useless than that. The 'observable universe', now you have something. 'Everything' is of course a useful quantifier that masquerades as a word.

That's right because you don't own a house by virtue of arbitrarily ascribing ownership to a sensory experience of an object, you own a house because institutions exist which codify agreement between people about what you're entitled to do with houses should you own any.

I opened an account 20 years ago. My brain and body are completely different than than the ones that opened that account. There are lots of people who have bodies much more similar to the one that opened the account than me. Anyone can see they're the right age, and I'm a much older man. And there is no "same body" as all my atoms have been replaced long ago. Fortunately for me, they don't go by any of that. They go by the fact the continuity of my existence makes me the same person. They saw me each week, and they remember my face as it doesn't change quickly. They see I'm not acting radically different. They see that I have the right bank card on my person. They see I know my PIN number, and I make my signature the same way, but those things were all different 20 years ago.


That depends more on how you define a thing. If the thing is the continuity of my existence, then there is only 1 thing.


How much you wanna bet?


Take a class in set theory and tell me that 'universe' is a useless word.


I didn't say it was arbitrary. I have sensory experiences of institutions codifying such an agreement.

Really? Do they have your DNA? Do they have that birthmark that at a certain angle looks like Humphrey Bogart? Do they house an organ that tends to say "I'm BruceZ"? You are going by the least relevant criteria of sameness.

So if you open the account in 1984, leave the country for 20 years, come back to close the account 20 years later, the tellers who have never seen you will panic? Why, we haven't ever seen this person, we can't confirm his continuity of existence, what are we to do?

Then link it already. What are you waiting for? The whole entry please. In the best case, you will have provided one definition. What's the second encyclopedia that contains the definition you gave? It's certainly not SEP, read the first line.


Or maybe I could find a hippy child whose parents named her 'Universe' and tell her that she's useless! Obviously any word can be useful if you find a use for it. The basic cosmological sense of 'universe' is pretty useless, I supplied that sense.


Your sensory experience doesn't codify the agreement, the institution does, basic difference.

I'm going by the criteria they go by which is most relevant. I don't know where you bank, but I haven't seen a bank yet that checks my DNA and birthmarks.


Yes, that's a major problem.


I don't yet have the technology to link a hardcover book. I think you've confused the teleportation thing with something real. I told you that it's in Wikipedia, and it's in Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics.


I'm not talking about proper names. I'm talking about the concept of universe as it applies to everything that can be under discussion. It's crucial for set theory. Set theory is the basis for mathematics and science, and it's intimately connected with logic. The only thing it may not be the basis for is philosophy which appears to be based on people not knowing what the hell they're doing, circular arguments, etc. I understand you people have even elevated circular arguments to an entire branch of philosophy. You call it 'coherentism'. We just call it bad logic, give you and F, and drum you out of the class.


I only have knowledge of my sensory experience of the codified agreement. That is all I can ever know. As a philosopher, you should understand that.

I'm upset over being replaced = psychology. I'm replaced = ontology = philosophy.

You can say anything you want about the apple. You can say anything you want about a teleported me. But I'm either alive or dead and you saying anything doesn't make it one or the other.

Is there anything controversial about the ontology? Seems fairly clear-cut.

You can't be dead. Death through teleportation is probably a better choice than public transportation.

I've been following most of this and side with what smrk2 is getting at. As normal, everyone seems to be talking past each other.

As I understand the thought experiment you guys are attempting... if the copy were perfect and the original you were destroyed, did you actually die or is the copy the same in all ways meaning you live on as your copy? We all seem to agree it's not, or at least would not want to personally find out for certain.

I mentioned this earlier, if there were a connection (say neural) between you and your copy, so that all subsequent experiences were shared, then you could actually be considered to be both bodies and brains at the same time. How well this would work out long term is anybody's guess, but if the original body and brain were then terminated leaving the copy who has shared all the same experiences I think you could then be considered to never have died. Fresh new body and all, teleport successful!

Yes?

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I can't be dead. Woohoo. Can it ever obtain that I am not alive?

[quote]

I meant here, where smart people discuss things. What controversial things have you said? What have I said that is controversial?

Nope. My car is a car, and is a specific car. Before there was a car, there were some components that weren't the car, and after the components are done being a car, there will be no car.

In the time outside of the car existing there is no car that is not a car.

I'm not giving the criteria by which they go by. I'm giving you criteria by which they could go by, if it came to be believed that personal identity was an illusion. I said the criteria they could go by is just to treat people with very very similar brains as the same person, and people with very very similar brains will turn out to be those whose brains are biologically continuous with previous brains and bodies in the standard way.

Scan it, take a picture?

You citing Wikipedia as a second encyclopedia is hocus-pocus. An instance of me saying "According to Bruce, 2+2=4" does not imply "According to smrk and Bruce, 2+2=4".

And I'm talking about the concept of the universe that applies to what people who aren't as math literate as you are (nearly everyone) think it applies to, which is the cosmological concept that the universe is the totality of what exists, and this concept is pretty useless, in that it doesn't tell us what exists.

Why do you think that the extent of what you know through your senses is the extent of what there is? Did scotch not exist before you started drinking it?

Or they could just do what they do now, treat you as the same person because you are the same person by virtue of maintaining a continuity of identity.


It's more like you stating definitively that 2+2=4, and then citing me in a footnote. You would be doing more than saying "According to Bruce". You would be agreeing with me in your role as the compiler of knowledge. What if 100 other encyclopedias referenced that same sentence? Irrelevant?


We know many things that exist. In any discourse we are usually only addressing a subset of them. It's useful to be able to refer to this whole subset at once. If something is known to be true of everything, then it's certainly true for the elements of any subset of everything. So everything is a useful concept.


I didn't say it's the extent of what there is. I said it's the extent of what I know. There may or may not be something outside my senses, but even if there is, I can never know it. I can only know what my senses tell me. Before I drank scotch, I had visual perceptions of scotch, auditory perceptions of voices speaking of scotch, etc. But the point wasn't whether things ONLY exist in my mind. It was that they definitely exist in my mind (and maybe only there AFAIK).

Yep, I used to joke around I could never be sure but there was nothing before I was born. My parents just don't get me I guess. Then again, seeing is believing. LSD learned the boundaries of my senses in an angry Monet one night. Alas, I'm left only with reason, and even that seems up for grabs anymore. Beam me up, Jim!

For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

-Albert Einstein, On lifelong friend Michele Besso, in a letter of condolence to the Besso family, March 21, 1955, less than a month before his own death. Einstein Archives 7-245

Did you agree with chezlaw that pi is an illusion?

After the components are done being me, there will be no me.

Yasser Arafat is dead. Yasser Arafat is not alive. It is not the case that Yasser Arafat lives. Are any of these statements true? Are they false, are they neither true nor false? What's your best effort to capture the mortal status of Yasser Arafat?