X-Message-Number: 14929 Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 21:29:48 -0500 From: david pizer <> Subject: Moving closer to agreement on identities vs persons. >From: Stasys Adiklis <> >Subject: Re: Pizerism, briefly. snip >Meanwhile a church of Pizerists was busy convincing everybody: >"Don't use those evil telepods, telepads and other tele-stuff! The question >is not what the person stepping out thinks, but rather what is the truth >about the survival! The truth is that something nonfeelable, unperceivable, >still unknown to modern science is not being transferred..." We need to find out BEFORE the first person uses one. ------------------------------------------------------------------ From: Henri Kluytmans <> >Subject: Pizerism >Again, in his last posting David Pizer assumes that some new and >still unknown physical mechanisms are required to explain how >the brain can generate consciousness : I think almost anyone studying brains would agree that new science is needed to explain consciousness. I don't think this statement is controversial. We can't explain it now, we need new tools. ><snip> >>Their problem, in a nutshell, is that the non-Pizerists use rules for >>describing non-physical things to describe physical things. >Uhh ? Can you give some concrete examples ? >Or are you referring to the scientific approach ? They talk about substituting memory as if it were all there is to being a specific person, they claim a person is just an abstract concept like a number. Then they make a conclusional leap that substituting the memory is all that is needed to make the new person the old person. The difference is that they look at a person as an abstract, non-physical relation of positions of objects, like neurons, or molecules or atoms. Pizerists say there is more. Pizerists think that a physical, real *thing* that "feels" the sensations and memories is the main part of being a specific person, and memories also contribute. Since no two of these feeling devices can occupy the same space at the same time, no two physical feeling processes can be the same. However, by non-Pizerists' definitions of a person being nothing more than an abstract relative concept, then using their theory, two identical abstract concepts, (or a jillion), even after being places in separate feeling devices, could all be the same person. Pizerists disagree. >>No one doubts that the person stepping out will have a personal existence, >>and most will not doubt that the person stepping out will "think" he/she is >>the other person, but the question is not what the person stepping out >>thinks, but rather what is the truth about the survival of the person >>stepping in? (Why we also need better epistemology). >Already the existance of this apparent "paradox" seems to imply that >the informational viewpoint of identity is the correct one. Because >using this last viewpoint there is no "paradox" ! I do not see the paradox. What am I missing? Pizer theory holds that no two separate, physical "feeling processes" can occupy the same space at the same time. That is more reasonable than any other part of any of the theories. Of course, that only shows one of the reasons why the non-Pizerists are wrong, it does not show why Pizerists are right, even though commonsense concepts seem to support Pizerism. >Of course two different persons are not the same person. >Using the "term" person here, only confuses everthing. I >suggest not to compare "persons" but only *identities*. We, in cryonics, want to survive as people. We are talking about the survival of a person, not the survival of identities. My main purpose as a cryonicist is for, David Pizer, the person to survive, not an identity of him. An identity of me could be a well-written description of every thought I ever had, but that alone would not cause me to survive. Your point above is interesting. Perhaps *all* non-Pizerists are not claiming that two identical persons are one and the same. However, *some* have claimed this and that claim is what I am doubting. If an idenity was copied and *put* into a second person, who also felt the identity as did the original person, then we are no longer talking about 2 idenities, but 2 persons. That is where I think the differences arise. That is where I think there are now two persons, each feeling the same identities, but each now wanting to survive. I don't know what all the non-Pizerists think about this point. Perhaps we are not all so far apart. To repeat with different words: Two abstract descriptions, neither one installed in bodies, may be the one same person, but when they are both installed into 2 separate persons, the 2 persons are not the same because each person *feels* the memories in 2 different awareness processes, it two different places in space at the same time. >I do claim that two frozen bodies with the exact identical >chemical structure contain the same identity. When the bodies >would be animated then of course, they would immidiately start >to diverge. But of course, we "non-Pizerists" already mentioned >this many, many times over. Not really. Some non-Pizerists have argued that as long as they were feeling new identical sensory input, they all are still the same person. Or, some have argued that measuring the original, storing the information, destroying the original and then installing the information in a new person is a survival of the old person. I am dead set against destroying the original thing that does the feeling. I think that is an important part of the original person. I don't give a hoot if someone can copy their identity without destroying the original. All that is is like having identical family members. Some people strive for that now. ---------- What if there was another person in another universise living a life just like your's and thinking exactly what you are thinking from your day one to now. What if you were to be destroyed now and you know that other person in that other universe is not going to be destroyed. Would you still mind being destroyed? Dave Pizer Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14929