X-Message-Number: 21246
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 23:27:09 -0800
From: James Swayze <>
Subject: Important issues regarding identity
References: <>

> Message #21223
> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 07:07:09 -0500
> From: Thomas Donaldson <>
> Subject: CryoNet #21214 - #21221
>
> For Dave Pizer:
>
> You now are distinct from the Dave Pizer who existed yesterday. The
> Dave Pizer of tomorrow will be distinct from the Dave Pizer of
> today. Do we then consider you to be totally different people
> for each day/hour/minute/second of your life? In what way does
> your brain continue the same?
>
> The problem with your argument is that it uses a very narrow and
> precise definition of "sameness" to draw its conclusions. Any
> such argument must deal with the simple fact that many of our
> atoms have been inserted long after we were born, and others
> removed long after we were born. So far as our brains show any
> changes at all, that is true of our brains, also.
>
> Clearly if we duplicate someone (forgetting all the problems of
> doing so, even with Nanotechnology)


I don't think they should be forgotten. For instance someone once asked me if I 
could still have

objection to an individual being bifurcated in two, who then would be the 
original? It seems a

conundrum on the surface if taken simply abstractly and leaving out the pesky 
details but I am

unable, owing to my type of intelligence (perhaps more on this later), to 
separate the practical

from the abstraction so I _see_ in my mind's eye an individual now separated 
into two but one has

no heart and both their brains are either left or right brain dominate. 
Something just struck my

from the word I just used, 'individual'. I believe it is rooted in 
indivisible... cannot be
divided.

> then the two duplicates cannot
> be the same person. If nothing else, they have different locations
> in space, and soon will fall to arguing over just what possessions
> and attachments (wife, children, dog, cat) are to go to which
> one of them --- thus becoming increasingly different, and perhaps
> even hating one another.
>
> However if by some event one person is destroyed while a duplicate
> of him/her is created, the situation at least is less full of
> strife and problems.


Only for society and the friends and relatives of the hapless duped individual. 
This is the

inherent problem of duplicity. No outside test can determine who is who. But an 
outside test is

meaningless to the subjective _inside_ experience of the person subjected to the
process of

duplication. I call duped for more than one reason. All arguments that rely upon
outside
observance are meaningless.

> Other than the obvious and very severe
> problems of making a true duplicate, I see no philosophical
> reason why that duplicate does not continue living as the person
> duplicated. How is he/she any  different than you are from the
> Dave Pizer of 5 minutes ago? Your brain has busily made new
> molecules and destroyed others as you were thinking; in that
> sense you aren't even the same person as you were 5 minutes
> ago.


If we change the bricks of  a house slowly over time to different bricks has the
address changed?

I have pointed out many times that the bit by bit exchange of atoms analogy is 
meaningless to the
identity issue. We cannot abstract consciousness.

> Message #21224
> From: "michaelprice" <>
> References: <>
> Subject: Why a duplicate cannot be the original - the final proof! .... Not
> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 12:27:47 -0000
>
>
> The notion that an individual has "died", even though a copy persists is a
> non-operational statement.  In Ayer's terminology it is a meanlingless
> or metaphysical statement, as distinct from empirical statements or
> tautologies (such as 1+1=2) which are both in principle verifiable.


I'm sorry but this just does not fly. It is just as meaningless for you to 
arbitrarily define

your _own_ definition of survival as being the _only_ one that matters. You 
cannot prove yours is

preferred over Dave's. You _yourself_ may choose to prefer it but that does not 
make it
universally true by any means.

> Ask yourself this, how could you ever, even in principle, test the notion
> of individual survival being dependent on phyical continuity?  It can't be
> done and is therefore a meaningless concept.


How about you ask yourself this. How could you ever, even in principle, test the
notion of

individual survival _not_ being dependent on physical continuity? It can't be 
done and is
therefore just a meaningless concept.


However, I might have a way to help define for patternists a non abstract 
concept of how us non
abstracting non patternists see sameness of consciousness.


I have it on good authority that isomorphists or patternists do quite adamantly 
feel that a copy

is the same as the original and can substitute for same. I recently said no 
amount of math can

make an X be a Y. Quick thinking math brained abstract thinking 2D thinker 
patternists on this

forum and another came back with X=2, Y=2, therefore X=Y. But I had set a trap 
because I did not

say no amount of math can make X equal Y, I said that an X cannot _be_ a Y. For 
this on the other

forum I was accused of word trickery or playing semantics game. But semantics is
involved in this

discussion and every bit as valid a constraining participle as any other. After 
all it is

semantics that is the basis of identity. With the statement, "the witness 
indentified the

perpetrator as a tall dark haired caucasian", one has just used semantics to 
objectively identify

an individual. However, this identity says nothing about the perps inner 
subjective
consciousness.


So back to an X cannot be a Y. To me, a non abstract 3D thinker, sameness 
implies that the

consciousness of the original and that of the copy must be interchangeable. In 
fact it more than

implies this it in fact actually must mean they think the same thing. I have 
thought of a way to

test this but we would need to have duplicated an individual and we cannot do 
that yet.


Suppose that individual were me. I am placed in a room and on the opposite side 
of the room sits

my duplicate. Above me and behind me is painted a circle. Above him and behind 
him is painted a

square. Neither of us have seen the wall behind us. The question is if we are 
indeed the same

individual, if our consciousness is of the same individual, do I see what he 
sees and he what I
do? When this is true then I will believe that a copy indeed is the original.


This is what I have tried to explain and been accused of holding onto religious 
beliefs in a

soul. But as an Adventist when I was religious I didn't believe in a soul, SDA's
are

materialists, so how could there be any soul belief lingering? I was accused of 
this because I

have said that, "I would have to believe in a soul and that said soul 
transmigrated to the copy

with continuity through said transmigration for me to believe that a copy living
on and my dying

meant that I really had not died". Put that way shows the absurdity of this 
notion, of course I
had died!


That is the point, when you die you're dead, end of story. Cryonics can 
interrupt that process

and so I believe in it. If I am destroyed in an upload or teletransportation, 
oops I have died...

that's the end of me, period. A copy may think he is me but I am dead. Good for 
him, more power
to him, hope he enjoys _his_ life but it is no longer _mine_.


As I said we cannot do the above experiment yet because we cannot duplicate a 
person yet.

However, we can approximate it in principle. We can go to stringent lengths and 
precise

techniques to exactly duplicate two computers. Each will have a video camera and
be set up the

same as the above experiment. Without being linked via LAN or wireless or any 
other method when

the two computer's hard drives contain images of both circles and squares, I 
will believe a copy
_is_ the original.

> Message #21228
> Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 11:52:51 -0700
> From: Mike Perry <>
> Subject: Comment on Duplicates

<snipped for brevity>

> To me this is crucial because (1) I am comfortable with the idea that I
> "survive" through memories and other personal information, regardless of
> which particular material structures may encode this information, and (2) I
> see terrible philosophical problems if one is attached to specific material
> structures to comprise one's identity. I will not deny that there are some
> tough philosophical problems associated with the patternist position; many
> of them have been aired on this forum. But the problems of the tokenist
> position are worse, in my estimation.


Perhaps we really should make a comprehensive list of the philosophical problems
with each side

of the issue and compare them. I will even offer one from the patternist camp to
begin the list.

Patternist list:


1. If you don't upload and make backup copies eventually something will cause 
your physical
death.

Non patternist list:


1. A backup copy should have rights too if indeed it is equivalent to the 
original since the

original had rights, therefore it would be inhumane to not allow any backup 
runtime but runtime

would mean divergence making it no longer a reliable backup. If one claims a 
backup is not

deserving of runtime one then is admitting a copy is not equivelent to the 
original.

Ok, now I leave it up to everyone else to contribute more.

James
--
Cryonics Institute of Michigan Member!
The Immortalist Society Member!
The Society for Venturism Member!


MY WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.com/~davidpascal/swayze/ While there follow the
links to photos

of me and some of my artwork and a radio interview on Dr.  J's ChangeSurfer 
Radio program with me

and the father of cryonics Prof.  Robert Ettinger, author of "The Prospect of 
Immortality".
A RELIGION I actually recommend: http://www.venturist.org
A FAVORITE quote: Last lines of the first Star Trek the Next Generation movie.

Capt.  Picard: "What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived, 
after all Number
One, we're only mortal."
Will Ryker: "Speak for yourself captain, I intend to live forever!"

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