X-Message-Number: 25140
From: 
Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2004 12:22:25 EST
Subject: "shared" experiences

If I understand him correctly, Mike Perry thinks that, if A and B (or A and 
A, for that matter) have sufficiently similar mental events, they "share" 
experience. I think this is inappropriate language, for the following reasons:

1. Chronology. If you and I have sufficiently similar experiences at 

different times, I don't think any reasonable person would say that we "shared" 
the 

experience. Or if I had the same experience at different times--maybe I smelled
coffee--we would just say my experience was repeated, not that my past and 
future selves "shared" something. 

2. "Fungibility" and "sharing" are not the same. Hydrogen atoms are fungible, 
and everybody has a lot of them in his brain, but does that mean you and I 
"share" hydrogen atoms? Bad language.

If A and B and their experiences differ only in spatial location--assuming 

this is possible, which is unclear--then saying that A and B "share" experience
is still just a choice of language, not a logical conclusion from agreed 

premises. And that, in my opinion, is what the "pattern" people basically 
do--they 
base their conclusions on arbitrary and inappropriate use of language.

Robert Ettinger 


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