X-Message-Number: 2707
From: 
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 94 18:40:44 EDT
Subject: CRYONICS more philosophy

A few more quick comments after reading recent postings:

Are the questions of philosophy answerable in principle? If we eventually
know everything there is to know about the laws of nature, will there still be
indeterminate answers to questions of "ought"?  Probably not--probably we CAN
answer the "ought" questions once we understand the biology and physics, and
I have many partial and tentative answers. But we can't yet be certain.

For example, suppose we eventually are forced to conclude that the individual
exists only in the moment, or only at a  "point" in spacetime--that your past
and future selves and distant duplicates are not "you." In that case,
it may be physically impossible to do anything at all to affect your fate or
condition.  Then fatalism would seem logical---in fact, nothing at all would
matter, or ought to matter. But this sort of speculation is highly contingent
on postulated answers to the paradoxes of continuity and the nature of time or
spacetime. 
  
Again, consider one of the questions often dismissed as irrelevant for
practical purposes: IS POTENTIALLY TO BE, TO BE?  Is potential existence in
some sense equivalent to actual existence? We tend to answer "yes" if the
potentiality is not remote--if we are talking about anaesthesia or cryonic
suspension. But if potential existence is the criterion, then we ALWAYS
existed (and perhaps always will).  It is easy to take a pragmatic approach
and concern oneself only with the near and likely rather than the distant and
improbable; but probabilities change with technology.   In the distant
future, maybe duplicates in space and time will be easily and routinely
capable of construction.  On what basis then will we decide what we "ought"
to want? 

Is any of this ethereal stuff important?  I think so, for several reasons.
One of the more obvious is that our morale or hopefulness can depend on the
many possibilities that most people cannot take seriously, or even
understand.  But sufficient unto the day is the maundering thereof.  --R.E.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=2707