Originally posted by PalynkaBut I am claiming that the copy most definitely is a continuation of yourself. It has exactly the same cause/result relationship as the future 'original', with the only real difference being in the atoms making up the pattern. Just before the copying, a neuron fires in one part of your brain resulting in a thought occurring in both the copy and the original. Why is the original considered the 'true' continuation and not the copy?
*sigh* We're clearly not communicating, tw.
Please see my point about the self being continuously dynamic and not just an interconnected sequence of static states. The copy can never be a continuous continuation of my self.
Edit - This point, IMO, is exactly why bbarr "accepted" the first objection, but pointed out that it wasn't enough for the other two thought experiments.
Originally posted by twhiteheadNot possible. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
But I am claiming that the copy most definitely [b]is a continuation of yourself. It has exactly the same cause/result relationship as the future 'original', with the only real difference being in the atoms making up the pattern. Just before the copying, a neuron fires in one part of your brain resulting in a thought occurring in both the copy and the original. Why is the original considered the 'true' continuation and not the copy?[/b]
-Removed-No, you are both real people; both persons with all the entitlements, rights and obligations attendant to being a person. You are both agents, with beliefs, desires, goals, etc. You both have lives that can go better or worse. That your duplicate has an admittedly bizarre origin is irrelevant to whether he is a person. That something is a copy does not mean that something is a fake. A perfect duplicate of my truck is still a truck. A perfect duplicate of my cat is still a cate. A perfect duplicate of a person is still a real person.
-Removed-Yes, but this shows nothing. Counterfeits, like other forgeries, are such because they lack certain relational properties. Whether something is a truck, cat, or person is determined by its intrinsic properties. That it is a forgery of a Degas does not mean it is not a painting, after all. In the person example, your duplicate is a forgery of you (if we want to take your analogy seriously), but a person nonetheless. I mean, be serious, do you really think that an entity that is physically and psychologically identical to you could fail to be morally considerable; to be such that we could completely discount him in our moral deliberations? That is absurd.
-Removed-To expand on bbarr's response, a dollar bill is a proof of a promise. Duplicating a dollar bill does not duplicate the promise hence when you try to claim on more promises than you are entitled to with your duplicate proofs you may go to jail.
What aspect of a human being is 'authentic'? What is important about a human beings origin?
And similar to my discussion with Palynka, surely the original you is a major part of the origin of the copy and therefore you and your copy share an origin.
Or is your real objection the fact that the whole concept we are discussing contradicts the concept of a soul?
Originally posted by PalynkaI don't understand. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle would apply equally to your copy and your future self, and I am not convinced that you have given a good argument as to why it warrants declaring the copy a separate entity. Sure it may result in a small percentage of difference between the copy and the original but it would not be significantly larger than the changes the original undergoes on a daily basis.
Not possible. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
-Removed-Let’s say I could also survive the process, so there was two of me in the room. Who is divegeester? If you asked each of me the question both would say "me". However, we know that the latest edition is a new fabrication and not the original me and therefore not a real person. So having made the replica would we then have the moral position to destroy it again?
Your view strikes me as bizarre. For one, there are any number of people out there who are also not the original you and yet you are not denying that they are "real" persons because of it. Granted, they were not "fabricated" in the way your duplicate was here, but why would that have any bearing on the matter? For two, without doubt you would acknowledge the rights you have as a person (for instance, that others have obligation not to "destroy" you) and yet you do not acknowledge the same rights in something that is functionally identical to you. That strikes me as a complete failure of rationality. I just find it bizarre how easily you entertain the idea of destroying something that is identical to you.
-Removed-In this experiment I am the "real" person by very fact of my temporal and physiological origin
Again, I find this all bizarre. I would have thought you are a real person because of the psychological capacities you hold; but, of course, your duplicate holds all the same capacities too. So the circumstances surrounding one's "origin" is what confers personhood? I don't understand.
Originally posted by PalynkaA nice introduction to the issue is found in John Perry's delightful (and delightfully brief!) "A Dialogue on Personal idneity and Immortality". More technical but philosophically seminal articles can be found in a collection, edited by Perry, called "Personal Identity".
Sounds potentially very reasonable, but if anything this thread shows that it's the nitty-gritty of the details that tend to cause problems.
What bothers me about the stability of traits is that when I look at a picture of when I was 7 or 8, I like to think that is indeed "me". What I am now is clearly not independent of what I was "then", but of course ...[text shortened]... f a good, not too technical, book recommendation about this I would appreciate it.
I enjoy this thread big time🙂
It seems to me that almost all of you, amici miei, you attempt to take “Self” for granted through Experience -Your experience, that is; I make this assumption because you are all talking about the necessity of establishing specific standards that you attribute to “Self”, which they all are grounded in the World 2 and then they have to be accepted by the consciousness of the individual at every time unit “as is”.
However without Experience there is nothing left for us to help us grasp the concept of “Self”. So, once your “Self” is separated from your body, your sensing, your cognition, your volition and your consiousness you remain with “No Self”. Of course you cannot have consciousness without the previous four qualities, you cannot have volition without the previous three qualities and so on. And you cannot have consiousness without a body. So, the sole agent for this Experience is “Self” as you imagine it by means of the World 3 (an idea, a theory) through your interpretation of that idea/ theory by means of World 2.
Then, when you have to offer your opinion once you enter a probability that ends up with a duplication of "yourself", you wonder how is it possible to have “two” instead of “one” body, which both of them are guided from a Single Consciousness? Over here, some of you you left common sens behind and you took a dive in Theology like my friend divegeester, or you followed somebody elses' variations like my friend Palynka. But for the sake of the conversation I admit that, if this probability was becoming real as barr posed at his first post of this thread, then both BodySouls of "yours" will have the same standards that you accept in order to establish the concept of “Self” when you accept that you “have” just “one” body (for the time being I leave aside the fact that we already have “two” bodies and that we all know very well how it feels)!
It seems to me that this mental construction that you call “Self” is solely a product of your sixth sense -of your mind; you use this product in order to define yourselves as “Self” within the plexus of the World 1 (as you perceive it through your Experience). This approach could sound fine for everybody who is definitely sure that his mind is not deceiving, thus that this specific theory of his mind is the Reality itself. However the multiple contradictions that they arise from this approach they force me to separate not myself from the truth of my insubstantiality😵
Originally posted by black beetleMost of your post is a little too deep for me. 🙂
I Of course you cannot have consciousness without the previous four qualities, you cannot have volition without the previous three qualities and so on.
But I disagree that sense is a necessary prerequisite for consciousness or even volition.