Very nice work by Christopher Malloney. It is a nice (re)discovery
of what I'm used to call mechanist or computationnalist indeterminism.
It is the fundamental first step of my "proof" that if we can survive
with digital "bodies" then physics must be derived from (computationnal)
psychology/theoretical computer science. (See also The PE-omega experiment
described in the list or in James Higgo Web Pages
http://www.higgo.com/quantum/reality.htm).
I agree with everything said by C. Malloney in his post. Nevertheless,
with HE (the hypothesis that there is a running UD in our concrete
universe (UD is a program which run all possible programs)), such an
assumption is obviously false because in that case, there is an
uncountable
set of reconstitutions.
(And with either Occam Razor or the Movie Grap Argument in my work,
there is no need of the HE (Extravagant Hypothesis).
Note also the use by Malloney in his Theseus' Ship argument
http://www.chrismaloney.com/seed/seed1.html#identity
of what I have called, following Nick Bostrom and Hal Finney in this
list, in a
preeceeding post: the RELATIVE Strong
Self-Sampling Assumption. That is to say: the probabilities are defined
only relatively to a (3-person defined) computationnal state.
This appears in the "Theseus'
Ship Argument" when Chistopher Malloney mentions that:
"At the moment I press the button, the NEXT instant of my conscious
awareness will be selected at random out of the ensemble of "NEXT states"
in which I exist." (Emphasis are mine).
This is important because it cuts at the root Jacques M Mallah's argument
against comp-immortality: although there is some sense in believing that
the measure of future selves decrease in *time*, this is no more true for
the
relative measure.
The original Theseus' Ship argument appears, to my knowledge, in HUME,
and is indeed well discussed by Nozick. An interesting work on personal
identity, with metaphysical and ethical consideration, is PARFIT's
Reasons and Persons. (detailled reference in my thesis : see the URL
below).
A nice book, which I discover recently, bearing on these questions, is
"The METAphysics of Star Strek" by Richard Hanley, Basic Books, 1997.
(Not to be confused with "the physics of star strek").
Bruno
Bruno MARCHAL Phone : +32 (0)2 6502711
Universite Libre Fax : +32 (0)2 6502715
de Bruxelles Prive : +32 (0)2 3439666
Avenue F.D. Roosevelt, 50 IRIDIA, CP 194/6
B-1050 BRUSSELS Email : marchal.domain.name.hidden
Belgium URL :
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal
Received on Tue May 25 1999 - 02:54:29 PDT