Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
...
> I assume that there is some copy of me possible which preserves my
> 1st person experience. After all, physical copying literally occurs
> in the course of normal life and I still feel myself to be the same
> person. But suppose I am offered some artificial means of being
> copied. The evidence I am presented with is that Fred2 here is a
> robot who behaves exactly the same as the standard human Fred: has
> all his memories, a similar personality, similar intellectual
> abilities, and passes whatever other tests one cares to set him. The
> question is, how can I be sure that Fred2 really has the same 1st
> person experiences as Fred? A software engineer might copy a
> program's "look and feel" without knowing anything about the original
> program's internal code, his goal being to mimic the external
> appearance as seen by the end user by whatever means available.
> Similarly with Fred2, although the hope was to produce a copy with
> the same 1st person experiences, the only possible research method
> would have been to produce a copy that mimics Fred's behaviour. If
> Fred2 has 1st person experiences at all, they may be utterly unlike
> those of Fred. Fred2 may even be aware that he is different but be
> extremely good at hiding it, because if he were not he would have
> been rejected in the testing process.
>
> If it could be shown that Fred2 behaves like Fred *and* is
> structurally similar
Or *functionally* similar at lower levels, e.g. having long and short-term memory, having reflexes, having mostly separate areas for language and vision.
>to Fred then I would be more confident in
> accepting copying. If behaviour is similar but the underlying
> mechanism completely different then I would consider that only by
> accident could 1st person experience be similar.
I'd say that would still be the way to bet - just with less confidence.
Brent Meeker
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Received on Tue Dec 05 2006 - 18:11:30 PST