Brent Meeker writes:
> > 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
It's the level of confidence which is the issue. Would it be fair to assume that a digital and an analogue audio source have the same 1st person experience (such as it may be) because their output signal is indistinguishable to human hearing and scientific instruments?
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Tue Dec 05 2006 - 22:48:11 PST