2009/2/21 Stephen Paul King <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>:
>
> Hi Stathis,
>
> A question : Is is incorrect of me to infer that the psychological
> criterion of personal identity discussed in Shoemaker's book and, by your
> statement below, used by a predominance of members of this list is one that
> treats conscious self-awareness as an epiphenomena arrising from a Classical
> system and that it is, at least tacitly, assumed that quantum effects have
> no supervenience upon any notion of Consciousness?
> While I welcome the rejection of notion of "Souls" which are in
> principle non-verifiable, could we be endulging in meaningless chatter about
> computerizing consciousness if we do not first determen that consciousness
> is a purely classical epiphenomena? After all we are repeatedly told that it
> is the classical view of the Universe and all within it is a theory long ago
> refuted.
The psychological criterion of personal identity is, or should be,
agnostic on the question of how consciousness is actually generated.
It says simply that if I am destroyed here and a copy of me with the
same psychological properties is created there, then I will suddenly
find myself there. It is possible to accept this criterion but deny
that the right sort of psychological properties could be duplicated in
a computer, or by any physical means at all if there is a supernatural
element involved in consciousness. What I find incoherent is the idea
that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
cannot be duplicated.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Sat Feb 21 2009 - 01:19:38 PST