Re: Personal Identity and Ethics

From: John Mikes <jamikes.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:15:15 -0500

Stathis,

I usually appreciate the wisdom in your posts. Now I have a retort:

>"...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."<

If you accept the topic (to be discussed) of the unidentifiable imaginary
"soul", than you have to accept that *"IT"(???) can be duplicated as well.*
Once we are in Wunderland we are in Wunderland.

And if "you find yourself there" you have no notion of your destoyed
identity "here" and you *A R E* the copied fake (I call it 'fake', because
it is extracted from your 'here'-relations which constitute the essential
content of your identity. The "there" YOU is either another one with
relations to the "there" circumstances or a fake replica of what you were
'here' (and have no knowledge (memory) of it. Or is the duplicate homesick?

Wunderlandistically yours
John M


On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp.domain.name.hidden>wrote:

>
> 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 Sun Feb 22 2009 - 08:15:27 PST

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