2009/4/1 Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>:
>> A
>> historian could come along and argue for one reason and another that
>> the Middle Ages should not be considered to have ended until the year
>> 1800, and although we might disagree with him we can't say that he is
>> wrong in the same way he would be wrong if he claimed that the British
>> landed in Australia in 1066. Similarly with personhood, we could come
>> up with a definition, eg. that a person consists of the series or
>> person-stages such that each person-stage shares some memories with
>> the preceding and succeeding person-stage, but you wouldn't be wrong
>> if you rejected the definition, in the way you could be wrong about a
>> matter of fact concerning a particular person-stage.
>
> I don't understand the analogy, because something like "Middle Ages"
> is not supposed to have an inner subjectivity. And we have to put the
> probabilities on the possible inner expectations, when trying to
> extract physics from computer science.
The subjective experience of an observer moment is not problematic.
What is problematic is the *relationship* between separate observer
moments: are they different stages in the life of a particular person
or not? The answer to this question seems to me to be ultimately
arbitrary, in the same way that it is ultimately arbitrary to say
whether 1400 AD was in the Middle Ages or not.
> I am not sure. Unless you identify death and amnesia. But that is what
> makes the trouble for extracting physics from numbers.
> What is your opinion for the "Alzheimer" problem I just asked to
> Quentin.
I would say that if you are at a fork where one version of you loses
all memories and another does not, then you will find yourself going
down the no memory loss path. It is more complicated if the memory
loss is gradual or partial: you might find yourself fading away and QI
won't save you.
> We are in deep waters here, and I apology if I am pushing too much.
> With AUDA, the math shows that the notion of person is unavoidable,
> for any sufficiently rich (Lobian) machine. I believe more in persons
> than atoms, but I have to explain the atoms from a notion of
> continuity of persons, and I think the continuity is not in the
> memories, but in the self-referential loop itself.
--
Stathis Papaioannou
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Wed Apr 01 2009 - 21:39:55 PDT