Consciousness schmonscioisness

From: James Higgo (co.uk) <"James>
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 13:05:31 -0000

It's been almost two years you guys have been hung up on this 'I' nonsense -
can't you conceive, for one moment, that there is no 'I'? Can you grasp the
indisputable fact that this debate is meaningless if there is no 'I', just
observer-moments without an 'observer'? Has anybody out there understood
this point? (Apart from Jacques Mallah, who has long deserted the debate,
and maybe Martin Marcel).

Could we start a separate list at eskimo-com for people who still want to
have the pointless old consciousness debate below?

James
----- Original Message -----
From: Jesse Mazer <lasermazer.domain.name.hidden>
To: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 5:46 PM
Subject: RE: on formally describable universes and measures (fwd)


> "Meeker, Brent" wrote:
>
> > Bruno, perhaps I'm just unusally dense today; but I dont' grasp the
> >uncertainity to you write of the the Washington-Moscow thought
experiment.
> >It seems obvious to me that when I am reconstituted in Washington and
> >reconstituted in Moscow then I am in both places. This of course assumes
> >that there is no mystical, indivisble "soul" that is "really" me. It
> >follows from the idea that my internal pyschological states derive from
the
> >physical processes of my body - and if the body is reproduced then so are
> >those processes.
>
> After the split, though, the experience of the two copies will diverge.
If
> I find myself in Moscow, I am no longer the "same person" as my twin in
> Washington...if I knew the Washington twin was going to be tortured my
> attitude would be quite different from what it would be if *I* was going
to
> be tortured.
>
> So, if continuity of consciousness is "real" it is reasonable to expect
that
> our theory of consciousness should allow for the possibility of splitting,
> and that from a first-person point of view, I-before-the-split would have
an
> X% chance of becoming one copy and a Y% chance of becoming another. That
is
> not to deny, though, that the split would happen both ways at once--in
other
> words, each copy would be correct in saying it was continuous with the
> single consciousness before the split.
>
> Jesse Mazer
> _________________________________________________________________
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>
Received on Sat Feb 10 2001 - 04:49:14 PST

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