Re: Immortality

From: Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon Sep 10 07:30:33 2001

Saibal Mitra wrote:

>You could object that in the first case your consciousness is somehow
>transferred to a different person (you ``jump´´ to a different branch that
>separated from the dying branch before you were diagnosed), but I would say
>that the surviving person has the same consciousness the original person
>would have if you cured his disease and erased all memory of having the
>disease.

Perhaps. But if you do that move, everyone is resurrected in everyone, and
there is only one person in the multiverse. I don't know. James Higgo
was more radical on this, he defended the idea of zero person.
With just comp this issue is probably undecidable. I guess comp (perhaps
QM too) can lead to a vast variety of incompatible but consistent point of
view on those matter. Comp is compatible whith a lot of personal
possible interpretations of what is identity. What is possible to prove
with comp is the non normative principle according to which personal
identity is *in part* necessarily a matter of personal opinion.
What remains to do is to compute the "real" probabilities to backtrack with
amnesia compare to the probability to quantum/comp-survive big injuries.
I doubt we have currently the tools to do those computations.

Bruno
Received on Mon Sep 10 2001 - 07:30:33 PDT