Le 22-juin-05, à 15:05, Stathis Papaioannou a écrit :
> Hal Finney writes:
>
>> I was trying to use Stathis' terminology when I wrote about the
>> probability of dying. Actually I am now trying to use the ASSA and I
>> don't have a very good idea about what it means to specify a
>> subjective
>> next moment. I think ultimately it is up to each OM as to what it
>> views
>> as its predecessor moments, and perhaps which ones it might like to
>> consider its successor moments.
>>
>> Among the problems: substantial, short-term mental changes might be
>> so great that the past OM would not consider the future OM to be the
>> same person. This sometimes even happens with our biological bodies.
>> I can easily create thought experiments that bend the connections
>> beyond
>> the breaking poing. There appears to be no bright line between the
>> degree to which a past and future OM can be said to be the same
>> person,
>> even if we could query the OM's in question.
>>
>> Another problem: increases in measure from a past OM to a future OM.
>> We can deal with decreases in measure by the traditional method of
>> expected probability. But increases in measure appear to require
>> probability > 1. That doesn't make sense, again causing me to
>> question
>> the whole idea of a subjective probability distribution over possible
>> next moments.
>
> I agree that it's difficult to specify what counts as a subjective
> "next moment". That has to do with the way our minds have evolved to
> think, and we just have to leave it as unspecified or arrive at some
> arbitrary definition when considering physical theories.
I think that the better option consists in leaving it as unspecified.
Now logic and algebra has been invented for reasoning with unspecified
propositions or objects. I am thinking again how to convince you (all)
how a minimal amount investing in (modal) logic could be most helpful
especially with respect to the question of what OMs are and what are
the possible relations between OMs, etc.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
Received on Fri Jun 24 2005 - 08:45:49 PDT