Lee Corbin writes:
[quoting Stathis Papaioannou]
> > Certainly, this is the objective truth, and I'm very fond of the
>objective
> > truth. But when we are talking about first person experience, we are not
> > necessarily claiming that they provide us with objective knowledge of
>the
> > world; we are only claiming that they provide us with objective
>knowledge of
> > our first person experience.
>
>"Objective knowledge of my first person experience", eh? I'll
>have to ponder that one! Perhaps it will help if I contrast
>it with subjective knowledge of my first person experience :-)
If I say, "I feel that man is a crook", that is a subjective statement about
a 3rd person fact (the man's honesty), but an objective statement about a
1st person fact (what I feel about the man).
> > If we are to be strictly rational and consistent, it
> > is simplest to go to the extreme of saying that *none*
> > of the instantiations of an individual are actually the
> > "same" person, which is another way of saying that each
> > observer moment exists only transiently. This would mean
> > that we only live for a moment, to be replaced by a copy
> > who only thinks he has a past and a future.
>
>Mike Perry, in his book "Forever For All" develops these
>from the idea of "day-persons", i.e., the idea that you
>are not the same person from day to day. But that's
>certainly not a satisfactory way of extending our usual
>notions into these bizarre realms; you and I want to live
>next week because we believe that we are the same persons
>we'll be then. And the idea that we *are* fuzzy sets in
>person space permits this.
>
> > We die all the time, so death is nothing to worry about.
>
>On this definition, yes. But this is *such* an impractical
>approach. We all know that it's bad for your neighbor when
>he dies, despite us and him totally believing in the MWI.
>We would like to avoid having to say that we die all the
>time.
"Impractical" is not the first criticism that comes to mind re this belief.
Suppose it were revealed to you that as part of an alien experiment over the
past 10,000 years, all Earth organisms with a central nervous system are
killed whenever they fall asleep and replaced with an exact copy. (Sleep has
actually been introduced by the aliens specifically for this purpose;
otherwise, what possible evolutionary advantage could it confer?) Would it
make any practical difference to your life? Would your attitude towards
friends and family change? Would you take stimulants and try to stay awake
as long as possible? Is there anything about how you feel from day to day
that could be taken as evidence for or against this revelation? If the
aliens offered to stop doing this in your case in exchange for a substantial
sum of money, or several years reduction in your (apparent) lifespan, would
you take up the offer? My answer to all these questions would be "no".
--Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Thu Jun 30 2005 - 00:16:04 PDT