Lee Corbin writes:
[quoting Bruno Marchal]
> > Why not choose D, that is "I will see 0 on the wall OR I will see 1
> > on the wall."
>
>Okay, now you have switched back to the prior (prediction)
>level.
>
>Here is the reason not to say that. As the person who is about
>to be duplicated knows all the facts, he is aware (from a 3rd
>person point of view) that scientifically there will be *two*
>processes both of which are very, very similar. It will be
>false that one of them will be more "him" than the other.
>Therefore he must identify equally with them. Therefore,
>it is wrong to imply that he "I" will be one of them but not
>the other of them.
>
>But if you answer "I will see 0 on the wall OR I will see 1 on the wall"
>then it makes it sound as though one of those cases will obtain but
>not the other. (This is usually how we talk when Bruno admits, for
>example, that tonight he either will watch TV *or* he will not watch
>TV. But the case of duplicates is not like that. In the case of
>duplicates, it is a scientific fact that Bruno will watch TV (in one
>room) and will not watch TV (in the other room). In short, it will
>be true that Bruno will watch TV and will not watch TV---simply because
>there will be two instances of Bruno.)
Is there any way of asking the question such that the answer is "there is an
even chance that I will see either a 1 or a 0"? For example, every time I
flip a coin it *seems* that I get either heads or tails, and not both. The
objective truth may well be that coin-tossing causes duplication and I do,
in fact, experience both, but don't realise it. I am interested in asking
and/or answering the question assuming this sort of ignorance. Can it be
done, or is it linguistically as well as physically and logically
impossible?
--Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Sun Jul 10 2005 - 10:17:59 PDT