Bruno,
There's a lot to digest in this post. I should clarify that in my original
post I had in mind two different usages of the word "death". One is what
happens to you in destructive teleportation: you vanish at one set of
spacetime coordinates, then reappear in almost exactly the same material
configuration at a different set of spacetime coordinates. Ordinary moment
to moment life is a special case of this process where the difference
between the "before" and "after" coordinates is infinitesimal, and therefore
there is no subjective discontinuity between one moment and the next. I
would call what happens when you vanish "provisional death". Provisional
death becomes "real death" if (contra QTI) there is no successor OM (or no
next moment, or no reachable world): if the teleporter breaks down and loses
the information obtained in a destructive scan before it can be sent, or if
you are killed in an accident in ordinary life. It is interesting to note
that memory loss is effectively the same as real death, or real death with a
backup that is not up to date (eg. the original is killed a few minutes
after undergoing non-destructive teleportation) if the memory loss is
incomplete. Real death and memory loss cause a cul-de-sac in a stream of
consciousness, whereas provisional death does not.
If you can convince yourself that you undergo provisional death all the
time, and real death when you experience memory loss, then it may be
possible to convince yourself that death is no big deal. However, our
evolved minds would fight very hard against such a conclusion.
>In this post I will try to make clearer my argument with Lee by using a
>minimal amount of modal logic (and so it's good "revision" ;)
>
>Then I will explain how Stathis seems to have (re)discovered, in its
>"DEATH" thread, what I call sometime "The Smallest Theory of Life and
>Death", or "Near Death Logic", or just C.
>I have never abandon C, but the interview of the Lobian machine will give C
>again, but through some of its most notable extensions which are G and G*.
>
>To prevent falling in the 1004-fallacy, I will use (at least temporarily)
>the words "state", "world", "situation", "observer-moment", "OM", etc. as
>synonymous. I will use "world" (if you don't mind), and I will designate
>individual world by w, w1, w2, w3, w4, etc.
>
>Like Stathis (and Kripke!), I will accept that some world can have
>*successor* world (successor OMs in Stathis terminology). More generally we
>suppose a relation of accessibility among worlds (that's Kripke's idea how
>to enrich Leibniz).
These words - successor, accessibility, reachability - are figures of
speech, right? What is important is the relationship between the worlds, not
that someone or something "reaches" physically from one world to the next.
> I will be interested in the discourse which are true at each world, and I
>will assume that classical logic holds at each world.
>p, q, r, ... denotes propositions. And a "semantics" is given when it is
>said which one of p, q, r ... are true or false in each world.
>
>
>
>I suppose you know some classical logic:
>(p & q) is true if both p and q is true, else it is false
>(p v q) is true if at least one among p, q is true, else it is false
>(~p) is true if and only if p is false
>(p -> q) is true if p is false or q is true
> (to be sure this last one is tricky. "->" has nothing to do with
>causality: the following is a tautology (((p & q) -> r) -> ((p -> r) v (q
>-> r))) although it is false with "->" interpreted as "causality", (wet &
>cold) -> ice would imply ((wet -> ice) or (cold -> ice)). Someday I will
>show you that the material implication "->" (as Bertrand Russell called it)
>is arguably the "IF ... THEN ..." of the mathematician working in Platonia.
That last one always got me: a false proposition can imply any proposition.
All the rest seem like a formalisation of what most people intuitively
understand by the term "logic", but not that one. Why the difference?
>(p <-> q) is true if (p->q) is true and (q->p) is true. I could have said
>(p <-> q) is true if p and q have the same truth value. The truth value are
>true and false, and I will write them t and f.
>You can see t as a fixed tautology like (p -> p), and f as a fixed
>contradiction like (p & (~p)), or add t and f in the proposition symbols
>and stipulate that
>f is always false
>t is always true
>
>That classical logic holds in the worlds means the "usual things", for
>example that
>
>- if p holds at w, and if q holds at w, then (p & q) holds at w,
>- if p holds at w, then p v q (read p or q) holds at w,
>- if p holds at w and p -> q holds at w, then q holds at w.
>- t holds in all world
>- f does not hold in any world
>- etc.
>
>Etc. All "tautologies" will be true in all world (p -> p), (p -> (q -> p)),
>((p & q) -> p), etc.
>(whatever the truth value of p, q, r, ... in the worlds).
>I hope most of you knows the "truth table method" to verify if a
>proposition is a tautology or not. But I can explain or give reference or
>you could google.
>
>Remark.
>Note that if the excluded middle principle (p v (~p))is a classical
>tautology, it is not an intuitionist logic, and (much later) we will met
>this logic. We live the modern time where even the classical (Platonic)
>logician must aknowledge the importance of the many many many many possible
>logics.
>For example in Quantum Logic and in the Relevant Logics, the classical
>tautology which is "guilty" is the "a fortiori principle": (p -> (q -> p))
>One of the main utility of modal logic, imo, is to give a tool to
>"modelize" non-classical logics in a classical setting. But this we don't
>need to know now.
>
>
>KRIPKE:
>
>Now, and this is the important line, with Kripke, some worlds can be
>reachable from others; and I will say that the modal proposition Bp, also
>often written []p or \Box p (in LATEX), is true at some world w if and only
>if p is true in each world which are successor of w.
Is this the same B which is the modal logic operator for necesssity = true
in all possible worlds?
>I say it again:
>
>KRIPKE IMPORTANT LINE: Bp is true in w if for all world x such that wRx
>we have that p is true in x.
>
>You can read wRx as the world w reaches the world x, or x is accessible
>from w.
>
>For example, with a drawing, where the (broken) line represents the
>oriented accessibility relations (please add an arrow so you see that it is
>the worlds on the top which are accessible from the world at the bottom:
>
>p p
> \ /
> \ /
> \/
> Bp
>
>
>Let us consider that "multiverse" M with only three worlds: w, w0, w1, and
>with "successor" or "accessibility relation" R given by wRw0, and wRw1.
>Meaning obviously that w0 and w1 are accessible from w, and that's all.
>
>Now what I was trying to say to Lee was just that if p is true in w0, and
>if q is true in w1, then, B(p v q) is true in w0.
>
>
>p q
> \ /
> \ /
> \/
> B(p v q)
>
>
>And if the world represents subjective observer moment a-la Bostrom, and if
>the accessibility relation represents scanning-annihilation followed by
>reconstitutions, the diagram with w, w0, w1 + wRw0 and wRw1 fits well the
>situation.
>
>
>OBJECTION?
>Ah! but Lee could have build an objection by saying that in Stathis' theory
>we die, or can die, at each "instant", or at each teleportation experiment.
>He told us this in its death thread.
I don't think Lee accepts my idea of death.
>Stathis was doing Kripke semantics, perhaps like Jourdain was doing prose.
>He suggests to define a state (world, OM, ..) as being "alive" when it is
>"transient":
>
>The state/world/OM... x is "alive" when there is a y such that xRy
>
>and a state is "dead" when there is no such accessible world from x. x is
>terminal, or cul-de-sac, dead-end, etc.
>
>Now in Stathis' theory, we die at each instant and this means that all
>transient states reach dead-end worlds!
What do you mean by "transient state"? Aren't all states transient?
>Now suppose x is alive. This means there is y such that xRy. But the
>proposition true, t, is true in all world, and thus it is true in y. This
>means Bf is false in x (by KRIPKE IMPORTANT LINE). It is just false that f
>is true in all accessible world from x, giving that in y t is true (and
>xRy). So in any world x which is alive, Bf is false. This means that ~Bf
>is true (worlds obeys classical logic). and giving that f equivalent with
>~t, this means that ~B~t is true in the alive state.
>What about ~B~t, or ~Bf, in a dead-end state?
>What about Bf in a dead-end state?
If you specifically define B as above, you could say Bf is false because
there are no reachable worlds for it to be true in. However, the same could
be said for Bt, which doesn't seem right, since t is by definition true in
any possible world. Could I go for a third option, "undefined"?
>This is a little bit tricky and I let you think (I must go now). It is
>important also for getting a "theory" (set of propositions through in all
>worlds in some multiverse, where a multiverse is just a set of worlds (OMs)
>with some specified accessibility relation among worlds (OMs).
>
>The main exercise now consists in finding all formulas true in all worlds,
>whatever is the valuations of p, q, r in the worlds, when the worlds
>belongs to Papaioannou multiverse, and I recall that a Papaioannou
>multiverse is characterized by the fact that all transient (alive) state
>reaches dead-end.
>For this the first problem is the truth/false status of Bf in a cul-de-sac
>world.
>
>Stathis, dont' hesitate to accuse me of betraying your idea if that is the
>case,
I think you got it basically right. I was not aware of Kripke's work, but
have encountered similar ideas in reading philosophers of personal identity.
>Sorry for those holiday exercises,
>
>Don't hesitate to ask questions, it is cumbersome to explain Kripke
>semantics without easy drawing abilities (I already regret the combinators
>;-)
>
>I will come back on this asap (or just a little bit later),
>
>Bruno
--Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Sun Jul 17 2005 - 05:13:46 PDT