Re: Reasons and Persons

From: Russell Standish <r.standish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 11:15:30 +1000

On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 07:53:35PM -0400, Jesse Mazer wrote:
>
> Anyway, I agree with your basic point--although practical possibility is not
> important to philosophical thought-experiments, *logical* possibility
> certainly is, and if there were no smooth path between me and Napoleon (or
> Bruno or anyone else) in the phase space of all possible minds/brains, such
> that every intermediate point on the path was a single integrated mind, then
> Parfit's thought-experiment wouldn't work. I don't think this "island" idea
> is very plausible given the hugeness of the space of all possible
> minds/brains, but it can't be ruled out.
>
> Jesse
>

Huge it is, but implementation space is even huger. We don't have an
adequate theory of what arrangements of things can be conscious, but
if we limit ourselves to brains we have a problem. There are vastly
more nonconscious arrangements of neurons than conscious ones. And the
conscious states we know of are not fully contiguous either.

Anyway, the end result may well be "we don't know", but there still
seems to be some life in this thread!

Cheers

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A/Prof Russell Standish                  Phone 8308 3119 (mobile)
Mathematics                         	       0425 253119 (")
UNSW SYDNEY 2052         	         R.Standish.domain.name.hidden             
Australia                                http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks
            International prefix  +612, Interstate prefix 02
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Received on Wed May 31 2006 - 21:16:32 PDT