Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> Finally, a variation on the type of thought experiments we have been discussing (I'd be surprised if someone hasn't already brought this up sometime, but I don't recall seeing it). We agree that if someone spends a minute in Brussels, then is destructively teleported to Washington, where he spends another minute, he will experience two minutes of continuous consciousness, the first minute in Brussels and the second minute in Washington, even if there is a delay between the disintegration and rematerialisation. But what if, somehow, the minute's experience in Brussels were run simultaneously with the minute's experience in Washington, just as they would have happened consecutively, and then the person in Brussels instantly disintegrates. We could even arrange it so that the minute in Washington objectively precedes the minute in Brussels, as Greg Egan does with uploaded beings in "Permutation City". Would the subject experience the same linear progression of time in either case? Would there be a moral probl
em with "killing" the subject in Brussels which was not an issue with the "normal" teleportation?
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
Without really getting into your thought experiment, I want to ask a
question. What does it mean to "experience a minute of continuous
consciousness"? OK, we have a biological clock that gives us a rough
sense of relative passing of time. But I don't think you maintain that
our personal identity is tied to that, do you? In order to really be
sure we are going through time, I think we have to get discrete input
from the external world every once in a while to see how much time
(roughly) has passed. If we are annihilated and duplicated with a
delay, I think we would be interested in how much time actually *did*
pass, in order to continue to live our life (identity) in the most
effective way.
Tom
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Received on Mon Jun 19 2006 - 19:46:36 PDT