Re: Teleportation thought experiment and UD+ASSA

From: Russell Standish <r.standish.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:40:51 +1000

On Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 10:31:16AM -0700, "Hal Finney" wrote:
>
> Russell Standish <r.standish.domain.name.hidden> writes:
> > If computationalism is true, then a person is instantiated by all
> > equivalent computations. If you change one instantiation to something
> > inequivalent, then that instantiation no longer "instantiates" the
> > person. The person continues to exist, as long as there remain valid
> > computations somewhere in the universe. And in almost any of the many
> > worlds variants we consider in this list, that will be true.
>
> That's true, but even with the MWI, making an instantiation cease to
> exist decreases the measure of that person. Around here we call that
> "murder". The moral question still exists. I don't see the MWI as
> rescuing functionalism and computationalism.
>
> What, after all, do these principles mean? They say that the
> implementation substrate doesn't matter. You can implement a person
> using neurons or tinkertoys, it's all the same. But if there is no way
> in principle to tell whether a system implements a person, then this
> philosophy is meaningless since its basic assumption has no meaning.
> The MWI doesn't change that.
>
> Hal Finney
>

There is no way to tell if a given system implements a person
REGARDLESS of whether functionalism is true or not.

The best we have is some kind of Turing test - if it walks and quacks
like the only person we know (ourself), it is a person and if it doesn't then
there is little benefit in assuming that it is a person.

Cheers

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Received on Wed Jun 21 2006 - 19:02:37 PDT