Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> I am not so sure that the standard model of personal identity with which we are familiar would be
> a universal standard. Imagine intelligent beings evolved from hive insects which go through
> several radically different life stages, frequently share genetic information with each other
> like bacteria, identify self and others via pheromones which can change or be transferred to
> other individuals... the possibilities are endless. These beings would have an utterly alien
> psychology, ethics, aesthetics, and probably also an utterly alien sense of what it means to be a
> person, including what it means to be the same person from one life stage to another. However, if
> they were intelligent, they would come up with the same scientific truths as us, even if they
> thought about them very differently, because such truths are in a fundamental sense
> observer-independent.
>
> Perhaps we have reached a consensus of sorts (Brent and Lee, let me know if you disagree):
> evolution has given us brains hardwired with a sense of continuity of personal identity over time
> for very good reasons, but it could have been otherwise, and it would not have been inconsistent
> with any logical or empirical fact about the world had it been otherwise.
I agree, except I don't see how evolution could have worked it out otherwise for our kind of animal.
Your thought-experimental day-people took supernatural intervention to evolve. Assuming that
their outward behavoir comported with personal continuity; I'm not sure how much their inner
narrative could differ from our own. To what degree could they really worry (an emotion) about
their future circumstance without feeling that they would *be* that future person. Is there
anything to continuity of personal identity besides a) the third-person continuity of body, memory,
personality and b) the emotions related to anticipation of pain, pleasure, etc.
You make a good point though that a species like the social insects must have a different kind of
feeling of identity - if any. Richard Hofstader imagined an intelligent ant colony in which the
mind supervened on the spatial and chemical interactions among individuals of the colony. This has
also been addressed in fiction. Greg Egan wrote a short story about a person who woke up in a
different body every morning. Stanislaw Lem, in one of his Star Diaries stories, has the hero land
on a planet where everyone changes societal roles each day.
Brent Meeker
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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 Fri Jul 14 2006 - 14:22:41 PDT