Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sn0wball

Still, some kind of legal solution resembling inheritance law would probably work smoother - but this one would surely be more interesting. How do all the xoxes organize internally ? Do they form a democracy ? Are they required to form a democracy or can they do as they please ? I think it would be fascinating to explore a situation like that.

A general partnership is not normally a democracy. Democracies do not permit any one voter to exercise sovereign authority on behalf of the entire body politic; they require at least a bare majority.

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Handling some of the major points since my withdrawal from the thread. I admit I'm not following it meticulously enough to answer everything.

Originally Posted by Pomphis

The bible is static. A mind may well be an ongoing process. Anyway, can information/mind exist outside a physical medium ? In other words, do we assume supernatural souls ? If we do not, and assume that a mind requires a physical medium, like the bible requires a book, or a CD, or a stone tablet, or a human memory, then "mind in brain A" is as much a different thing from"mind on mainframe B" as a printed bible is a different thing from a CD with the bible on it.

First, the claim that the Bible is static is rather silly. Let's start with the creation of the New Testament (as an addition to the original Bible consisting of the Old Testament), then let's add all the translations and (gasp) revisions.

Another example would be the Constitution (of almost any arbitrarily chosen state). It is not static. And, more to the point, when people say 'I uphold and follow the Constitution', they do not mean that this piece of dead tree goes somewhere, and they follow this piece of dead tree. Nor that if a page on a specific piece of dead tree gets rewritten, they will uphold and follow that specific piece. Does that mean that the Constitution or Bible has a soul? Does not follow.

Originally Posted by whswhs

So you only have one hydrogen atom in your body? So much for being 80% water!

The body content is calculated based on the number of atoms with non-identical coordinates, not just identical name. That's kinda the point. You can have billions of hydrogen atoms. Each of them will match the criteria of being a hydrogen item, but they will have other criteria that differ. These criteria, however, do not stop them from being Hydrogen.

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

They're not the same number. There's no such thing as 'numbers.' What you've done is created something that some people would interpret to have the same meaning.

If there is no such thing as 'number' then there is no such thing as 'identity', since you (apparently - I could be wrong) deny the existence of numbers based on them being an informational entity. But identity is even more an abstraction than a number is.

Originally Posted by whswhs

Beyond that, you are describing it as "a copy"; that is, you are saying that it is not the original; that is, you are acknowledging that there are two different machines, and one is the original, and one is not.

Interesting. What is 'a copy' to you? To me, it means that the two physical arrangements of particles both match some criteria to count as copies of the same benchmark. Also, consider this: when people tell someone to type three copies of an autobiography (on a typewriter), they mean to create three pieces of paper with the appropriate texts. They do not mean to make a piece of paper with text, then copy it three times and bring the last 3 out of 4. A copy is a synonym of what Kron calls a token - see below.

Originally Posted by whswhs

All your talk about "tokens" is fundamentally mistaken, because it supposes that the word "I" refers to a class of entities, and it does not. It's a label for the source of a linguistic communication in a specific single entity—a pointer, if you like. There can be no "tokens" of "me," because I am the only me there is.

And this is where we have a clash of definitions, which comes of the fact that never before was it possible for more than one token of a mind to exist within a single frame of time. So people automagically assumed that 'I' refers to all the tokens of a given mind throughout time. But whether or not it refers to a series of tokens of a given mind in such a way as to refer to no more than one token out of each time frame, or not, is not obvious. I say that there's no reason for such an assumption, while you take it for granted.

I suspect the problem is that the answer to this question is undefined in the current linguistic system, because the question never came up in a realistic scenario before. It's kinda like what happens when you expect to be given a boolean variable, but once you get your variable and examine it, you discover that it is neither true nor false, but rather null. Confusion ensues.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The body content is calculated based on the number of atoms with non-identical coordinates, not just identical name. That's kinda the point. You can have billions of hydrogen atoms. Each of them will match the criteria of being a hydrogen item, but they will have other criteria that differ. These criteria, however, do not stop them from being Hydrogen.

No, but that's not numerical identity; that's species identity. Aristotle distinguished clearly between those two concepts over two thousand years ago. And you yourself are relying on that distinction, when you treat the fact that two hydrogen atoms have different spatial coordinates as showing that they are in fact two different atoms, not the same atom double counted. You cannot even state what your position is without tacitly using the concept of numerical identity to make it possible to assign a different ordinal number to each atom in an ensemble. Even in using the plural "atoms" you are assuming that it is possible to count atoms, or to place a set of atoms in one to one correspondence with some other set, both of which require the mental operation of distinguishing among physical entities with the same species identity—for example, among atoms that are all hydrogen atoms. And that distinction you are making is precisely the recognition that different atoms have different numerical identities.

I must say I find it ironic that you are perfectly willing to say that one hydrogen atom and another are meaningfully different, but think that if two human beings are sufficiently similar they are not meaningfully different, even though any two beings will have not only differences in spatial location (like the hydrogen atoms) but, inevitably, a vast number of differences in internal spatial structure at the molecular level.

And then there's the elephant in this room: The fact that you are proposing to apply this idea of common identity not to two flesh and blood human beings, but to a flesh and blood human being and a cybershell made of metal and silicon. In terms of actual physical structure, the two are nothing alike.

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I must say I find it ironic that you are perfectly willing to say that one hydrogen atom and another are meaningfully different, but think that if two human beings are sufficiently similar they are not meaningfully different, even though any two beings will have not only differences in spatial location (like the hydrogen atoms) but, inevitably, a vast number of differences in internal spatial structure at the molecular level.

Huh? They are both Hydrogens. And both me-2001 and me-2009 are me. They are subsets of the set 'Hydrogen'. They are subsets of the set 'vicky'.

(And no, atoms are not elements. They are sets of sets that have properties/criteria thanks to which we call them atoms.)

Originally Posted by whswhs

And then there's the elephant in this room: The fact that you are proposing to apply this idea of common identity not to two flesh and blood human beings, but to a flesh and blood human being and a cybershell made of metal and silicon. In terms of actual physical structure, the two are nothing alike.

But structure is of no importance to being a person (unless we fall back to biochauvinism). The person is the information, not the medium. Just like following the Constitution has nothing to do to walking towards the location of a dead tree.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

The person is the information, not the medium.

Is this also true of the Mona Lisa?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

Is this also true of the Mona Lisa?

Yes, people are ignoring the picture, and obsess over the painting/medium. Which kinda reminds me of the part of Interstate 60, where a lady explains that people who strive to buy originals do not care for the works of art, but only about bragging rights.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Yes, people are ignoring the picture, and obsess over the painting/medium.

Okay. So?

Your own personal aesthetics have nothing to do with the identity of the piece of wood and the paint.

If you were running an auction house, would you not distinguish between a modern reproduction and the actual painting when selling them? If you were a judge in a case in which it was claimed to be the original, yet the purchaser was provided only a forgery?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

Okay. So?

Your own personal aesthetics have nothing to do with the identity of the piece of wood and the paint.

If you were running an auction house, would you not distinguish between a modern reproduction and the actual painting when selling them? If you were a judge in a case in which it was claimed to be the original, yet the purchaser was provided only a forgery?

Those people are buying tokens, not types. I would inform them regarding token criteria, since that's what they care about. But at this point it is no longer about the art, but about the medium.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Huh? They are both Hydrogens. And both me-2001 and me-2009 are me. They are subsets of the set 'Hydrogen'. They are subsets of the set 'vicky'.

You're cheating by shifting from contemporaneous to sequential. The concept of numerical identity applies precisely between an entity at one time and that entity at another time; it does not apply between two different entities at the same time. You do understand the difference between timelike and spacelike intervals, don't you?

Bill Stoddard

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Those people are buying tokens, not types. I would inform them regarding token criteria, since that's what they care about. But at this point it is no longer about the art, but about the medium.

Okay. And if you're a doctor and you've been hired to euthanize someone, do you euthanize the token that hired you, or will any token of that set do?