Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

person-0y.o has an inherent interest in the welbeing, liberty, and chattels of person-18y.o that supersedes anyone else's interest, if any. It follows that in the earlier pre-crime example punishing person-18y.o is also a punishment against person-0y.o.

If you are prepared to accept a theory of "identity" under which a sufficient close copy of a person IS that person . . . for example, that the destruction of your brain and the use of the data gained thereby to create a digital model of your brain results in a digital ghost that IS you . . . then a punishment against the digital ghost is a punishment against you; and I can tell you, "your punishment will be to have your ghost subjected to agonizing torture," and have that influence your conduct.

We might even envision a legal system under which flesh and blood humans are not punished, but accumulate penalty points that are saved until they upload. And then the people who believe that uploading is suicide, and that their digital ghost wouldn't be them anyway, will be immune to punishment. It would be kind of like the old fear that an atheist, having no fear of divine punishment, could not be counted on to tell the truth under oath.

But if you accept the similarity theory, so that punishing the ghost IS punishing the organic person who will become the ghost; AND if you accept that the newborn is similar enough to the adult so that punishing the adult IS punishing the newborn; then all the other adults whose minds are equally similar to that of the newborn ARE the newborn, and punishing any of them counts as punishing the newborn, too.

In fact, we don't apply the concept of identity that way in the law. The law treats "being on the same worldline" as "identity" as "being an information processing unit" as "being a locus of decision making," and assigns penalties, costs for past choices, and payments for past services accordingly. How a legal system that assumed similarity, and similarity alone, to be a criterion of identity, would operate is hard to imagine. But if Molokh wants us to envision a world where the digital ghost is accepted not merely as the live person's legal successor, but as the same person, I think he needs to assume that such a legal code exists, and to examine how it works. Do we say, for example, that when a given infant is born to given parents, if they wish to leave their wealth to it, every adult eighteen years later has an equal right to a share of that wealth?

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Do we say, for example, that when a given infant is born to given parents, if they wish to leave their wealth to it, every adult eighteen years later has an equal right to a share of that wealth?

I think people who write a last will allowing their infants to inherit their fortune do not care about their (personal) identity, merely about genetics. Which means they write inheritance criteria according to genetics.

That is, assuming that all infants over the world are mentally identical, which I doubt.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

That is, assuming that all infants over the world are mentally identical, which I doubt.

They don't need to be "identical." You don't require that two things be identical to meet your criterion of personal identity; you merely require that they be "similar enough." And I put it to you that a given infant eighteen years ago is not identifiably more similar to one newly adult person now than to another, over a wide, wide range of adult persons; that, indeed, one infant is more similar mentally to another infant than any infant is to any adult.

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

They don't need to be "identical." You don't require that two things be identical to meet your criterion of personal identity; you merely require that they be "similar enough." And I put it to you that a given infant eighteen years ago is not identifiably more similar to one newly adult person now than to another, over a wide, wide range of adult persons; that, indeed, one infant is more similar mentally to another infant than any infant is to any adult.

Bill Stoddard

I stand by the opinion that infants' minds (not just conscious minds, but complete minds) may or may not have more identifying criteria in common with each other than with the adult minds found in their bodies 18+ years later.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I stand by the opinion that infants' minds (not just conscious minds, but complete minds) may or may not have more identifying criteria in common with each other than with the adult minds found in their bodies 18+ years later.

In other words, your criterion of "sufficient similarity" is one that you cannot operationalize and cannot even suggest a method of operationalizing. You do not know which people are similar enough to count as "the same person." And yet you believe in it strongly enough to be willing to (in imagination, at least) stake your personal life or death on it.

And you wonder that other people perceive this as an expression of religious faith?

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

In other words, your criterion of "sufficient similarity" is one that you cannot operationalize and cannot even suggest a method of operationalizing. You do not know which people are similar enough to count as "the same person." And yet you believe in it strongly enough to be willing to (in imagination, at least) stake your personal life or death on it.

And you wonder that other people perceive this as an expression of religious faith?

Bill Stoddard

I have no idea how to perform a surgery, but I can reasonably believe in surgeons - enough to stake y life or death on them.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I have no idea how to perform a surgery, but I can reasonably believe in surgeons - enough to stake y life or death on them.

Not the same. You know how a surgery works: they cut you open, suture some stuff, maybe use a laser to burn something off or closed, then close you back up and are fixed. You may have no idea how to do it yourself, but you can describe what "surgery" is.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I have no idea how to perform a surgery, but I can reasonably believe in surgeons - enough to stake y life or death on them.

That's all very well. But we have actual practitioners of surgery with actual methods of performing surgery; we have the ability to assess the outcomes of surgery; and we have a clear definition of what some of those outcomes mean—whether the patient lives or dies, whether the problem is cured or mitigated or left unchanged. We don't have anyone with the professional skill of judging whether two people are "the same person" purely by criteria of similarity of the information contained in their brains, let alone a way of testing whether they're doing it right. And we don't have any evidence that this concept is even well defined; it raises conceptual issues of the sort I have been discussing.

There is a profession of priesthood, there are recognized procedures for carrying it out, and there is a stated goal of doing so, saving people's souls. But there is no way of testing whether it has been done, and no evidence that "soul" is actually a meaningful concept. And what you are talking about looks a lot more like "priesthood" than like "surgery" to me.

Bill Stoddard

[jeff_wilson]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If you are prepared to accept a theory of "identity" under which a sufficient close copy of a person IS that person . . . for example, that the destruction of your brain and the use of the data gained thereby to create a digital model of your brain results in a digital ghost that IS you . . . then a punishment against the digital ghost is a punishment against you; and I can tell you, "your punishment will be to have your ghost subjected to agonizing torture," and have that influence your conduct.

I meant to refute Vicky's example; the two "snapshots" of the person at different ages are legally and causally distinguishable despite a continuous existence as a decision maker and a common interest in the latter's state; the infant's future interest has to be discounted somehow for time, for example. I believe it follows that the issue of a Ghost being the same person or not doesn't isolate them from legal entanglements either way and legal precedents are not particularly compelling in deciding questions of personal numerical identity since the law equally concerns itself with the considerations of the public trust in continued order, by definition a compromise of individual concerns.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

I meant to refute Vicky's example; the two "snapshots" of the person at different ages are legally and causally distinguishable despite a continuous existence as a decision maker and a common interest in the latter's state; the infant's future interest has to be discounted somehow for time, for example. I believe it follows that the issue of a Ghost being the same person or not doesn't isolate them from legal entanglements either way and legal precedents are not particularly compelling in deciding questions of personal numerical identity since the law equally concerns itself with the considerations of the public trust in continued order, by definition a compromise of individual concerns.

I think that's obviously wrong. I discount the interests of my future self of 2020, yes, but that has nothing to do with our being "two different people"; we're at two different points on the same worldline, and discounting along a worldline is a natural, indeed an inevitable, consequence of being a rational agent.

Why?

*To be an agent you have to act; action means causing changes in the world; change can only take place if there is time.

*If you were indifferent between obtaining a desired result now and obtaining it later, there would never be any reason to act to gain that result now specifically; "tomorrow" or "next year" would be every bit as good.

*Certainly, this is biased by the fact that we are mortal and might not live to enjoy the future reward, and also by the fact that we have emotions that drive us to seek present rewards (which themselves are selected for by processes based on our mortality). But the fact that we can explain the cause of our preference for the present over the future can hardly be counted as evidence that we don't have such a preference.

*And suppose that those causes were gone. In other words, imagine a being not only immortal but impossible to damage. It would never be acting under the pressure of biological urgency. But if it did not feel some sort of urgency, it would truly have no reason to favor NOW over IN A GEOLOGICAL EPOCH, and would never have any reason to act at all . . . and such a being probably would not be a rational agent.

Therefore, the assumption that people are rational agents already implies discounting. There is no need to assume that the identity of the present and the future self is problematic; the fact of discounting follows naturally from their being "present" and "future."

As to law having other purposes, I don't see the relevance. The law does have the purpose of making decisions about personal identity, and decisions based on personal identity. And it does so based on worldlines. If you assume that worldlines have no rational significance, then you cannot include a conceptual scheme based on them in the law; you will either have to formulate a scheme based on a different model of "identity," or do without such a scheme entirely. Either way, you will have different laws.

And that could be a very practical question in THS. Here, for example, is an SAI of Model N; an instance of that program has directed a cybershell to commit a destructive and cruel act against an innocent human being. Do we punish the individual SAI involved? Do we punish any instance we encounter? Do we punish all the copies cloned from the SAI? Do we punish all the instances?

Bill Stoddard