Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

[Zell]

Originally Posted by whswhs

And wrong. I am not a disembodied mental entity, and indeed, there are no disembodied mental entities. I am a physical entity, and my identity is the sum of my physical characteristics. If you create a computer model of some of those physical characteristics, that model as such is not an actual entity but a simulated entity, and it is running on a physical entity very different from me. Its identity and mine cannot be the same.

Do you shed your old identity for a new one every time you cut your hair or shed skin cells? If not, where do you draw the line?

Also, your view implies a kind of type physicalism, a theory with serious flaws in it that has largely been replaced with functionalism and eliminative materialism in cognitive science and philosophy of the mind.

[Zell]

Also, a friendly reminder: You sort of skipped something there. Might want to go back and take a look at it. I wouldn't want anyone to say that you are consciously failing to respond to questions you feel unable to answer in a satisfactory way.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Zell

Also, your view implies a kind of type physicalism, a theory with serious flaws in it

As a staunch physicalist myself (to put it mildly), I'd be interested to see what you think these flaws are.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Zell

Wow, this looks really similar to something I have already responded to. I wonder why. Now, I once remember saying something like "They aren't relying on its space-time history, they are relying on their state-based momentary memories of its past runs, which is strongly correlated (in their model of the universe) with systematic accuracy." I also fail to remember someone actually responding to that. That's odd. Surely you would never decline to respond to my answers and then restate the same "argument" while you have still to answer my counter-argument? Because that would be strange, especially since that you claim that 'I' stopped responding to your posts.

They cannot know that that is true of its current run unless they assume that it's still the same instrument, which rests on its numerical identity. It doesn't matter how well correlated their past runs are with each other. Given any time series whatever, you can come up with a predictive model of it that fits it perfectly—but unless you test that model on new observations, you are not entitled to say that it has any connection with reality.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Zell

Do you shed your old identity for a new one every time you cut your hair or shed skin cells? If not, where do you draw the line?

Also, your view implies a kind of type physicalism, a theory with serious flaws in it that has largely been replaced with functionalism and eliminative materialism in cognitive science and philosophy of the mind.

Once again, I am not talking about the identity of my mind; I am talking about my identity as a physical organism. Do you have an eliminative materialist theory of the body?

Incidentally, I've read a fair bit of Paul Churchland, and some of Patricia Churchland, and it's clear that what they are "eliminating" is not the fact that we have experiences; they are not, for example, denying that if I apply a blowtorch to your hand you will feel pain (as the Cartesians did, in relation to nonhuman animals). What they are "eliminating" is the propositional model of mind, or the idea that awareness as such not merely can be described in the form of propositions, but in fact is made up of propositions, so that, if I throw a toy mouse, I can say of my cat, "He knows that it's on the sofa," and suppose that there is something in his mind that literally says "it's on the sofa." But that model was never valid in the first place. It takes the grammatical form of human linguistic communication and hypostatizes it as an internal mental manipulation of internal objects; it assumes that anything that is conscious at all must be conscious in the form of propositions; and it treats the nervous system as if it existed to engage in cognition for its own sake, rather than existing to steer the body around, with cognition taking place as a means to doing so—which tells us a lot about the habits and culture of philosophers but not much about living organisms. If you look into current cognitive science you'll find that the idea of embodied consciousness—the idea that neural information processing is inherently and inescapably tied to bodily activity and functioning—is gaining increasing currency there.

As to how I draw the line, I think you're just coming up with a new version of the paradox of the heap. I don't have to be able to define a criterion with molecular precision to know that I am me and my cat is not me. I don't suppose you seriously are ever in any doubt as to who you are, or which body is yours, or whether something is part of your body or not; I think you're just engaged in the classic Cartesian exercise of inventing doubts.

Bill Stoddard

Edit: And when you get done with this one, would you go back and respond to my point about the epistemic status of physical theory?

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by Zell

Either "identity" is the sum of the mental characteristics we consider important to who we are or it has no comprehensive meaning whatsoever.

Why would "sum of all mental characteristics" (not just those "we" (who selects those "we" ?) consider important) have no comprehensive meaning ?

Why would "sum of all mental and physical characteristics" have no comprehensive meaning ?

Originally Posted by Zell

All arguments against this belief is based on folk psychology or gut feelings.

And what is "this belief" based on ? The assumption that we have a mind/soul that exists indepedently of some physical body ?

IMO the arguments against this belief are based on a) assuming that our minds do not exist independently of our brains and b) practical considerations. I am still waiting for practical solutions to the consequences of your belief, specifically the problem of previously single persons suddenly existing multiple times.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by Zell

Now, I once remember saying something like "They aren't relying on its space-time history, they are relying on their state-based momentary memories of its past runs, which is strongly correlated (in their model of the universe) with systematic accuracy.".

That´s a contradiction. How can a) "aren´t relying on its space-time history" and b) "memories of its past runs" be both true ? If "it" had past runs, that requires that it is the same machine that did those past runs. What is that if not space-time history ?

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Pomphis

That´s a contradiction. How can a) "aren´t relying on its space-time history" and b) "memories of its past runs" be both true ? If "it" had past runs, that requires that it is the same machine that did those past runs. What is that if not space-time history ?

Yes, exactly.

Here is your physicist. They want to be able to rely on the accuracy of a machine. But they cannot assume that it is the same machine on the basis of its numerical identity with a machine that had a past history. Instead they must perform a correlational analysis to see if it is similar to the past history they have.

Do they check for correlation of this particular machine with only one past history, the past history of the particular machine they're looking at? How do they pick that one history? It seems that to be sure, they must check it will all the past histories of all the machines, including machines in entirely different cities and countries.

Of course, as a matter of common sense, a machine in Tokyo can't be the same as a machine that's been in St. Petersburg for the past five years, and has no record of being shipped elsewhere. But we're ignoring common sense appeals to space-time histories, aren't we?

Bill Stoddard

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by whswhs

They want to be able to rely on the accuracy of a machine.

I think you got 'em whooped with this one.

This is one that makes me real sad I didn't think up myself. I had thought about mentioning testing instruments, but I hadn't made the connection to the machine's identity itself. I was only thinking about the calibration of the machine.

That is one nice argument you have there.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

That is one nice argument you have there.

Give Pomphis part of the credit. . . .

Bill Stoddard