Similar to an argument I tried (clumsily) to make

[ruby sparks]

In what way is it useful or accurate to say that this:



is this:



If that's anything like what is being said, which I'm guessing it isn't. But then what is being said?

Is it that the top one 'would be' the bottom one if it 'was' the bottom one (or identical to it)? Isn't that getting towards a not very useful tautology? As things stand, the painting are different, right?

I'm good with the idea that we should perhaps not think of ourselves as being as unique as we might think and that hypothetically we wouldn't be unique if there was an exact duplicate of us. After that, I get lost.

As I said, I'm happy with the idea that (up to a reasonable point) I'd still call myself me no matter what the content of my experiences were. The 'reasonable point' is quite a big caveat though. Even setting aside experiences of multiple selves, other personality dissociation disorders and senility, most people can informally disown themselves quite often ('I wasn't myself just now', they might say).

 

[PyramidHead]

Please bear with me because I'm struggling to understand what you're trying to get at.

Assuming you're stipulating identical initial genetics and identical (I'm assuming exactly the same) subsequent environmental conditions then how could your 'swapped gametes' scenario result in anything other than the same 'you'?

I don't think it would, but many people do. The reasoning is pretty simple: trace your body's existence back far enough and you'll arrive at a pair of gametes. If there was another pair somewhere in this grand universe, exactly identical to the ones that actually gave rise to you, that's fine and dandy, but they are numerically distinct from yours. In fact, if they were fused and implanted, the resulting person would be someone you'd regard as a twin sibling, and not you.

I can imagine that someone who believed that there was some unique non-physical essence/soul associated with every gamete pair (including physically [qualitatively] identical gamete pairs) might have the intuitions you describe here. However if you you don't accept the existence of a non-physical essence or soul, logic surely dictates that identical genetics and environment can only result in the same 'you'.

I am inclined to agree with that, at least for this example. However, there is another variant of the same example that tends to make people change their minds, even if they take what you just said as true. Forget about the swapping gametes situation for a moment. Just imagine that you were accompanied in the womb by a twin who didn't survive long enough to be born. Most people, if they learned that about themselves, would think something like, "It's lucky for me that I was the one who lived and not the one who died, otherwise I wouldn't be here." Assuming that whatever twin survived would be raised in the same way and go through the same life, it shouldn't matter which of them survived, like you say, but the intuition many people have is that their existence depended on an objectively identifiable group of cells and no other. This is made more explicit when you consider that, if both twins had survived, almost nobody would say they were both of them (I would, for the same reason given in the OP article).

 

[PyramidHead]

In what way is it useful or accurate to say that this:

View attachment 17065

is this:

View attachment 17064

If that's anything like what is being said, which I'm guessing it isn't. But then what is being said?

Is it that the top one 'would be' the bottom one if it 'was' the bottom one (or identical to it)? Isn't that getting towards a not very useful tautology? As things stand, the painting are different, right?

How different are the top and bottom paintings, compared to how different you were as a toddler to what you will hopefully be when you are elderly? Yet, you don't call it a useless tautology when old people reminisce about experiences they had when they were very young. It is obviously true that almost nothing of your older self will be the same as your younger self. There will be psychological connections in the form of preserved information, not all of which you will be able to access depending on how sharp you are. And let's be honest, even if you never develop any serious mental deficiencies, not all of your past experiences will be available to your current mind--actually, the vast majority of what anybody experiences is forgotten because it is unimportant. But they will still have been YOUR experiences, right? The fact that you can't recall them anymore due to physical degradation of neurological pathways does not make them less yours, it just makes them beyond your ability to currently summon into consciousness. If you could restore those neural pathways, you'd remember things you hadn't thought about in decades, and it would naturally occur to you that those were your experiences.

The OP article is pointing out that nothing should stop us from thinking about what we call other people's experiences in the same way. The barrier between one brain's bundle of experiences and another's is of exactly the same type as the barrier between the old man's bundle of experiences and those of his forgotten childhood days. If restoring the fidelity of neural connections in the old man's brain enables him to acknowledge previously unavailable memories as his own, then why shouldn't the same be true of the article's example, where the neural connections of multiple brains are exchanged at high fidelity? Why, if physicalism is true and there are no ghosts, is the first example a case of revealing to me that I am the same person as the child whose experience I am remembering, while the second must be a case of making me the same person as whoever is on the other end of the brain linkage?

 

[ruby sparks]

Why, if physicalism is true and there are no ghosts, is the first example a case of revealing to me that I am the same person as the child whose experience I am remembering, while the second must be a case of making me the same person as whoever is on the other end of the brain linkage?

I was fairly ok up to this point. Then I think the question above confused me. For starters, I would say that in the first example, the old person is not the same person as the young person.

But in any case, where, even hypothetically, would ghosts (or even some other immaterial thing with a different name) come into either example? If you are suggesting they might, then this may be the nub where we might disagree. Money, colour, number and self may exist as concepts, but that wouldn't make them immaterial? Unless we agree that's what we mean by concept.

I still have no idea where this is going. Do you? Or are you just exploring?

 

[The AntiChris]

"It's lucky for me that I was the one who lived and not the one who died, otherwise I wouldn't be here."

What could this possibly mean?

What state of affairs would have to prevail for it to be the case that "I" was in actual fact the twin that died? Once again this seems to rest on the notion that 'my' unique non-physical essence/soul might inhabit either twin. I don't buy into non-physical essences so any speculation that "I" could have been the twin that died makes no sense to me.

This is made more explicit when you consider that, if both twins had survived, almost nobody would say they were both of them (I would, for the same reason given in the OP article).

I'm afraid you lose me completely here.

 

[PyramidHead]

Why, if physicalism is true and there are no ghosts, is the first example a case of revealing to me that I am the same person as the child whose experience I am remembering, while the second must be a case of making me the same person as whoever is on the other end of the brain linkage?

I was fairly ok up to this point. Then I think the question above confused me. For starters, I would say that in the first example, the old person is not the same person as the young person.

Okay, let's start there. I get the sense in which "the same person" could be viewed from the outside, and indeed you could say that the old man has become different enough in personality, etc. that it's like he's a different person. But there is also the sense, separate from that stuff, in which it is nonetheless true that the person who experienced being that child is the same one as the person who is now experiencing being the old man. I'm not saying that's accurate or not, but do you see how that is a different question from whether or not their personalities or physical makeups are the same?

But in any case, where, even hypothetically, would ghosts (or even some other immaterial thing with a different name) come into either example? If you are suggesting they might, then this may be the nub where we might disagree. Money, colour, number and self may exist as concepts, but that wouldn't make them immaterial? Unless we agree that's what we mean by concept.

I guess I'm more specifically talking about souls, essences, selves, homonculi, or whatever you want to name them (Speakpigeon posited "bare consciousnesses" that "haunt" individual bodies).

Most atheists, skeptics etc. don't believe in those things. But they implicitly invoke them when they insist that there is something about a particular body and brain among all those that exist or have ever existed that makes it THEIR body and brain. Thomas Nagel expressed it by saying you could line up all the people who have ever lived, list out every detail about them in perfect detail, and still leave out the fact of which one is me. Eliminating each of those humans from existence would be to change my surrounding world, until you get to a particular human, in which case eliminating THAT human would eliminate THE WORLD for me. Yet, nothing about that human is special in any obvious way that would account for this fact. Logically speaking, I could easily imagine another one of the humans in that long list being THE ONE, the anchor for my entire experience of reality, not an object of compassion but self-interest. The accepted secular, non-supernatural view of conscious existence is, paradoxically, that an exhaustive physical description of the whole universe would be incomplete, because it would not include any information about which person had this special status.

 

[PyramidHead]

"It's lucky for me that I was the one who lived and not the one who died, otherwise I wouldn't be here."

What could this possibly mean?

What state of affairs would have to prevail for it to be the case that "I" was in actual fact the twin that died? Once again this seems to rest on the notion that 'my' unique non-physical essence/soul might inhabit either twin. I don't buy into non-physical essences so any speculation that "I" could have been the twin that died makes no sense to me.

We agree; you would have existed no matter which twin was born. I'm just describing the usual view about what was required to happen in order for you to exist, and it has stronger and weaker variants. Some would say their existence depended on a specific pair of gametes being carried to term. You would disagree and say it doesn't matter if it's a specific pair, as long as whatever pair it is has the right genetic information. But that leaves unanswered why a certain genetic signature was "right" to bring you into existence. How different could it have been without erasing your chances of "waking up" in the world as a conscious being? One base pair? Just the non-coding DNA? Different eye color?

 

[Juma]

"It's lucky for me that I was the one who lived and not the one who died, otherwise I wouldn't be here."

What could this possibly mean?

What state of affairs would have to prevail for it to be the case that "I" was in actual fact the twin that died? Once again this seems to rest on the notion that 'my' unique non-physical essence/soul might inhabit either twin. I don't buy into non-physical essences so any speculation that "I" could have been the twin that died makes no sense to me.

We agree; you would have existed no matter which twin was born. I'm just describing the usual view about what was required to happen in order for you to exist, and it has stronger and weaker variants. Some would say their existence depended on a specific pair of gametes being carried to term. You would disagree and say it doesn't matter if it's a specific pair, as long as whatever pair it is has the right genetic information. But that leaves unanswered why a certain genetic signature was "right" to bring you into existence. How different could it have been without erasing your chances of "waking up" in the world as a conscious being? One base pair? Just the non-coding DNA? Different eye color?

Thing is, what is you is all up to the being you are now.
Any one becoming you would be you...

 

[The AntiChris]

But that leaves unanswered why a certain genetic signature was "right" to bring you into existence.

I really don't understand this. What does it mean say that a particular genetic signature must be "right" to bring a specific individual into existence?

How different could it have been without erasing your chances of "waking up" in the world as a conscious being? One base pair? Just the non-coding DNA? Different eye color?

Now your questioning seems to have moved from the philosophical to the scientific (what is required to ensure the creation of a conscious being). I'm confused

 

[Subsymbolic]

Surely the whole thing falls apart here:

This electrode directly records your thoughts, just as the previous model, but it is also able to produce thoughts: instead of showing you an image through the glasses, it directly stimulates your visual processing center in the brain to create it. In a similar way, you are not restricted to sharing words anymore: you can upload your thoughts (any thoughts) to your Couples+ and they will be “read” by your partner, exactly as they were thought. And you can do the same with your images and sounds: everything you see or hear is recorded by the electrode, which sends it to your partner via her own electrode, so that she can see or hear everything you’ve experienced, just as if she was you.

For the argument to work there has to be a single point - the electrode - fulfilling the same role Descartes gave to the pineal gland. Not only does no such place exist but the microstructure of every brain is entirely different. There's no technology that could map brain state to brainstate in this way. Every brain is different and there is not enough architectural similarity at the level that content is superpositionally stored, to be able to map brainstate to brainstate. To put it another way, every brain, and indeed CNS is uniquely structured and tuned.

The scientific issues preclude getting to the philosophical ones.

 

[PyramidHead]

Surely the whole thing falls apart here:

This electrode directly records your thoughts, just as the previous model, but it is also able to produce thoughts: instead of showing you an image through the glasses, it directly stimulates your visual processing center in the brain to create it. In a similar way, you are not restricted to sharing words anymore: you can upload your thoughts (any thoughts) to your Couples+ and they will be “read” by your partner, exactly as they were thought. And you can do the same with your images and sounds: everything you see or hear is recorded by the electrode, which sends it to your partner via her own electrode, so that she can see or hear everything you’ve experienced, just as if she was you.

For the argument to work there has to be a single point - the electrode - fulfilling the same role Descartes gave to the pineal gland. Not only does no such place exist but the microstructure of every brain is entirely different. There's no technology that could map brain state to brainstate in this way. Every brain is different and there is not enough architectural similarity at the level that content is superpositionally stored, to be able to map brainstate to brainstate. To put it another way, every brain, and indeed CNS is uniquely structured and tuned.

The scientific issues preclude getting to the philosophical ones.

The charitable thing to do would be to assume for the sake of argument that those technological hurdles were overcome by whatever device they were wearing. Surely, even if the microstructure of every brain is different, it remains true that every brain has a microstructure, which could in principle be mapped and transmitted as described in the article.

 

[PyramidHead]

But that leaves unanswered why a certain genetic signature was "right" to bring you into existence.

I really don't understand this. What does it mean say that a particular genetic signature must be "right" to bring a specific individual into existence?

From the perspective of the individual, only one genetic makeup would do the trick, right? I mean, think of yourself. If things had gone differently and a different sperm had fertilized the ovum of your mother, you probably believe you wouldn't be here right now. You could line up all the hundreds of thousands of sperms produced by all of your male ancestors and identify one specific lineage that, in retrospect, turned out to be the one that brought you into being. Any deviation from that exact sequence of begettings would have prevented you from existing, which from your perspective must be an incredible stroke of luck.

 

[Subsymbolic]

Surely the whole thing falls apart here:

This electrode directly records your thoughts, just as the previous model, but it is also able to produce thoughts: instead of showing you an image through the glasses, it directly stimulates your visual processing center in the brain to create it. In a similar way, you are not restricted to sharing words anymore: you can upload your thoughts (any thoughts) to your Couples+ and they will be “read” by your partner, exactly as they were thought. And you can do the same with your images and sounds: everything you see or hear is recorded by the electrode, which sends it to your partner via her own electrode, so that she can see or hear everything you’ve experienced, just as if she was you.

For the argument to work there has to be a single point - the electrode - fulfilling the same role Descartes gave to the pineal gland. Not only does no such place exist but the microstructure of every brain is entirely different. There's no technology that could map brain state to brainstate in this way. Every brain is different and there is not enough architectural similarity at the level that content is superpositionally stored, to be able to map brainstate to brainstate. To put it another way, every brain, and indeed CNS is uniquely structured and tuned.

The scientific issues preclude getting to the philosophical ones.

The charitable thing to do would be to assume for the sake of argument that those technological hurdles were overcome by whatever device they were wearing. Surely, even if the microstructure of every brain is different, it remains true that every brain has a microstructure, which could in principle be mapped and transmitted as described in the article.

Sure, but that wouldn't be the killer problem. So let’s say you have mapped both brains perfectly. Now you need to translate the subsymbolic mapping of each brain so that it makes any sense to the other brain.

 

[PyramidHead]

The charitable thing to do would be to assume for the sake of argument that those technological hurdles were overcome by whatever device they were wearing. Surely, even if the microstructure of every brain is different, it remains true that every brain has a microstructure, which could in principle be mapped and transmitted as described in the article.

Sure, but that wouldn't be the killer problem. So let’s say you have mapped both brains perfectly. Now you need to translate the subsymbolic mapping of each brain so that it makes any sense to the other brain.

If there is a computationally possible way to do this, given enough processing power and energy, just assume that's what they did in the example. It's a thought experiment!

 

[The AntiChris]

But that leaves unanswered why a certain genetic signature was "right" to bring you into existence.

I really don't understand this. What does it mean say that a particular genetic signature must be "right" to bring a specific individual into existence?

From the perspective of the individual, only one genetic makeup would do the trick, right?

No. Any change in my initial genetic makeup wouldn't result in my not existing - it might result in aspects of my character, memories etc. being different but I'd still exist.

I mean, think of yourself. If things had gone differently and a different sperm had fertilized the ovum of your mother, you probably believe you wouldn't be here right now.

No, why on earth would I believe that?

You could line up all the hundreds of thousands of sperms produced by all of your male ancestors and identify one specific lineage that, in retrospect, turned out to be the one that brought you into being. Any deviation from that exact sequence of begettings would have prevented you from existing,

I'm afraid this makes absolutely no sense.

Sorry if I appear rather negative but it seems to me that underlying all your questioning is the unstated premise that each conjunction of sperm and egg must create a unique non-physical 'person identifier (the religious would call it a soul).

 

[PyramidHead]

From the perspective of the individual, only one genetic makeup would do the trick, right?

No. Any change in my initial genetic makeup wouldn't result in my not existing - it might result in aspects of my character, memories etc. being different but I'd still exist.

So, what would make those things aspects of YOUR character, memories, etc., as opposed to someone else's? What's the feature of whatever person we're talking about here that makes it you, instead of somebody else?

You could line up all the hundreds of thousands of sperms produced by all of your male ancestors and identify one specific lineage that, in retrospect, turned out to be the one that brought you into being. Any deviation from that exact sequence of begettings would have prevented you from existing,

I'm afraid this makes absolutely no sense.

Sorry if I appear rather negative but it seems to me that underlying all your questioning is the unstated premise that each conjunction of sperm and egg must create a unique non-physical 'person identifier (the religious would call it a soul).

I'm just describing the usual view, which I reject. I'm curious as to why you do too, and whether you follow that rejection to its surprising conclusion.

Let's summarize. We agree that every aspect of your genetic makeup, life history, and brain structure could have been different without that person being someone other than you. Right?

So... what does "you" actually mean, after all of that is off the table? You could have been born as a girl, and it would have still been you--just you, as a girl. You could have been raised in the south of France instead of wherever you were raised, and it would have still been you--just you, raised in the south of France. Let me push one step further: you could have been born from completely different parents, and it would still have been you--just you, born of different parents. Do you still agree?

 

[Subsymbolic]

The charitable thing to do would be to assume for the sake of argument that those technological hurdles were overcome by whatever device they were wearing. Surely, even if the microstructure of every brain is different, it remains true that every brain has a microstructure, which could in principle be mapped and transmitted as described in the article.

Sure, but that wouldn't be the killer problem. So let’s say you have mapped both brains perfectly. Now you need to translate the subsymbolic mapping of each brain so that it makes any sense to the other brain.

If there is a computationally possible way to do this, given enough processing power and energy, just assume that's what they did in the example. It's a thought experiment!

There isn’t. That’s why it is called the problem of other minds. You could try doing it by trial and error, but it would be NP hard. In other words you wouldn’t be able to make any progress before the heat death of the universe. Of course, that only works if you deny mental events and are just trying for a behaviourist account. If you accept mental events, even if they are reducible to physical events, then you also need to achieve that reduction from personal experience to allow you to correlate the physical events with mental events. Even those Cognitive Scientists who believe this to be logically possible think it is practically impossible. You’d need to do it twice. Of course brains are dynamic systems that are changing all the time while you are trying to do all of this...

 

[The AntiChris]

So, what would make those things aspects of YOUR character, memories, etc., as opposed to someone else's?

Because I'm incapable of experiencing anything other than my own character, memories etc.

What's the feature of whatever person we're talking about here that makes it you, instead of somebody else?

The fact that you're interrogating me and not someone else.

I'm just describing the usual view, which I reject. I'm curious as to why you do too, and whether you follow that rejection to its surprising conclusion.

What do you think is the "surprising conclusion"?

Let's summarize. We agree that every aspect of your genetic makeup, life history, and brain structure could have been different without that person being someone other than you. Right?

I must be missing something. Of course I could be very different.

So... what does "you" actually mean, after all of that is off the table?

It's the person to whom you're addressing your questions.

 

[PyramidHead]

If there is a computationally possible way to do this, given enough processing power and energy, just assume that's what they did in the example. It's a thought experiment!

There isn’t. That’s why it is called the problem of other minds. You could try doing it by trial and error, but it would be NP hard. In other words you wouldn’t be able to make any progress before the heat death of the universe. Of course, that only works if you deny mental events and are just trying for a behaviourist account. If you accept mental events, even if they are reducible to physical events, then you also need to achieve that reduction from personal experience to allow you to correlate the physical events with mental events. Even those Cognitive Scientists who believe this to be logically possible think it is practically impossible. You’d need to do it twice. Of course brains are dynamic systems that are changing all the time while you are trying to do all of this...

I don't see how you could possibly know any of this, but sure. I guess the thought experiment won't convince you.

 

[PyramidHead]

Because I'm incapable of experiencing anything other than my own character, memories etc.


The fact that you're interrogating me and not someone else.

I'm just describing the usual view, which I reject. I'm curious as to why you do too, and whether you follow that rejection to its surprising conclusion.

What do you think is the "surprising conclusion"?

Let's summarize. We agree that every aspect of your genetic makeup, life history, and brain structure could have been different without that person being someone other than you. Right?

I must be missing something. Of course I could be very different.

So... what does "you" actually mean, after all of that is off the table?

It's the person to whom you're addressing your questions.

Then, what would it be like for you if you were born of different parents, with a different genetic makeup, different brain structure, and a different life history? If I understand your agreement, you would just be that different person. You would experience that person's conscious existence. Well, compare that person to somebody who was born in ancient Rome. Different parents, different genes, different brain, different life. Were you not also that person, experiencing that person's conscious existence?