Identity is in the map. There is no objective answer there, just various models where the idea of a unique identity is more useful or less useful. It’s not useful for describing a splitting worm. It’s useful to describe the feeling of being the same person as yesterday. It is less useful in a hypothetical world with human clones. It is only marginally useful for multiples or for people with DID. It may not make sense in some cultures where people identify with a group more than with a body.
Let us not try to stretch a model beyond its domain of applicability.
But the specific concept of identity must map to something in the territory, otherwise it’s empty, so it can’t be only in the map.
If it was people who could split, I’d still be interested in knowing if I black out forever, or if I have a 50% of subjective experience probability of finding myself in each continuation. If someone told me that there was no objective answer there, I couldn’t imagine what would that look like. I can imagine blacking out forever, or rolling the dice, but not there being no objective answer as to whether or not either of those two happens.
We could say that by switching the model, we can switch which answer is correct, but that’s always true for every question (unless it’s a logical necessity/impossibility), so I’m not sure what makes identity special in that sense.
But the specific concept of identity must map to something in the territory, otherwise it’s empty, so it can’t be only in the map
Yes, it corresponds to the part of the territory where there are single-mind non-clonable humans.
If it was people who could split, I’d still be interested in knowing if I black out forever, or if I have a 50% of subjective experience probability of finding myself in each continuation.
I don’t think you can profitably use the notion of probability here. If you are one of the clones, and you remember being the pre-cloned human, you can claim that you have the same identity if that is what feels like to you. There is no “objective identity” here. Same with all other clones. There is no contradiction between multiple clones having the same identity if you define identity as “remembering being the pre-cloned human”. Of course, once the experiences diverge, each one has their own identity.
We could say that by switching the model, we can switch which answer is correct, but that’s always true for every question (unless it’s a logical necessity/impossibility), so I’m not sure what makes identity special in that sense.
The difference is usefulness/accuracy of a given model. If an outdated model leads you astray, come up with a better one. Just because a model worked in one setting, doesn’t mean it would work in a different one.
So your position would be that if you split, there is no fact on the matter as to whether you experience blacking out forever (like after a car accident), or whether you roll a dice as to which descendant you wake up as?
There is no objective “fact of the matter”, no. Identity is an emergent subjective concept. There is no “experience” of a blackout, as far as we know, since there is apparently no memory being recorded during that time. The experience comes from waking up and reflecting on what you recall, and this reflection can lead to different feelings for different people (or different parts of the same person). Privileging identity over brain functioning is not a great approach.
We don’t need to talk about splits to consider this sort of question.
Suppose a person at 2:00 viscerally feels that they aren’t the same person as a second earlier, even despite having all the same memories from before 2:00, personality, skills, values, beliefs, and so on, except that they are utterly convinced that they came into existence just now with all of those.
Should we believe that the previous person has died? Is there anything in the territory that can make it either a fact or a delusion?
Going further: does it make any sense to say that a person could die and be replaced by another who does not have that belief, so seamlessly that nobody could possibly ever tell the difference including the person who replaced the deceased?
My strong suspicion is that there isn’t anything in the territory that could make either of these true or false. That it’s a mental illusion, a belief that points to nothing fundamental but is just a byproduct of a model with an extraneous parameter.
Even if something like souls exist, then in the first scenario there is still no reason to expect this sudden belief to be strong evidence of truth that a new soul was inserted into the body. I don’t think souls are likely to come with clocks saying how long they’ve been present in a body, whereas people do observably experience hallucinations and delusions about all sorts of things.
In the second scenario, I’m not sure that it makes a difference at all, even if souls exist. If some entity has all the memories, personality, skills, values, beliefs, feelings and so on of a person, then as far as I can tell they simply are that person, regardless of whether or not they have the same “soul”. Instantly destroying a soul and replacing it with another having all of those properties seems to be an operation that makes absolutely no observable difference to anyone, both objectively and subjectively.
My strong suspicion is that there isn’t anything in the territory that could make either of these true or false. That it’s a mental illusion, a belief that points to nothing fundamental but is just a byproduct of a model with an extraneous parameter.
I’m not sure that’s coherent. If we perceive it, there must be an entity or a process in the territory corresponding to it, which, in turn, makes it true (or false, in case the referent is missing—it seems like I could be mistaken about whether I’m a continuation of a particular person (for example, if I wake up tomorrow believing that I’m you)).
There are some objective means by which we can test properties associated with “X is a continuation of Y”, such as finding out whether X can answer questions consistently with having been Y. Those aspects are in the territory, but I don’t think they capture anybody’s concept of personal identity usefully.
If you can imagine doing every possible test and still not knowing the answer, that seems likely to be a sign that the question is referring to a distinction that is only in a model and isn’t in the territory at all.
That seems to be the case here. Most of humanity has a model of personal identity that works well for their ordinary experience: for each person X_now, and for each time t > now, there is exactly one person X_t such that X_t is a continuation of X_now and reversed for birth/conception < t < now. Many even extrapolate it past bodily destruction.
This relation has nice properties such as its symmetric extension (X continues Y or Y continues X) being an equivalence relation that partitions the world of people into distinct equivalence classes.
It is a less useful model in the presence of probably physically possible but currently implausible circumstances such as minds that can be copied, edited, overwritten, or merged. If a question is based on such a restricted model applied to the wider space of possibilities, it isn’t likely to have any answer.
I see, for me, if an ontology says that there is no fact on the matter as to whether X is a continuation of Y, it means the ontology has to be discarded and replaced by another one, but I can see how some people would be unbothered by their next experience being undefined, as long as it doesn’t happen too often.
Identity is in the map. There is no objective answer there, just various models where the idea of a unique identity is more useful or less useful. It’s not useful for describing a splitting worm. It’s useful to describe the feeling of being the same person as yesterday. It is less useful in a hypothetical world with human clones. It is only marginally useful for multiples or for people with DID. It may not make sense in some cultures where people identify with a group more than with a body.
Let us not try to stretch a model beyond its domain of applicability.
But the specific concept of identity must map to something in the territory, otherwise it’s empty, so it can’t be only in the map.
If it was people who could split, I’d still be interested in knowing if I black out forever, or if I have a 50% of subjective
experienceprobability of finding myself in each continuation. If someone told me that there was no objective answer there, I couldn’t imagine what would that look like. I can imagine blacking out forever, or rolling the dice, but not there being no objective answer as to whether or not either of those two happens.We could say that by switching the model, we can switch which answer is correct, but that’s always true for every question (unless it’s a logical necessity/impossibility), so I’m not sure what makes identity special in that sense.
Yes, it corresponds to the part of the territory where there are single-mind non-clonable humans.
I don’t think you can profitably use the notion of probability here. If you are one of the clones, and you remember being the pre-cloned human, you can claim that you have the same identity if that is what feels like to you. There is no “objective identity” here. Same with all other clones. There is no contradiction between multiple clones having the same identity if you define identity as “remembering being the pre-cloned human”. Of course, once the experiences diverge, each one has their own identity.
The difference is usefulness/accuracy of a given model. If an outdated model leads you astray, come up with a better one. Just because a model worked in one setting, doesn’t mean it would work in a different one.
So your position would be that if you split, there is no fact on the matter as to whether you experience blacking out forever (like after a car accident), or whether you roll a dice as to which descendant you wake up as?
There is no objective “fact of the matter”, no. Identity is an emergent subjective concept. There is no “experience” of a blackout, as far as we know, since there is apparently no memory being recorded during that time. The experience comes from waking up and reflecting on what you recall, and this reflection can lead to different feelings for different people (or different parts of the same person). Privileging identity over brain functioning is not a great approach.
Thank you for explaining this. I don’t think this is coherent, but now I understand what you mean.
Well, I find my approach perfectly coherent, unlike the alternatives that pretend to be objective :)
That’s valid.
We don’t need to talk about splits to consider this sort of question.
Suppose a person at 2:00 viscerally feels that they aren’t the same person as a second earlier, even despite having all the same memories from before 2:00, personality, skills, values, beliefs, and so on, except that they are utterly convinced that they came into existence just now with all of those.
Should we believe that the previous person has died? Is there anything in the territory that can make it either a fact or a delusion?
Going further: does it make any sense to say that a person could die and be replaced by another who does not have that belief, so seamlessly that nobody could possibly ever tell the difference including the person who replaced the deceased?
My strong suspicion is that there isn’t anything in the territory that could make either of these true or false. That it’s a mental illusion, a belief that points to nothing fundamental but is just a byproduct of a model with an extraneous parameter.
Even if something like souls exist, then in the first scenario there is still no reason to expect this sudden belief to be strong evidence of truth that a new soul was inserted into the body. I don’t think souls are likely to come with clocks saying how long they’ve been present in a body, whereas people do observably experience hallucinations and delusions about all sorts of things.
In the second scenario, I’m not sure that it makes a difference at all, even if souls exist. If some entity has all the memories, personality, skills, values, beliefs, feelings and so on of a person, then as far as I can tell they simply are that person, regardless of whether or not they have the same “soul”. Instantly destroying a soul and replacing it with another having all of those properties seems to be an operation that makes absolutely no observable difference to anyone, both objectively and subjectively.
I’m not sure that’s coherent. If we perceive it, there must be an entity or a process in the territory corresponding to it, which, in turn, makes it true (or false, in case the referent is missing—it seems like I could be mistaken about whether I’m a continuation of a particular person (for example, if I wake up tomorrow believing that I’m you)).
There are some objective means by which we can test properties associated with “X is a continuation of Y”, such as finding out whether X can answer questions consistently with having been Y. Those aspects are in the territory, but I don’t think they capture anybody’s concept of personal identity usefully.
With strong enough models of the mind we may even be able to objectively predict whether X considers themself to be a continuation of Y. This still does not mean that personal identity is in the territory, any more than the blegg/rube distinction is in the territory in https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yA4gF5KrboK2m2Xu7/how-an-algorithm-feels-from-inside.
If you can imagine doing every possible test and still not knowing the answer, that seems likely to be a sign that the question is referring to a distinction that is only in a model and isn’t in the territory at all.
That seems to be the case here. Most of humanity has a model of personal identity that works well for their ordinary experience: for each person X_now, and for each time t > now, there is exactly one person X_t such that X_t is a continuation of X_now and reversed for birth/conception < t < now. Many even extrapolate it past bodily destruction.
This relation has nice properties such as its symmetric extension (X continues Y or Y continues X) being an equivalence relation that partitions the world of people into distinct equivalence classes.
It is a less useful model in the presence of probably physically possible but currently implausible circumstances such as minds that can be copied, edited, overwritten, or merged. If a question is based on such a restricted model applied to the wider space of possibilities, it isn’t likely to have any answer.
I see, for me, if an ontology says that there is no fact on the matter as to whether X is a continuation of Y, it means the ontology has to be discarded and replaced by another one, but I can see how some people would be unbothered by their next experience being undefined, as long as it doesn’t happen too often.