I disagree with the whole distinction. “My sensor” is indexical. By saying it from my own mouth, I effectively point at myself: “I’m talking about this guy here.”
Also, your possible worlds are not connected to each other. “I” “could” stand up right now because the version of me that stands up would share a common past with the other versions, namely my present and my past, but you haven’t provided a common past between your possible worlds, so there is no question of the robots from different ones sharing an identity. As for picking out one robot from the others in the same world, you might equally wonder how we can refer to this or that inanimate object without confusing it with indistinguishable ones. The answer is the same: indexicals. We distinguish them by pointing at them. There is nothing special about the question of talking about ourselves.
As for the sleeping beauty problem, it’s a matter of simple conditional probability: “when you wake up, what’s the probability?” 1⁄3. If you had asked, “when you wake up, what’s the probability of having woken up?” The answer would be one, even though you might never wake up. The fact that you are a (or “the”) conscious observer doesn’t matter. It works the same from the third person. If, instead of waking someone up, the scientist had planned to throw a rock on the ground, and the question were, “when the rock is thrown on the ground, what’s the probability of the coin having come up heads?” It would all work out the same. The answer would still be 1⁄3.
I would say that English uses indexicals to signify and say 1P sentences (probably with several exceptions, because English). Pointing to yourself doesn’t help specify your location from the 0P point of view because it’s referencing the thing it’s trying to identify. You can just use yourself as the reference point, but that’s exactly what the 1P perspective lets you do.
I’m not sure whether I agree with Epirito or Adele here. I feel confused and unclear about this whole discussion. But I would like to try to illustrate what I think Epirito is talking about, by modifying Adele’s image to have a robot with an arm and a speaker, capable of pointing at itself and saying something like ‘this robot that is speaking and that the speaking robot is pointing to, sees red’.
“it’s referencing the thing it’s trying to identify”
I don’t understand why you think that fails.
If I point at a rock, does the direction of my finger not privilege the rock I’m pointing at above all others? Even by looking at merely possible worlds from a disembodied perspective, you can still see a man pointing to a rock and know which rock he’s talking about.
My understanding is that your 1p perspective concerns sense data, but I’m not talking about the appearance of a rock when I point at it. I’m talking about the rock itself. Even when I sense no rock I can still refer to a possible rock by saying “if there is a rock in front of me, I want you to pick it up.”
I disagree with the whole distinction. “My sensor” is indexical. By saying it from my own mouth, I effectively point at myself: “I’m talking about this guy here.” Also, your possible worlds are not connected to each other. “I” “could” stand up right now because the version of me that stands up would share a common past with the other versions, namely my present and my past, but you haven’t provided a common past between your possible worlds, so there is no question of the robots from different ones sharing an identity. As for picking out one robot from the others in the same world, you might equally wonder how we can refer to this or that inanimate object without confusing it with indistinguishable ones. The answer is the same: indexicals. We distinguish them by pointing at them. There is nothing special about the question of talking about ourselves. As for the sleeping beauty problem, it’s a matter of simple conditional probability: “when you wake up, what’s the probability?” 1⁄3. If you had asked, “when you wake up, what’s the probability of having woken up?” The answer would be one, even though you might never wake up. The fact that you are a (or “the”) conscious observer doesn’t matter. It works the same from the third person. If, instead of waking someone up, the scientist had planned to throw a rock on the ground, and the question were, “when the rock is thrown on the ground, what’s the probability of the coin having come up heads?” It would all work out the same. The answer would still be 1⁄3.
I would say that English uses indexicals to signify and say 1P sentences (probably with several exceptions, because English). Pointing to yourself doesn’t help specify your location from the 0P point of view because it’s referencing the thing it’s trying to identify. You can just use yourself as the reference point, but that’s exactly what the 1P perspective lets you do.
I’m not sure whether I agree with Epirito or Adele here. I feel confused and unclear about this whole discussion. But I would like to try to illustrate what I think Epirito is talking about, by modifying Adele’s image to have a robot with an arm and a speaker, capable of pointing at itself and saying something like ‘this robot that is speaking and that the speaking robot is pointing to, sees red’.
“it’s referencing the thing it’s trying to identify” I don’t understand why you think that fails. If I point at a rock, does the direction of my finger not privilege the rock I’m pointing at above all others? Even by looking at merely possible worlds from a disembodied perspective, you can still see a man pointing to a rock and know which rock he’s talking about. My understanding is that your 1p perspective concerns sense data, but I’m not talking about the appearance of a rock when I point at it. I’m talking about the rock itself. Even when I sense no rock I can still refer to a possible rock by saying “if there is a rock in front of me, I want you to pick it up.”