These various ideas about identity don’t seem to me to be things you can “prove” or “argue for”. They’re mostly just definitions that you adopt or don’t adopt. Arguing about them is kind of pointless.
I suppose that actual ground-truth knowledge of what qualia are and how they arise might help, since a lot of people are going to wrap certain things about qualia into their ideas about identity… but that knowledge is not available.
I absolutely disagree. The basic question of “if I die but my brain gets scanned beforehand and emulated, do I nonetheless continue living (in the sense of, say, anticipating the same kinds of experiences)?” seems the complete opposite of pointless, and the kind of conundrum in which agreeing or disagreeing with computationalism leads to completely different answers.
Perhaps there is a meaningful linguistic/semantic component to this, but in the example above, it seems understanding the nature of identity is decision-theoretically relevant for how one should think about whether WBE would be good or bad (in this particular respect, at least).
He didn’t say the question is pointless, he said that arguing about them is kind of pointless. It’s an empirical question for which we have no good evidence. The belief also pays no rent, unless you can actually get your brain scanned.
He didn’t say the question is pointless, he said that arguing about them is kind of pointless. It’s an empirical question for which we have no good evidence.
… what? I’m confused what you’re referring to.
He said the question was “mostly” a matter of “just definitions that you adopt or don’t adopt.” How is that an “empirical question”?And if we have “no good evidence” for it, why is a site moderator saying that the assumption of computationalism is so reasonable (and, implicitly, well-established) that you don’t even need to argue for it in a curated post?
Moreover,I disagreed with his conclusion,and in any case,as has already been written about on this site many times, if you are actually just disputing definitions (as he claims we are), then you are dealing with a pointless (and even wrong) question. So, in this case, you can’t say “arguing about them is kind of pointless” without also saying “the question is pointless.”
do I nonetheless continue living (in the sense of, say, anticipating the same kinds of experiences)?
Does who continue living? The question isn’t what experiences this or that copy or upload or person-who-came-out-of-the-transporter or whatever has. The question is generally who that copy/upload/etc is.
understanding the nature of identity
What I’m trying to say is that there is no actual “nature of identity”.
Nobody’s disagreeing about anything physical, or anything measurable, or even about the logical implications of some set of premises. People are saying “yes, that would still be me”, or “no, that would not still be me”, based on exactly the same facts (and often exactly the same anticipated experiences, depending on the “what has qualia” thing).
These various ideas about identity don’t seem to me to be things you can “prove” or “argue for”. They’re mostly just definitions that you adopt or don’t adopt. Arguing about them is kind of pointless.
I suppose that actual ground-truth knowledge of what qualia are and how they arise might help, since a lot of people are going to wrap certain things about qualia into their ideas about identity… but that knowledge is not available.
I absolutely disagree. The basic question of “if I die but my brain gets scanned beforehand and emulated, do I nonetheless continue living (in the sense of, say, anticipating the same kinds of experiences)?” seems the complete opposite of pointless, and the kind of conundrum in which agreeing or disagreeing with computationalism leads to completely different answers.
Perhaps there is a meaningful linguistic/semantic component to this, but in the example above, it seems understanding the nature of identity is decision-theoretically relevant for how one should think about whether WBE would be good or bad (in this particular respect, at least).
He didn’t say the question is pointless, he said that arguing about them is kind of pointless. It’s an empirical question for which we have no good evidence. The belief also pays no rent, unless you can actually get your brain scanned.
… what? I’m confused what you’re referring to.
He said the question was “mostly” a matter of “just definitions that you adopt or don’t adopt.” How is that an “empirical question”? And if we have “no good evidence” for it, why is a site moderator saying that the assumption of computationalism is so reasonable (and, implicitly, well-established) that you don’t even need to argue for it in a curated post?
Moreover, I disagreed with his conclusion, and in any case, as has already been written about on this site many times, if you are actually just disputing definitions (as he claims we are), then you are dealing with a pointless (and even wrong) question. So, in this case, you can’t say “arguing about them is kind of pointless” without also saying “the question is pointless.”
Does who continue living? The question isn’t what experiences this or that copy or upload or person-who-came-out-of-the-transporter or whatever has. The question is generally who that copy/upload/etc is.
What I’m trying to say is that there is no actual “nature of identity”.
Nobody’s disagreeing about anything physical, or anything measurable, or even about the logical implications of some set of premises. People are saying “yes, that would still be me”, or “no, that would not still be me”, based on exactly the same facts (and often exactly the same anticipated experiences, depending on the “what has qualia” thing).