Proof of Immortality, the IV league

[Jabba]

Human beings don't have VINs.

The self identified by its characteristics is the only self that exists under H. If you're talking about some other kind of self, you're not talking about H.

Dave,
- I'm talking about the same ineffable self as is Susan Blackmore.
- That's the E in my formula.
- That's the self to which I'm referring in H (OOFLam).

 

[Jabba]

- Each new consciousness has its own self.
- If I were physically replicated, I would not be looking out of two sets of eyes. That "I" is the "self" I'm talkin about.

 

[jond]

- Each new consciousness has its own self.
- If I were physically replicated, I would not be looking out of two sets of eyes. That "I" is the "self" I'm talkin about.

Jabba, if you were physically replicated, there would be two selves, both would think they are Jabba, and no one would know which was the original. Why you continue to ignore this despite being told an infinite number of times is beyond me.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- I'm talking about the same ineffable self as is Susan Blackmore.

Then you're talking about a self that doesn't exist at all under H.

Although I'd be curious what Susan Blackmore has to say about the ineffable self further on in that book.

- Each new consciousness has its own self.
- If I were physically replicated, I would not be looking out of two sets of eyes.

Because two is more than one. There would be two selves for exactly the same reason that there would be two pairs of eyes.

 

[abaddon]

- Each new consciousness has its own self.
- If I were physically replicated, I would not be looking out of two sets of eyes. That "I" is the "self" I'm talkin about.

Which one?

 

[Belz...]

And that is explicitly and exactly the Texas sharpshooter's fallacy.



Irrelevant. If the self you are speaking of doesn't have articulable characteristics of its own, it simply does not exist in any addressable way. You as the claimant are responsible for defining the characteristics of the thing you imagine exists, and proving by valid and controlled tests of those characteristics that it does exist. Blackmore's pseudo-mystical mumbo-jumbo doesn't cut it in science. This is why she abandoned science and publishes for the mush-headed popular audience now.



Irrelevant. We discussed this with the thought experiment of the hypothetically perfect clone, which you still cannot wrap your mind around.



Asked and answered. In the scientific model, consciousness does not have cardinality.



A VIN is a testable characteristic of a car that has its own well-defined rules. You identify nothing remotely like that as a characteristic of your soul. In fact, you explicitly disavow such things above when you attempt to invoke Blackmore. Improper analogy.

I think you should change the name in the quote to Jabba, not Argumemnon.

 

[jond]

- Each new consciousness has its own self.
- If I were physically replicated, I would not be looking out of two sets of eyes. That "I" is the "self" I'm talkin about.

Oh, and because you're once again going to state that a clone of your DNA won't create the same you: you continue to assert that the self is a thing instead of a process. For some reason you find it impossible to consider that the self does not exist as an entity separate from your brain. But it really is an ongoing process, not an entity. Brain stops, process stops.

Further, because it's a process, every experience you have feeds that process. That time your father told you to never give up? Yes, that's a part of your self. That time you created a thread about the shroud of Turin and ignored all the evidence that dismantled your argument? Yes, that's a part of your self too. All those times people have explained this to you and you've ignored it? Yup, those too are a part of your self. It's not a thing, Jabba, it's a process. Like running. Or yellow.

 

[jond]

Dave,
- I'm talking about the same ineffable self as is Susan Blackmore.
- That's the E in my formula.
- That's the self to which I'm referring in H (OOFLam).

And in science that self is a process. It is fed by every experience you've ever had. And because of that, the only self you could ever be is Jabba.

 

[MRC_Hans]

- Each new consciousness has its own self.
- If I were physically replicated, I would not be looking out of two sets of eyes. That "I" is the "self" I'm talkin about.

I'm sorry, but you are not making sense.

Hans

 

[Belz...]

I'm sorry, but you are not making sense.

Well, at least he's right that someone replicated doesn't experience through the copy. That's always been my objection to teleportation.

 

[Dancing David]

Mojo,

- I wasn't very clear...

- It's how the particular self comes about -- not selves in general -- to which I was referring.

- Also, it's that ineffable kind of self, rather than the self identified by his/her characteristics -- the self (perhaps, illusional) described by Susan Blackmore.
Who – or what – am I? Answers such as ‘I am my body’ or ‘I am my brain’ are unsatisfactory because I don’t feel like a body or a brain. I feel like someone who owns this body and brain. But who could it be who feels as though she lives inside this head and looks out through the eyes? Who is it who seems to be living this life and having these experiences?
Blackmore, Susan. Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions) (Kindle Locations 1064-1067). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.

- More about that later.

- But, most importantly, this particular self is brand new -- the offspring/result of a particular bit of consciousness, and no more limited than the number of consciousnesses possible. We're like recycled yellow Volkswagons, each of us having our own (new) VIN #.

There are bodies and some of them have brains, there is no self other than that of the bodies.

Anatta

 

[Dancing David]

Dave,
- I'm talking about the same ineffable self as is Susan Blackmore.
- That's the E in my formula.
- That's the self to which I'm referring in H (OOFLam).

Susan Blackmore isn't here, there is no ineffable self.

 

[caveman1917]

But that's the same population I used to construct my model to match. In my view, matching is not enough. To count as a useful model, it should have explanatory power as well. And, by explanatory power, I mean it suggests different connections and outcomes from those we used to construct the model in the first place.

I'll try one more example to see if we can agree.
Suppose I sample (using good random technique) the natural numbers. I take a sufficiently large sample (say a few million) and find that about half are evenly divisible by two. I now suggest that the entire population of natural numbers (if infinity bothers us here, we can set some very high limit instead) has this property.

I sample again and get the same results (within some acceptable margin of error).

Now, you seem to be saying the second sampling confirms my hypothesis in some way. I'm saying that it adds no new information, since one of the characteristics of my first sampling was that it represents the entire population fairly. The best I might say is I have demonstrated good sampling technique, not that my hypothesis is anything more than a restatement of the results of my sampling.

If that's misleading or wrong, perhaps you could give an example which illustrates your point - because I suspect we are talking at cross purposes here.

You are assuming that the hypothesis you derive from the first sample is true for the population, hence why you don't see new information from the second sample. Suppose your first sample showed that about half of the numbers are evenly divisible by 3. The second sample refutes that, showing that it was just a statistical fluke in your first sample. You got new information and have updated your beliefs about "half of them are divisible by 3".

 

[JayUtah]

Dave,
- I'm talking about the same ineffable self as is Susan Blackmore.
- That's the E in my formula.
- That's the self to which I'm referring in H (OOFLam).

No, you're groping frantically for whatever extrinsic reference you think will absolve you of the need to present and defend by yourself a complete, coherent, non-contradictory argument.

H is the scientific model of consciousness. In the scientific model, consciousness is an emergent property of a functioning brain. E is that there exist beings with consciousness. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Blackmore's pseudo-philosophical larking about.

As I said yesterday, you're desperately trying to paste onto the scientific model things you pick up from popular mystical tripe and demanding that the scientific model explain them, if only so you can assert that it doesn't or can't. Straw man.

 

[JayUtah]

- Each new consciousness has its own self.
- If I were physically replicated, I would not be looking out of two sets of eyes. That "I" is the "self" I'm talkin about.

No. Under H, consciousness is an emergent property of a functioning brain. Consciousness is not an enumerable substance or quantity. Physical items that exhibit that property may be enumerated. But the property is not the item or an item. This is not even difficult from a philosophical standpoint, so I fail to see why you're having so much trouble with this concept.

 

[aleCcowaN]

... If I were physically replicated, I would not be looking out of two sets of eyes...

Ahhh! You're starting to understand ... or is that evidence a new fringe reset is on the making?

 

[abaddon]

Ahhh! You're starting to understand ... or is that evidence a new fringe reset is on the making?

Who knows? He claimed before that he actually would be looking out of two sets of eyes somewhere back in the depths of the thread. I'm going with another fringe reset. It's the only constant in this thread.

 

[JayUtah]

Ahhh! You're starting to understand ... or is that evidence a new fringe reset is on the making?

Fringe reset. Which is to say, this "one soul looking out of two eyes" paradox-in-a-teacup is how he always tries to get around the problem that "emergent property" in the scientific model is entirely dissimilar from the "immortal soul" of his model.

 

[godless dave]

Which is to say, this "one soul looking out of two eyes" paradox-in-a-teacup is how he always tries to get around the problem that "emergent property" in the scientific model is entirely dissimilar from the "immortal soul" of his model.

I still don't understand why he thinks it's a gotcha. If you could have one soul looking through two sets of eyes, that would be evidence that selves aren't material and aren't tied to a specific physical brain.

 

[Belz...]

I still don't understand why he thinks it's a gotcha. If you could have one soul looking through two sets of eyes, that would be evidence that selves aren't material and aren't tied to a specific physical brain.

It's also be both highly confusing and useful. Imagine the black ops you could achieve if the team members didn't need to actually communicate!

Also, kinky stuff.