Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

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Jabba said:
Dave,
- My claim is that a perfect copy of me would be missing something -- my self awareness; whereas, a perfect copy of your wife's Beetle, would not be missing something (it would not be missing anything).
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If a replica of you is missing 'your self awareness' (even though it would have an identical self awareness to yours) then by the same logic, a replica of you would be missing everything, as the atoms, molecules, cells, organs, shape, colour, etc. would just be replicas of those things you have, the replica wouldn't have the 'same' shape as the original, just an identical shape.

Depending on how you choose to equivocate on the meaning of the word 'same', a replica of you would either be missing everything or nothing. Singling out your sense of self as being something 'missing' is just special pleading.

Agreeing for argument sake that a replica of you would not have the 'same' sense of self, meaning that the sense of self would be a replica of your sense of self and not a continuation of your currently self, then that in no way makes it something random, anymore than the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle replica is 'random' because it's not the 'same' shape as the original, just an identical shape. And because we don't have a 'formula' for the 'same' shape of a Volkswagen Beetle, the shape is therefore 'random'.
 
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Jabba said:
Dave,
- My claim is that a perfect copy of me would be missing something -- my self awareness; whereas, a perfect copy of your wife's Beetle, would not be missing something (it would not be missing anything).
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And that claim is un evidenced in all ways, what makes you certain that you are the same 'me' you were the day before?
 
Jabba said:
Dave,
- My claim is that a perfect copy of me would be missing something -- my self awareness; whereas, a perfect copy of your wife's Beetle, would not be missing something (it would not be missing anything).
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We know that this is your claim, but it's simply not correct. A perfect copy of you would include a perfect copy of your brain. This perfect copy would have every neuron and glial cell connected in exactly the same way as they are in your brain, and those neurons and neuoroglia would transmit identical signals via identical synapses. The emergent property of your brain - your consciousness/self awareness/sense of self - would be identical.

If you want to convince others of your claim, you'll need to show some evidence to support your claim, something more than just a feeling or a desire not to die.

What would be missing from this perfect copy of you that would prevent it having an identical sense of self?
 
Agatha said:
We know that this is your claim, but it's simply not correct. A perfect copy of you would include a perfect copy of your brain. This perfect copy would have every neuron and glial cell connected in exactly the same way as they are in your brain, and those neurons and neuoroglia would transmit identical signals via identical synapses. The emergent property of your brain - your consciousness/self awareness/sense of self - would be identical.

If you want to convince others of your claim, you'll need to show some evidence to support your claim, something more than just a feeling or a desire not to die.

What would be missing from this perfect copy of you that would prevent it having an identical sense of self?
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Agatha,
- If we produced that perfect copy while I was still alive, would I find myself looking out two sets of eyes?
 
Jabba said:
Agatha,
- If we produced that perfect copy while I was still alive, would I find myself looking out two sets of eyes?
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Jabba, this has been answered many times. There would be two Jabbas, each would think they were Jabba, and no one would have any way of knowing which was which.
 
Jabba said:
Agatha,
- If we produced that perfect copy while I was still alive, would I find myself looking out two sets of eyes?
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No, because two identical things are two things, not one. The two identical-but-separate Jabbas don't share the same consciousness, they have identical-but-separate consciousnesses.

At the moment of replication, there are two Jabbas. For convenience, and without knowing or implying anything about which one was the original and which the copy, we'll call them Jabba1 and Jabba2. At that moment of replication, everything about those two separate Jabbas is identical - including everything about their brains. Each Jabba has an identical set of eyes, and each set of eyes is connected via the optic nerve to each identical but separate brain. (The process of seeing and interpreting what is seen is simplified here to save my typing fingers).

What Jabba1 sees through his eyes is processed in Jabba1's brain. What Jabba2 sees (which will be slightly different, given that both identical-but-separate Jabbas cannot occupy the same point in space) is processed in Jabba2's brain.
 
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jond said:
You may have missed this question, so I will ask again:

Why do you continue to to ignore the fact that however unlikely your current existence is, it remains far more likely than your scenario in which you not only have your body, but also have a soul which somehow must connect with your body?
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Jond,
- I'll try to answer your question -- but, it will probably take awhile...
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- So jond, I think you're saying that an event should be less likely to occur than another event if, for one thing, the former event has more requirements required (and for another thing, whose requirements are more difficult).
- If that's correct, I'll try to answer when I get back from my run.
 
Jabba said:
If we produced that perfect copy while I was still alive, would I find myself looking out two sets of eyes?
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Under H, no. "Myself" is a subjective construct under H, not an externality. Thus one organism looks out one set of eyes and another organism looks out another set of eyes, and both have an identical subjective sense of self.
 
Jabba said:
Agatha,
- If we produced that perfect copy while I was still alive, would I find myself looking out two sets of eyes?
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Of course not. There would be two Jabbas. Each of them would be looking through his own eyes. Each of them would not be looking through the other Jabba's eyes.

They would be two Jabbas. Not one Jabba with two bodies. They would be identical, but there would be two of them. The copy would not be the original, it would be a second, identical, Jabba.

Just as, if you were to be perfectly reproduced after you die, the copy would not be you; it would be another Jabba identical to you.

Your problem here appears to be an inability to understand that if there are two identical entities, there are two of them. Not one. Two. More than one.

I apologise if this isn't "friendly" enough for your liking.
 
Jabba said:
- So jond, I think you're saying that an event should be less likely to occur than another event if, for one thing, the former event has more requirements required (and for another thing, whose requirements are more difficult).
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No, he's saying that if an event has all the same requirements as another event, and also has some more requirements, it is less likely (unless the likelihood of the extra requirements is 100%, of course, in which case the two event have equal likelihood). But there is no way the event with mire requirements can be less unlikely than the event with fewer requirements.
 
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Jabba said:
- So jond, I think you're saying...
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You're obfuscating a very simple concept.

An event can't be more probable than the conditions it depends on, when considered broadly.

Your theory requires (1) a particular physical body, (2) a particular soul, (3) some mechanism to combine them.

Materialism requires (1) a particular physical body.

You're trying to argue that materialism is less probable than your theory. But your theory requires the same thing (1) as materialism, and then also additional things (2) and (3) that have their own probabilities. When those combine with (1), the result cannot possibly be more probable than (1) alone.
 
Jabba said:
- So jond, I think you're saying that an event should be less likely to occur than another event if, for one thing, the former event has more requirements required (and for another thing, whose requirements are more difficult).
- If that's correct, I'll try to answer when I get back from my run.
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JayUtah answered perfectly.
 
Agatha said:
No, because two identical things are two things, not one. The two identical-but-separate Jabbas don't share the same consciousness, they have identical-but-separate consciousnesses.
At the moment of replication, there are two Jabbas. For convenience, and without knowing or implying anything about which one was the original and which the copy, we'll call them Jabba1 and Jabba2. At that moment of replication, everything about those two separate Jabbas is identical - including everything about their brains. Each Jabba has an identical set of eyes, and each set of eyes is connected via the optic nerve to each identical but separate brain. (The process of seeing and interpreting what is seen is simplified here to save my typing fingers).

What Jabba1 sees through his eyes is processed in Jabba1's brain. What Jabba2 sees (which will be slightly different, given that both identical-but-separate Jabbas cannot occupy the same point in space) is processed in Jabba2's brain.
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Agatha,
- Good answer. That's my point.
- It seems to me that there would be something significantly different between the two copies of me, but not between the two copies of Dave's wife's VWs.
 
Jabba said:
Agatha,
- Good answer. That's my point.
- It seems to me that there would be something significantly different between the two copies of me, but not between the two copies of Dave's wife's VWs.
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See my earlier response to that point.
 
Jabba said:
Agatha,
- Good answer. That's my point.
- It seems to me that there would be something significantly different between the two copies of me, but not between the two copies of Dave's wife's VWs.
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Why?

Why couldn't there be two separate but identical selves?
 
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Jabba said:
It seems to me that there would be something significantly different between the two copies of me...
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Under H there would not be.

...but not between the two copies of Dave's wife's VWs.
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Under H there is no difference in significance between the emergent properties of an organism and the emergent properties of a Volkswagen. That's not to say they have the same palette of emergent properties. It's to say there's nothing "magical" about the emergent properties of the human organism to make them behave differently than any other example of emergence.
 
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