Cont: Proof of Immortality, V for Very long discussion

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Jabba said:
H doesn't claim that this self-awareness doesn't exist, it just claims that this self-awareness is physical.
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That's not what he said. He said that under H, the self that reincarnationists are talking about doesn't exist. The recreationists' persistent self is not the same thing as self-awareness. Do not equivocate or put words in other people's mouths.
 
Agatha said:
OK, that seems to be progress. We've come to an understanding that a perfect copy is separate, albeit identical, to the original.

Now if we could return to the question I posed last night when you said that you believed that the two identical copies would have something significantly different between them - what difference do you think there would be, and why?
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OH! I Know! They'll be looking through two sets of zombie eyes who were each begging the question.
 
Jabba said:
Jim,
- I can't be sure we're talking about the same self -- it isn't something we can point at.
- If this was done before I died, would I find myself looking out two sets of eyes?
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JimOfAllTrades,
Don''t fall for Jabba's repeated and continual Appeals to Befuddlement[TM]. He's been pulling this stunt for close to five years on this thread alone.

There is a positive correlation between Jabba's responding to a recent poster and his pulling another Fringe Reset.
 
John Jones said:
JimOfAllTrades,
Don''t fall for Jabba's repeated and continual Appeals to Befuddlement[TM]. He's been pulling this stunt for close to five years on this thread alone.

There is a positive correlation between Jabba's responding to a recent poster and his pulling another Fringe Reset.
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Oh I know, I've been following this thread and it's predecessors from the beginning, but I don't post much. And lately in this thread godless dave, JayUtah, Pixel42, and others have been doing such a good job of keeping Jabba from getting away with his usual stuff that I didn't think I could add much. But every now and then I get the bug and jump in again.
 
JayUtah said:
That's not what he said. He said that under H, the self that reincarnationists are talking about doesn't exist. The recreationists' persistent self is not the same thing as self-awareness. Do not equivocate or put words in other people's mouths.
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- This is where we're passing in the night. The experience that reincarnationists think returns after death must surely be the same experience that you think doesn't.
- Why do you think that they're referring to a different experience?
 
Jabba said:
- This is where we're passing in the night. The experience that reincarnationists think returns after death must surely be the same experience that you think doesn't.
- Why do you think that they're referring to a different experience?
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They are referring to a different cause. You're equivocating on the cause by referring to the experience. The actual debate you're trying to have is about the cause, so that's the debate everyone is quite properly holding you to.
 
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Jabba said:
- This is where we're passing in the night. The experience that reincarnationists think returns after death must surely be the same experience that you think doesn't.
- Why do you think that they're referring to a different experience?
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He doesn't. He is saying that under the hypothesis you are trying to disprove, souls don't exist. Got that? You, the reincarnationists, and Jay are all referring to the soul; you believe souls exist, the reincarnationists believe souls exist, but if H is true, souls don't exist.
 
Anyway, Jabba, back to the question that you have conspicuously failed to answer.

Why do you think there would be a difference between you and a perfect copy of you, and what would that difference be?
 
Jabba said:
- This is where we're passing in the night. The experience that reincarnationists think returns after death must surely be the same experience that you think doesn't.
- Why do you think that they're referring to a different experience?
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Jabba, the reincarnationists and you both believe that there exists an entity, separate from the brain, that is the "self" or "soul". Whether it's physical or non physical, you insist that it is an entity that exists on it's own. In H, there is no such thing, the self is a process in the brain. An action, not an entity.

Also, you have introduced another term, experience, to further muddy the waters. Do you mean experience as a noun or a verb?
 
Jabba said:
- This is where we're passing in the night. The experience that reincarnationists think returns after death must surely be the same experience that you think doesn't.
- Why do you think that they're referring to a different experience?
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They're not referring to a different experience. But you started talking about something different when you said this:

Jabba said:
- Also, it is the self that would be looking out two sets of eyes if it was perfectly reproduced.
- To me, that is the kind of self I'm trying to talk about. I don't know why it doesn't communicate...
- Whatever, I assume that that self could not be physically reproduced.
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So which is it? Are you referring to the experience of a sense of self, or to some immaterial self that is somehow capable of looking out of two sets of eyes?

We accept the existence of the former. We don't accept the existence of the latter. Which one are you talking about?
 
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Jabba said:
- This is where we're passing in the night.
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H and ~H are supposed to pass in the night. That's their job. H explains the sense of self as an emergent property of a functioning human brain. ~H, which includes reincarnation, explains it as some sort of soul. Using Bayes on them is pointless unless they're substantially different.

The experience that reincarnationists think returns after death must surely be the same experience that you think doesn't.
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As others have noted, you've once again changed the language and introduced a new, previously unused and undefined term, to represent the operative phenomenon. You really need to stop playing word games like this, because now you've improperly conflated cause with effect. Specifically -- and I already warned you about this once -- you're trying to hide important differences between H and ~H by folding them inappropriately into E.

E is that a person exists and have a sense of self. H and ~H differ in how that sense of self arises. You want "E has a sense of self" to be inexorably the sense of self (including its causation) as it arises in ~H. That's wrong. Until you correct that error, we cannot proceed.

In considering P(E|H) versus P(E|K), where K is in ~H, it is a foregone conclusion that E is part of both of those scenarios. What E is, or what E means, can't be predicated on either H or K. You can't define E variously for one then the other. E cannot contain prejudicial elements either of materialism or of reincarnationism. It is an observation shorn of speculations of causation. E is simply, "I exist as a self-aware entity." Materialism has one explanation for how that comes about -- one theory as to cause -- and P(E|H) is the probability it works that way in one case E. Reincarnationists have a different explanation -- that your self-awareness is caused by a soul -- and P(E|K) is its probability for the same case E.

Why do you think that they're referring to a different experience?
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I don't.

Now before you wrongly go off and say I'm agreeing with you, go back and read my previous section. Then read it again. Then read it a third time. Until you correct your misunderstanding of cause and effect in this problem, you're just going to make a fool of yourself if you say that agreeing to the effect is the same as agreeing to the cause. I agree that both materialists and reincarnationists are likely pointing to the same set of subjective information when they talk about self-awareness. I don't agree that what the reincarnationists say causes this is the same as in materialism.

You might consider it analogous to symptoms and disorders. If I have a headache, that is the observation. Someone might say I had too much to drink, and that's why I have a headache. Others might say I have a brain tumor, and that's what's causing the headache. Both sides agree that I have a headache, but they disagree on why. The problem in your argument is analogous to being unable to tell the difference between "has a headache" and "has a brain tumor."

Try again, this time with cause and effect in their proper places.
 
Monza said:
Nope. The two identical Jabbas would have the same memories, feelings, thoughts, etc. The 'copy' Jabba would know all of the intimate inner secrets and thoughts of 'original' Jabba. In fact, he would believe that he is the 'original' Jabba. And he wouldn't be wrong as there would be no way to distinguish between the two. His inner self is exactly the same as the other Jabba.

The above holds true at the instantaneous moment two separate Jabbas exist. From that moment, because they occupy slightly different dimensions in space, they would start to diverge from each other. They would then start to have different experiences. Each would remain Jabba but they wouldn't remain identical anymore. This is no different than when two identical VWs diverge as one is driven differently than the other. Bring them back together (either Jabbas or VWs) after a year and the pairs would no longer be identical.
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Monza,
- I accept all of that -- except that about the copy not being wrong. The copy would be wrong about being the original, but without witnesses to what just happened, no one could tell which one was which.
- In Dave's terms, the copy would be identical, but not the same.
 
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