Does the traditional atheistic worldview contradict materialism?

[yy2bggggs]

Not a problem here. You see this is a bit difficult, because everyone here has his own definition of continuity.

The definitions are not as different as you think.

What thesis is non sequitur to what premise?

Topic: Continuity of self.
A to B: Change of appearance.
B to C: Change of residence.
C to D: Change of personality.
Change of appearance, change of residence, and change of personality have nothing to do with continuity of the self.

Yes, it's not perfect. But it doesn't have to be. The point here was not to make you into a perfect copy of me.

But that's what the point should be, because this is your thesis from the OP:

...in a certain sense "you" are (and "I" am) all conscious beings that live, ... explains why you perceive yourself to be the same person that you were 5 years ago: because "you" are all persons in existence anyway ... Another way to look at it is empty individualism ... open and empty individualism are just different but equally valid views on the same model​

If you don't make me equivalent to you, then you have not demonstrated a sense in which we are the same individual.

You can simply replace scenario #1 with one of your liking where some transformation takes place but the continuity according to your definiton is not lost. Scenario #3 will always constitute a complete break in continuity (death).

Scenario #3 is clear as mud. This is my understanding of it.

1. I die in state A.
2. ???
3. Some person is made, with none of my memories. I think you somehow used the matter in my corpse to make him.

As much as I understand scenario 3, though, there would be nothing about this state E guy that is the same person as the guy in 1. The fact that you made the state E guy out of molecules in my corpse is irrelevant. You may as well have bought the matter at your local chemistry shop.

The point of the whole thought experiment is that we have the EXACT same person (including subjective self) at state E in scenario #1 and #3.

But you're doing this again. You're comparing the penny in my pocket to what would have been that penny if it were in France. Such comparisons do not make sense; it's a reification.

One time we get there with a break in continuity and one time with continuity preserved. So this shows that continuity CANNOT have an effect on the persistence of your subjective self.

Disregarding how I defined personal identity, and the fact that in scenario 3, by my definition, you cannot say that E is the same person as A; you did not actually show what you claimed to show in this post. You're confusing equivalence with identity, same as IacopoV. See post #91.

So you think that in scenario #1 the continuity was ended while the guy was slowly transforming, similar to what had happened if he had died?

Sort of; you need to be more specific here. If you're asking how I would answer the question: "Is the guy in scenario #1 state E the same person as scenario #1 state A?", then I would say no.

 

[IacopoV]

Hello. I have little time today, so some notes for only few post.

yy2bggggs (#108):

No, I too meant "identical memories", identical brain and so forth. I don't want push Open Individualism here. Just to show that non-locality is unavoidable for every materialist view, although limited only in some exceptional circumstances (no matter how much exceptional).

PixyMisa (#109):

Thank you for the link. Anyway I read this counter-argument for microtubules hypothesis, and I read also about another failure of this theory for some properties of Fröhlich condensed (I don't know the exact name in english) but I still think that quantum phenomena should have a role in the consciousness, and even the researches are still divided in pro and cons. I am not a professinal but I am a programmer and I studied logical network and theory of computability and I am convinced that a classical logical network, however complex, still remains a logical network, with deterministic behaviour and no possibility to let magically emerge any intentionality. In this framework the emersion of consciousness not only would remain something "magic", but also would be completely useless even for the selection of species. I think that consciousness have sense only if it may have a role in evolution, but this implies that it can influence matter somehow. In a classical environment and in a deterministic world this faculty were useless. In a quantum world this may have the opportunity to have some influence. I am aware that all the "quantum werdness" has been too easily claimed to explain a lot of stuff like telepathy or preveggence or other stuff like this, but consciousness is anyhaw the most difficult property in the world that we may try to explain. Anyway, these hypotheses did not affect the main problem about the personal identity.

Darat and PixiMisa again (#110 and #111) but interesting for many others too:

My basic question is: what do you think that might influence your personal identity? It's not just a convention. Imagine to be one of two identical replicas. You argue that they have two different personal identity. You may think "how strange is to be alive! But here I am". OK. But from a materialist point of view, you should think that you are alive because a body has been built with those characteristics that precisely define you. But looking at you replicas you might say: well, these characteristics are not sufficient, because here's another replica with the very same ones, and we have different identities. So, what else you may imagine that had defined that only in one of the two cases you had to born, and the other no? what you imagine that were the condition required to build a living being with your personal identity, i.e. YOU? You can see that just to count the bodies cannot be a cause. A dualist people may well say: each creature have a distinct soul because God create a different one for each of us. But we are atheist and materialist, so we cannot appeal to this. You must imagine a set of causes that globally made you be alive.

Sorry for the other posts, I will continue tomorrow. Here's about 4.00am (Italy).

 

[yy2bggggs]

yy2bggggs (#108):

No, I too meant "identical memories", identical brain and so forth. I don't want push Open Individualism here. Just to show that non-locality is unavoidable for every materialist view, although limited only in some exceptional circumstances (no matter how much exceptional).

No, you meant equivalent. Trust me .

Brain X being identical to brain Y means that X and Y are the same brain. This was not what you meant.

 

[PixyMisa]

Thank you for the link. Anyway I read this counter-argument for microtubules hypothesis, and I read also about another failure of this theory for some properties of Fröhlich condensed (I don't know the exact name in english) but I still think that quantum phenomena should have a role in the consciousness

What role? Why do you think this? What's the evidence?

I am not a professinal but I am a programmer and I studied logical network and theory of computability and I am convinced that a classical logical network, however complex, still remains a logical network, with deterministic behaviour and no possibility to let magically emerge any intentionality.

What is "magical" about intentionality that it cannot emerge from a deterministic system?

In this framework the emersion of consciousness not only would remain something "magic", but also would be completely useless even for the selection of species.

Only because you assert that consciousness is magical. Since that is false, this assertion is also false.

I think that consciousness have sense only if it may have a role in evolution, but this implies that it can influence matter somehow.

In the sense that you are suggesting, this is entirely untrue.

It implies merely that the results of the computation involved in consciousness are fed back to the unconscious computational processes in the brain.

In a classical environment and in a deterministic world this faculty were useless. In a quantum world this may have the opportunity to have some influence.

Not even remotely. This is the same mistake Schwartz, Stapp and Beauregard made, and is based on a complete misunderstanding of quantum mechanics.

Consciousness has no special properties or role either observed in nature or implied by quantum mechanics. None.

My basic question is: what do you think that might influence your personal identity?

Every interaction in my brain and between my brain and my body and the external world.

It's not just a convention. Imagine to be one of two identical replicas. You argue that they have two different personal identity. You may think "how strange is to be alive! But here I am". OK. But from a materialist point of view, you should think that you are alive because a body has been built with those characteristics that precisely define you.

No.

I am a process, not a thing. I change constantly. I'm not precisely defined. Identity is a label of convenience, of pragmatic utility, not a mathematical function.

But looking at you replicas you might say: well, these characteristics are not sufficient, because here's another replica with the very same ones, and we have different identities.

I can count them: One. Two. Therefore, they are not the same identity.

They have different experiences. They do not know the same things. Therefore, they are not the same identity.

All your premises are false. (And the sky is gray.)

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Actually, the programs would be access the exact same memory addresses at the exact same time; that's how precise this technique is.

As I noted, that sort of thing just can't be done with a human bran.


Yep.

The same can't be done with programs either. Even threads have their own memory space. Or whatever it's called, where the instructions are kept. You know what I mean, don't make me whip out the dinosaur book.

 

[MinnesotaBrant]

I read today that humans are a standard model with the male and female bits put in afterwords. Consciousness also comes standard though it varies slightly from person to person

 

[PixyMisa]

The same can't be done with programs either. Even threads have their own memory space.

In the case I'm talking about, these aren't threads. This is the same instruction, at the same clock cycle, read from the same memory location, executing identically on multiple CPUs.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

In the case I'm talking about, these aren't threads. This is the same instruction, at the same clock cycle, read from the same memory location, executing identically on multiple CPUs.

So all these CPU's share the same cache?

 

[PixyMisa]

So all these CPU's share the same cache?

When first implemented, I don't think the CPUs used had any cache. Current implementations do have separate caches per CPU. You wouldn't want to implement this with a shared cache, since the point is to avoid single points of failure, and these days you can't get away without any cache at all.

But the broader point I think you're making - that there has to be some separate state, even if it's only transient - is certainly true.

 

[IacopoV]

Hi everybody.

PixyMisa, you feel confident that consciousness may be explained in a classical framework. I used the term "magic" in quotes just to signify our lack of knowledge. I would like to read some of your sources if they are available on the Internet. My last reading was Hofstdter's book "I am a strange loop" that contains good ideas that I agree, but not the idea that all might be reduced somehow to a classical logical network. I liked the article at (I still cannot post link here for grup policies)<http>lesswrong.com<slash>lw<slash>iv<slash>the_futility_of_emergence<slash>. It seems to me rational and skeptical.

I have no time to continue to dialogue on a one-per-one basis. I would like to concentrate on problems. Do not interpret this as a way to escape other questions, just let me deal with one problem at a time: here I begin with what is more important and more controversial.

Imagine two perfect replicas with identical brain configuration, side by side but each isolated in their own artificial environment so that we can assume that they have the same input from the extern world in the same time. Something like what Dennet did in one of his thought experiments with brains in vats. I mean that they are composed with the corresponding particles in the same state, the only difference being their location in the space.

Imagine to be one of them, and to reason about your individual existence. I argue that if you are atheist and materialist, you must imagine that there are some unknow factors that caused your existence, and these factors must be material factors, not abstract factors. Normally, you could think that you are who you are because you are different from anybody else, but in this case, you could not appeal to this principle.

Many of you (all?) say that as you and your replica have each his/her own physical bodies, you evidently have a different personal identity. I can tell you that other materialists in other groups think differently, even if they don't subscribe Open Individualism, because they prefer to keep for sure that your personal identity is determined by factors inside you, even if this would imply non-locality or the way we experience the time. But let's go on.

In your view, what is another factor that may cause my existence, beyond my physical internal configuration, that caused me to be one of these replica, and not the other? Many of you said that it might depend by my relative position in the context (I don't think that any of you will appeal to an absolute time or an absolute space), but I said that this would imply that if your mother had travel in another part of the world during your gestation, the person that were born would have another personal identity. You (rightly!) said that this is silly.

I reformulate the problem with other words: what I always believed is that my existence must have rational causes, even if an huge number of them, and probably impossible to determine. But I believe that even if they are hidden causes, they had do be rational causes, and the basic fact that I am here and alive, demonstrates that their probability were greater than zero.

So I am convinced that theoretically were be possible to compile a list of conditions that may allow my existence, and this list were not infinite (otherwise the probability would converge to zero).

But once I imagine to have such a list, it would become just a matter of technical difficulties to allow the building of another person exactly identical to me. Do you see the paradox?

1) As I am here and alive, my existence were possible.

2) If my existence is possible, it required a finite number of rational conditions.

3) If we could know this list of condition, it were just a matter of technical difficulties to build a lot of replica of me, even in the same time of my existence.

I know that we could always think that all our cosmic horizon could be thought as a concause in determining our personal identity, so avoiding the possibility of one effective replica of me in this universe, but I am not very satisfied with this option. Do you are? It seems the only way to avoid the possible of a perfect replica of me with my same personal identity. And what could we say of the space that is supposed to exist beyond our cosmic horizon? There could be a far region where the same cause could happen again? Remember that to appeal to an infinite list of causes should make the probability of my existence converge toward zero.

So what you think that is more rational, atheist and materialist?

To think that I am alive even if the probability of my existence were zero, or to think that my existence could happen again, at last theoretically? (this comprehends "there is not enough time to make this improbable event happen again")

I don't want to push any solution. I expose the problem as I see it. I looking forward for your opinions. Bye!

 

[Complexity]

It is my opinion that you should pick a different hobby.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

My basic question is: what do you think that might influence your personal identity? It's not just a convention. Imagine to be one of two identical replicas. You argue that they have two different personal identity. You may think "how strange is to be alive! But here I am". OK. But from a materialist point of view, you should think that you are alive because a body has been built with those characteristics that precisely define you. But looking at you replicas you might say: well, these characteristics are not sufficient, because here's another replica with the very same ones, and we have different identities. So, what else you may imagine that had defined that only in one of the two cases you had to born, and the other no? what you imagine that were the condition required to build a living being with your personal identity, i.e. YOU? You can see that just to count the bodies cannot be a cause. A dualist people may well say: each creature have a distinct soul because God create a different one for each of us. But we are atheist and materialist, so we cannot appeal to this. You must imagine a set of causes that globally made you be alive.

Sorry for the other posts, I will continue tomorrow. Here's about 4.00am (Italy).

I'm really struggling to understand what you mean. In every day parlance I am the toroidal meatsack, if you duplicate that meatsack to a high enough fidelity you will end up with two meatsacks both of which will have a set of memories, a set of behaviours, and a conciousness. Both of them will say they are Darat, one will simply be the original and the other a copy, so you will have two "Darats".

We've been making high fidelity copies of things for (probably) millennia, there is nothing mysterious about making a copy of something, no matter what you are copying all it means is at the end of the copying you have one more of what you started with.

 

[Darat]

No we don't. Though the same visual image enters our corneas, it's encoded differently in our retinas, processed differently in our visual cortices, and interpreted differently in our parietal lobes. The pattern of neurons that indicate a pretty night sky in your mind would be total gibberish in mine, and vice versa. There is no similarity at that level between us.

I would say that the current evidence indicates that similar processes are occurring whenever anyone views something, we see certain areas of the brain doing something when subjected to visual stimulus no matter whose brain we look at (caveat with some atypical exceptions e.g. brain damage). How deep this similarity goes is of course not known and I think you are probably right that at a certain level our similarities breakdown.

 

[steenkh]

So what you think that is more rational, atheist and materialist?

None of the above. From the rational, atheist, and material POV our consciousness with all that it entails, such as personal identity, is just chemical/electrical signals moving about in a physical brain. If you copy it, you have two. It is that simple.

There is no non-locality involved, and no metaphysics.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Normally, you could think that you are who you are because you are different from anybody else, but in this case, you could not appeal to this principle.

This appears to be the root of your argument, and the root of the problem.

For anyone who hasn't bit the bullet, wiki'ing Open Individuality churns up a great deal of philosophical drek littered with the kind of vocab iapocov tends to use. Basically in the clone situation the idea is it doesn't matter which combination of clones/original survives, as long as one does that must be you because it thinks it's you and no one actually died back there because there's still a you.

Well, I are who I are because I yam who I yam. I'm a self-aware pattern of electrical and molecular activity. I do not need to be different to exist separately of the other patterns. If you make a clone and then kill me, regardless of what or if the clone experienced differently, I'm gonna be pretty pissed about it. There is no ethereal personal identity that I share with him. I'm me and he's him and that's that, and if he is my clone I'm willing to bet he'll chime in the same.

 

[yy2bggggs]

To Croc411 and IacopoV:

I'd just like to reiterate the difference between equivalence and identity, and hopefully show both of you what kind of mistake you're making by using an analogy far removed from personal identity.

If Joe has a bank account with 100 dollars in it, and John has a bank account with 100 dollars in it, then Joe's account has the same amount of money in it that John's account has. What Joe can buy with the money in his account is exactly the same as what John can buy with the money in his account. This is equivalence.

But this is not the same as identity. The question of whether or not John's bank account is identical to Joe's bank account is not a question of whether or not their bank accounts are in the same state; it is, instead, a question of whether or not they are the same account. If they are the same account, then if John withdraws 10 dollars from John's account, then Joe has 90 dollars left (in other words, it's a joint account). If they are not the same account, then if John withdraws 10 dollars from John's account, then Joe has 100 dollars in his account.

The confusion that I see both of you making is along these lines.

1. I recognize that materialism means that everything can be traced to material states. So, e.g., John's bank account and Joe's bank account must be material states.
2. Nevertheless, some things do not comprise of specific matter. Bank accounts, for example, are not comprised of specific notes, tellers, or branch offices. Therefore, they are comprised of states.
3. The only way this can be true is if a bank account is wholly represented by state.
4. Therefore, if two bank accounts are in the same state, they are the same account.

Items 1 and 2 are correct. Item 3 is somewhat correct but misleading; a bank account is dependent on the history of transactions, and states of affairs merely keep track of those transactions.

Item 4 is just an outright confusion. The fact that two bank accounts have the same state means simply that they have the same purchasing power. It does not mean they are a joint account.

If John's brain is equivalent to Joe's brain, then everything John is thinking, Joe is thinking; everything John is perceiving, Joe is perceiving. That's correct; the accounts have the same amount of money in it. However, if you prick John, and Joe does not bleed, they are not the same person. John is the guy over there looking at that room; Joe is the guy over there looking at that other room. It's nice that the rooms are the same; we can deposit equal amounts of money into different accounts. But that doesn't make them the same person, even if they started out in the same state.

I hope this helps.

 

[Complexity]

I can't imagine any reason to look up "Open Individuality".

 

[A'isha]

Well, I are who I are because I yam who I yam. I'm a self-aware pattern of electrical and molecular activity. I do not need to be different to exist separately of the other patterns. If you make a clone and then kill me, regardless of what or if the clone experienced differently, I'm gonna be pretty pissed about it. There is no ethereal personal identity that I share with him. I'm me and he's him and that's that, and if he is my clone I'm willing to bet he'll chime in the same.

That's why IacopoV had to go to such lengths to set up the thought experiement so that each brain received indistinguishable input. That's the only way the argument that both brains share a single identity will work, because as soon as you introduce even a tiny tiny difference in the input to one that you don't introduce to the other, it becomes blatantly obvious that they don't share a single identity at all.

EDIT: yy2bggggs's analogy above makes it even clearer.

 

[Dancing David]

No we don't. Though the same visual image enters our corneas, it's encoded differently in our retinas, processed differently in our visual cortices, and interpreted differently in our parietal lobes. The pattern of neurons that indicate a pretty night sky in your mind would be total gibberish in mine, and vice versa. There is no similarity at that level between us.

Thank you and in fact people will perceive the colors and brightness differently.

 

[Dancing David]

Behaviors differ: see "atheist=ontology materialist" vs "not-atheist=ontology ??? (or could be illogical ontological materialist rather than logical idealist)".

I understand you don't agree. We must be reading different posts.

How could you tell the difference between the ontologies?

Seriously, you can't.