Does the traditional atheistic worldview contradict materialism?

[Dancing David]

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

Almost we mostly female with the male bits added.

 

[Dancing David]

Hi everybody.

Sigh, another one who just won't discuss the issues.

We ask specific questions about statement because that is the way a discussion happens.

Let me see if you will respond to this:

YOU ASSERT that materialism is not capable of dealing with contingent history because it particles do not encode past location.

THIS is an example of STRAWMAN argument, YOU have paced a false premise upon an idea so you can attack it. A false dichotomy, a fallacy of construction as well.

Now what do macroscopic objects have?

-mass
-position in x,y,z and t
-inertia
-a vector of motion

Now you come along and say

This model which is based upon a naturalistic model of the description of objects is incomplete because it does not have a way of encoding the past location of objects and therefore I will assert that this model is incomplete and therefore we need something else.

this is your actual quote:

and I don't agree on the relevance of the "contingent history" if it cannot be reduced to something material

Now why would a fish need a bicycle? Even if that bicycle is some fancy Open Individualism 5000?

 

[Darat]

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.

Yes there does seem to be some strange disconnect that some of these folk seem to argue that this meatsack shouldn't be concerned about dying if I knew a copy had been made. You can sod that for a lark - I'm not accepting my death just because someone claims to be a copy of me!

However I have posted before that I could see if we came up with one of these scan/copy at a different location/disintegration transporters that we would socially end up accepting that disintegration because of the convenience but that's based on the fact that we (as individuals and as societies) seem very good at ignoring uncomfortable things we don't want to think about. There's nowt metaphysical about it.

 

[Darat]

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

What happens if you need to knock a wall down and you don't have a hammer just your head?

 

[IacopoV]

Hi everybody.

I am not here to say I'm am right, you are wrong.

I just want to know your opinion about these statements:

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

2) If my existence is possible, it required a finite number of rational/material 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 (with my own personal identity) even in the same time of my existence.

You agree on any of them? Why yes? Why no?

I know that everybody will deny 3), but it descends by 1) and 2).
So where is the failure?

In this moment any other issue does't matter. I would like to know your POV on this, also the one of Complexity too, it he's online.

Goodbye.

 

[dafydd]

Hi everybody.

I am not here to say I'm am right, you are wrong.

I just want to know your opinion about these statements:

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

2) If my existence is possible, it required a finite number of rational/material 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 (with my own personal identity) even in the same time of my existence.

You agree on any of them? Why yes? Why no?

I know that everybody will deny 3), but it descends by 1) and 2).
So where is the failure?

In this moment any other issue does't matter. I would like to know your POV on this, also the one of Complexity too, it he's online.

Goodbye.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[Complexity]

Not worth reading.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I have no idea what you are talking about.

He's doing the typical "back up and have anuvver go" routine: restating assertions 1-3 as if they were the contentious elements of the debate instead of the unspoken argument 4, that two things with the same personal identity are the same thing in every respect.

Now that I've wasted almost a full minute researching Open Individualism, I notice that "personal identity" is defined as two things with the same personal identity being the same thing in every respect.

Whether the inclusion of such loaded language will turn out to be a yrreg-style beg of the question, or else perhaps iacopov doesn't mean anything by it but simply can't imagine it any other way, we'll have to see.

But what the hey, I'll bite. I agree with all three of your premises, iacopov. Should it be possible to make a perfect clone of me, it would be possible to make a perfect clone of me. That don't make him me, no matter how much the little bastard thinks he is, he ain't.

Now come at me bro. Let's whip this rhetoric out.

 

[Croc411]

What happens if you need to knock a wall down and you don't have a hammer just your head?

Well, if we're talking about anything less than bunker-grade reinforced concrete, I would not place my bet on the wall ...

 

[si_fzz]

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

you already have as "croc" and "iaco"

 

[Croc411]

To yy2bggggs:

Thank you for your explanation. I appreciate your efforts.

But I know the difference between equivalence and identity.

The contentious point of the debate here is that you guys think you can assign identities to those illusions created by the processes in our brains (our perceived selfs), while IacopoV and me think you can not. Just like you cannot assign an identity to a particle.


Walks like a duck, talks like a duck ...

Almost walks like a duck, almost talks like a duck ...

 

[Dancing David]

Hi everybody.

I am not here to say I'm am right, you are wrong.

I just want to know your opinion about these statements:

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

Or something simlar, yes.

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

No, reality is a branching structure dependant upon contingent history.

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 (with my own personal identity) even in the same time of my existence.

Philosophically, maybe. realistically , no.

You can not rebuild the neural conditioning of cells in teh brain, so in a thought experiement, yes, in reality, maybe. Probably not.

You agree on any of them? Why yes? Why no?

I know that everybody will deny 3), but it descends by 1) and 2).
So where is the failure?

The finite states arguemnt.

In this moment any other issue does't matter. I would like to know your POV on this, also the one of Complexity too, it he's online.

Goodbye.

 

[yy2bggggs]

The contentious point of the debate here is that you guys think you can assign identities to those illusions created by the processes in our brains (our perceived selfs), while IacopoV and me think you can not. Just like you cannot assign an identity to a particle.

A materialist can assign identity to a particle. You're begging the question.

You're certainly not making a legitimate case.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Hi everybody.
Imagine two perfect replicas with identical brain configuration,

This is not possible.

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.

This is an unrealistic situation. People do not appear, wholly formed, from nowhere. They have histories. You are imagining an impossible situation, then asking what if?
Let me suggest an alternative.
Imagine you are a telepathic unicorn and there is another one in the same box.
What will happen to you if I set his tail alight?
Stupid question?
Correct.
How does it differ from yours?

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.

Not silly at all.
Consider two mothers in two parallel universes.
Mother A is a cosmonaut. Two days after fertilisation, she goes to the ISS for 35 weeks, then returns to Earth.
In the universe next door, mother B crashes in the Andes. She survives, but spends the first trimester of her pregnancy living on a reduced diet.
Do you think the children will differ or not?

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?

There is no paradox. You cannot do any of the things you suggest here. They are probably not even theoretically possible.

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

So far, so good.

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

OK

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 don't see any logical connection between 1& 2 and 3.

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.

I have no clue what this means. But in any case, let's say two people have mental processes of the kind PixyMisa describes in machines. Functionally indistinguishable. Even if we allow (which I do not) that they will continue to be identical in output...why does this strike you as in any way important?

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")

If it happens again, it won't be you, because you won't be there. There will have been two separate entities with similar minds. What is so hard about this?

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

 

[Soapy Sam]

Not worth reading.

Then don't.
Everyone else is having fun.
Go have a beer or sump'n.

 

[Dancing David]

A materialist can assign identity to a particle. You're begging the question.

You're certainly not making a legitimate case.

well the issue is that they make some false distinction that for materialism to be something, then particle have to be distinguishable. then they ignore such things as position.

It seems as though they want to say because elementary particles are indistinguishable from each other, they are all the same particle.

they further do not understand that in neurology, brains develop differently, and the same patterns between brains do not exist for the word 'dog', how one brain expresses the process that makes for the thought 'dog', is not the same between people at all.

Now if your read Kolak's silly book you will see that he mainly just asserts things and then goes crazy. he apparently mistakes his finger for the moon
http://books.google.com/books?id=-_...=onepage&q=indistinguishability kolak&f=false

"Are these particular neurons essential to your being who you are, any more than...it seems not given such Boundary Dissolves as Neuraids"

 

[PixyMisa]

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.

What 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.

Then you need to read it again.

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.

That article doesn't address the subject in any way; it merely addresses the language used in the debate. That's not in itself a bad thing, but it doesn't address the point.

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.

As has been noted repeatedly, this is impossible under our laws of physics, but go on.

Imagine to be one of them, and to reason about your individual existence.

Okay.

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.

So?

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.

Correct. You cannot keep human brains synchronised; even if they are in identical states at any instant in time (impossible to arrange; impossible to even determine), they will diverge imeediately.

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.

No, let's not go on. Stop there.

Personal identity is determined by factors inside you. This does not imply non-locality or anything odd about the way we experience time, even in the physically impossible scenario you have constructed.

All your premises are false, and all your conjunctions are non-sequiturs.

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?

Arithmetic. There are two of them.

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.

Well, duh. Of course they'd have another personal identity.

You (rightly!) said that this is silly.

No.

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.

What do you mean, "rational causes"?

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).

The laws of physics preclude this. It cannot be done, not even in principle.

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?

Again, the laws of physics preclude this. It cannot be done, not even in principle, for multiple different reasons.

And even then, it's not a paradox. What do you think is paradoxical about it?

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

Clearly.

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

What's a "rational condition"?

Anyway, no, the Universe simply doesn't work like that.

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.

No. You can't build an exact replica of anything complex; you can't even determine if two complex things are identical.

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.

What?

It seems the only way to avoid the possible of a perfect replica of me with my same personal identity.

First, it's impossible under the laws of physics. Second, even if it were possible, what's the problem? There are two yous wandering around. Even if we define them as identical at a particular point in time, they'll be in different locations (obviously), having different experiences, and their identities will diverge immediately.

It's not a paradox. It's not a problem. It's not even very interesting.

And what could we say of the space that is supposed to exist beyond our cosmic horizon?

It's causally disconnected from local space.

Remember that to appeal to an infinite list of causes should make the probability of my existence converge toward zero.

No. The probability of your existence is 1.

To think that I am alive even if the probability of my existence were zero

You don't understand statistics either.

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")

Neither. Both positions are based on a multitude of false premises.

 

[PixyMisa]

Hi everybody.

I am not here to say I'm am right, you are wrong.

And a good thing too.

I just want to know your opinion about these statements:

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

The probability of any event that has already happened is 1.

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

What's a "rational condition"?

Anyway, no. This assertion founders on the mathematics of limits in one direction, and quantum mechanics in the other.

In short, this is untrue.

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 (with my own personal identity) even in the same time of my existence.

It's impossible even in principle to precisely know all the conditions that brought about your existence. It's impossible even in principle to build an exact replica of you. Even if we build an exact replica of you, it would necessarily be in a different location and have different experiences.

You agree on any of them? Why yes? Why no?

1 is correct. 2 and 3 are entirely wrong for a whole list of reasons.

I know that everybody will deny 3), but it descends by 1) and 2).
So where is the failure?

2 is false, and 3 doesn't follow in any case.

 

[yy2bggggs]

I just want to know your opinion about these statements:
1) As I am here and alive, my existence were possible.
2) If my existence is possible, it required a finite number of rational/material 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 (with my own personal identity) even in the same time of my existence.

Sure, but you're kind of missing the point here.

I remember going to a really good concert last year. But memories have this strange quality--they can be fake. It would be very odd to me, because the memories are so vivid, if I in fact did not go to that concert; if, instead, these were merely false memories. But such things happen; false memories, even very vivid ones, are quite possible.

However, there is nothing different in my having a brain state consisting of a vivid false memory and a brain state consisting of a genuine memory. So if we're speaking in terms of whether the memory is genuine or fake, we need to speak about something more than merely my brain's state at the moment. We need to speak about what caused that state to go there.

By definition, my memory is a genuine memory if it is a result of environmental influences normally associated with such memories. In other words, there needs to be a particular kind of causal chain between the actual events that are the subject of those memories, and the memories that I have, for this to be a genuine memory. In short, it's a real memory if I actually went to that concert, and going to that concert caused me to have the memory.

The other situation is that some "illegitimate" means of stimulation somehow caused this memory. Some confusion I had with something I heard, that I falsely identified with, confusion about when the concert happened, or something along this line.

Now we can think of this a slightly different way. I not only remember going to that concert, I remember being at that concert. This is the degree of vividness that is present in my memory. I remember the loud noises; I remember seeing the band. I remember jumping into the crowded mosh pit, and the feeling of bumping into huge groups of bodies of fans. I remember these subjective experiences.

But again, this could be a false memory. Or it could be legitimate. The question is not one of brain state--the question is whether I "actually" was at that concert, for a given concept of "actually". In this sense, it's not enough that my brain state is such that I remember how this crowd felt. My memories have to actually not be false. They have to be a result of feeling like I was in that mosh pit, as opposed to some illegitimate means of that memory getting there.

Whether these are false memories or not, my brain state is such that I remember being at that mosh pit. But the question of whether or not that was me at the mosh pit is not a question of whether or not I have that brain state--it is a question of how that brain state got there.

If I am the same guy as some particular person in that mosh pit at that concert last year that I remember myself to be, then there is a causal chain between a person in that mosh pit that remembers the feeling of being in that mosh pit, and the memory that I have. If there is no such causal chain, then I was not the person I remember myself to be.

 

[IacopoV]

Hi everybody.

Just some words on Open Individualism: it has many different versions. There is variations of it in Hinduism, in Averrois' monopsychism, and (unfortunately!) in some naive new-age religions. I am here to bog you just because I think that is possible an atheist and materialist version of Open Individualism. I don't care about the effective possibility or life-reloading or brain joining or the creation of real consciousness in some virtual worlds. I just try to reason in a rational and mathematical way. So don't attribute to me any statement you find of other people. As I wrote in our Open Individualism group, I have my personal path with my personal arguments. I read the book of Kolak, our opinions are compatible but they do not are always the same. Our discussion would be more constructive if you'd stop to consider me as someone that is coming here to give you the revelation or so. I am posting you the same problems that I found by myself and I say my opinion about it, but it is just my opinion. You must know that I knew Open Individualism after that I came to the same idea by my own (and I am not the only one having doing this).

The very thing that I want support here is the same that Croc411 acknowledges:

"The contentious point of the debate here is that you guys think you can assign identities to those illusions created by the processes in our brains (our perceived selfs), while IacopoV and me think you can not. Just like you cannot assign an identity to a particle."

I couldn't have express it better. This is not a mystical or religious assuption. On the contrary, it is a materialist and skeptical assumption. I think it is actually a more skeptical position than the traditional materialistic view. It acknowledges that we cannot assume that the perceived selfs originated by these processes should have each a different personal identity. This doesn't implies that they should have anything more in common, because each brain has different memories and performances.

yy2bggggs said

"A materialist can assign identity to a particle"

I doubt that all materialists would agree. Otherwise, there's a problem with "Gibbs_paradox" (see wikipedia).

So let us recap the statements I posted the last time and your positions:

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

This is generally accepted, but somebody (Belzabuddy, Soapy Sam) interperted this differently, like if it were:
"As I am here and alive, the esistence of clones indistinguishable by me is possible", but it is not what I meant.

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

Dancing David says this is untrue, appealing to "contingent history".
I have a pendance with him on this argument. You wrote:

YOU ASSERT that materialism is not capable of dealing with contingent history because it particles do not encode past location.

[..] Now what do macroscopic objects have?

-mass
-position in x,y,z and t
-inertia
-a vector of motion

Now you come along and say

"This model which is based upon a naturalistic model of the description of objects is incomplete because it does not have a way of encoding the past location of objects and therefore I will assert that this model is incomplete and therefore we need something else."

this is your actual quote:

Quote:
and I don't agree on the relevance of the "contingent history" if it cannot be reduced to something material"

What I meant is not that the model is incomplete: I simply deny the relevance of the "contingent history". To be more clear, I should have written "because it cannot be reduced to something similar". Obviously there's a lot of things that leave trace of their past states in the present world state, e.g. in our memories (but as yy2bggggs said in his last post, these might be wrong), or in documents or in whatever state of something material that keeps record of past events. But the total information that we can have is what is stored somewhere in the present state of the material world. So "contingent history" is not something that has an absolute reality, is just what can be desumed by the current state of the world. And the amount of this information is finite. So this is not a good basis to deny the statement #2.

But this statement #2 can be expressed equivalently in this way:

2b) All what can happen one time, can happen many other times.

It's just a matter of availability of space and time. I find difficult to imagine restrictions to this formulation that didn't appear arbitrary. It doesn't say that it must happen: it says that nothings can definitely prevent it from happening again.

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 may try an equivalent expression:

3b) If my existence were possible in the past, theoretically it will continue to be possible in the future, and even in the present.

As I said, it is sufficient to acknowledge that theoretically it would be possible, no matter if you consider that it is statistically impossible. But beware that I am speaking about my same existence, not the existence of a perfect replica of me.

If you think that there's something that is not even theoretically possible, you should give some hint about why, otherwise we will continue to repeat uselessly "yes!" and "no!". I hope you can figure why I think what I wrote, even if you don't agree.

Maybe this would help Soapy Sam to understand how 3b) descend by 1) and 2b). I agree with him that two mental processes doesn't have to continue to give identical output, but in this case I added this condition to underline the fact that they may continue to be identical at least during our observation. Even if it is not mandatory, it is always possible (there's no theoretical reason that will impede this). In the comment of the last statement, he said that if the same causes that generates me occurred again ,they will generate another person. But when I speak about the causes that generates me, I mean precisely me, not a perfect clone of me.

Again Dancing David:
I don't deny materialism. Assume that particles are indistinguishable doesn't deny materialism. But allow to assume that, if all the particles of my body were instantly replaced with others of the same type and in the same state, I would continue to be the same person I was before, with no difference at all. Basing on what you wrote, you seems to think that you would be dead, replaced by a perfect clone that believes to be you. About your quotation of Kolak, it means that if your neurons were replaced one by one with others functionally equal, you still will continue to be the same person. Actually, it is what happens gradually in our whole life.

Finally, PixyMisa:
About Hofstadter, I meant that I don't agree on his (and your) idea that all might be reduced somehow to a classical logical network, but I agree on the idea of a logical structure that works like a "strange loop". I would like to know if you agree with him in this idea, because he talks about logical structures, not material structures, that are important just to actualize the logical structure that is what really matters.

But if you are convinced that our brain is equivalent to a classical logical network, you should have no problem to imagine a program that emulates perfectly a living brain. So you can imagine to setup two machines in the same way, or two identical programs in the same machines, or "in the cloud", without any problem with physical law or with mantaining the same input for both of them.

So I don't understand why you say

"this is impossible under our laws of physics"

, or

"impossible to arrange; impossible to even determine), they will diverge immediately"

, when we speak about classical logical networks with deterministic behaviour. Anyhow, I agree that two real brains almost surely "will diverge immediately", but exactly because they are not simply classical logical network; I suppose that they stay in synch for a while, just to clarify the problem. This, though very unlikely, is not physically impossible.

About "If my existence is possible, it required a finite number of rational/material conditions."

"Rational conditions" means some causes that can be described and explicated at least theoretically. It means that there's no causes that make appeal to something of divine or unexplicable, no matter if we actally don't know them.

"this is untrue"

(#158)
So you think that is true one or both of these statements:
Given that you exist, do you think that an infinite number of rational/material (physical) conditions (causes) were required, or that there were required some conditions (causes) that are not rational/material/physical?

"Universe simply doesn't work like that"

(#157)

"impossible under the laws of physics"

(#157)
There is a law of physic that impedes two particles to have the same state, differing only in position?
Two systems of two particles? Two systems of a billion particles? Two systems with a whole brain?

"It's impossible even in principle to precisely know all the conditions that brought about your existence"

(#158)
Maybe I am wrong, but I supposed that materialist and skeptical people would think that the universe is at least theoretically explicable in rational terms.
You are saying that there is a mystery at the base of your individual existence that it cannot be explained "even in principle". It seems to be not a skeptical/materialist POV.


TO ALL:

I have no time to write so much everyday, so forgive me if something is left without answer.
Please stop suspect that I want to give you some new mystical truth.
In the Open Individualism group, I always underline the need to be atheist, rationalist and avoid mysticism. Anyway, there are logical problems that are the ones that I propose.

The issue with the 3 points I presented here is that you should be aware that if I am alive, there are some causes that allowed my birth, with my personal identity, and if the same causes act again, I must presuppose that not only generate a person like me, but with my same personal identity, otherwise these causes would be not precisely all the causes that allowed my birth. Deny this, means to deny that my birth could be explained by a number of physical/material/rational causes, i.e. that there is something more that is "unexplicable", and I consider this to be dualism. I think that the majority of you would agree on this.

Be aware that "counting two people" is just an effect of these people be (eventually) two different persons, not the cause. So we must find some cause that make me exist with a different personal identity from all the others, and if we are materialist, this must be a material cause. This material cause must be valid even in the hypothetical scenario in which we were all built assembling our bodies in exactly the same way. No matter if it is practically impossible, or statically improbable: If you think so, you may say that if it were possible, then we could have the same personal identity; otherwise, no matter if it is impossible, we must search another possible cause. The simply fact that "I am here now, so I cannot be in another place in this same time", doesn't take in the account that doesn't exist an absolute time, and the perception of time is linked to our consciousness. We should investigate further on the nature of time. AlBell (#120) gave some suggestion on that matter. I read "End of time" of Julian Barbour (a physicist, not a philosopher involved in Open Individualism), and there are interesting considerations about "contingent history" as well.

If you have sources that you think I should read, give me some links.

Thank you all, I am aware that here I am seen as a disturbing presence.
I hope I gave you something to evaluate, no matter if convincing or not.

IacopoV