Does the traditional atheistic worldview contradict materialism?

[IacopoV]

Perhaps his question can be interpreted this way.

Suppose a replica of the entire universe was made with precise accuracy. Would the IcopaV in the copy universe be the same IcopaV in the original universe?

If determinism is correct they would be indistinguishable/identical.

Yes, this is my goal: even if someone may continue to add requisites to make a copy of me that would be exactly me, I still may image that all of these requisites could be satisfied somewhere. After all, they happened in this Universe, because I am here!

So, because I believe that what is enough probable to happen once, then is also enough probable to happen two, three, infinite times again (given enough time and/or space), then I conclude that I will born again each time that exactly the same circunstances will happen again.

Max Tegmark imagined something similar in his article about multiverses that you can read at http://www.scribd.com/autodidactic/d/6146247-Parallel-Universes-Max-Tegmark-Scientific-American (even if he don't speak about the personal identity).

Dancing David, I know the double slit experiment and Uncertainty principle, I wrote in some post that I really think that two brains in the same state will diverge in a moment, but with a number large enough of brains in the same state, at least two of them could enter in the same new state and so stay in synch for two moments, etc. Maybe you miss it, but no matter, as you continue to miss that my name is "IacopoV" and not "IcopaV". Anyway, thanks for your english corrections.

All this says nothing about Open Individualism, it just meant to show that I may born again even without the existence of any soul. But according to Open Individualism, it is not necessary to duplicate an intere universe to build two people with the same personal identity, it simply descends by their having the same property of consciousness.

Many of you said that this property must be considered different each time because it applies to different people; in my view, consciousness is like a function that requires an argument, that is not even a person, but a brain state enough complex to allow consciousness. So the function is always the same, but applied each time to different data. This explains why during our lives we can change all our material parts without losing our personal identity, and also how we can have the same personal identity without sharing any memories, nor willingness, nor thought between us.

I am aware that you will not agree, and that these are not proofs. But at least you can see that this model doesn't require any "cosmic soul" or religious concept. Maybe it's not a materialist view, but is not dualist as it doesn't need any kind of quintessence. My view of Open Individualism is based just on information, and everything I consider is only data and functions.

Thank you for having compared your ideas with mine.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes, this is my goal: even if someone may continue to add requisites to make a copy of me that would be exactly me, I still may image that all of these requisites could be satisfied somewhere.

No.

So, because I believe that what is enough probable to happen once, then is also enough probable to happen two, three, infinite times again (given enough time and/or space), then I conclude that I will born again each time that exactly the same circunstances will happen again.

Even if the Universe is infinite in time and space, this argument is worthless. Yes, your configuration of atoms will recur infinitely many times - but slightly different configurations of atoms will occur vastly more frequently.

Dancing David, I know the double slit experiment and Uncertainty principle, I wrote in some post that I really think that two brains in the same state will diverge in a moment, but with a number large enough of brains in the same state, at least two of them could enter in the same new state and so stay in synch for two moments, etc.

So?

All this says nothing about Open Individualism, it just meant to show that I may born again even without the existence of any soul.

Nope. The argument has no value.

But according to Open Individualism, it is not necessary to duplicate an intere universe to build two people with the same personal identity, it simply descends by their having the same property of consciousness.

Which is impossible.

Many of you said that this property must be considered different each time because it applies to different people; in my view, consciousness is like a function that requires an argument, that is not even a person, but a brain state enough complex to allow consciousness. So the function is always the same, but applied each time to different data. This explains why during our lives we can change all our material parts without losing our personal identity, and also how we can have the same personal identity without sharing any memories, nor willingness, nor thought between us.

Evidence that personal identity doesn't change?

 

[punshhh]

It's just the teleportation idea a tad larger - the answer remains the same whether it is universes or apples you are copying: 1+1=2*.

Yes I agree, perhaps this is what IacopoV is addressing.

Say there were two identical universes, deterministic for the sake of argument.
There would be two identical IacopoV's doing exactly the same thing. You could theoretically swap them over and neither of them would notice the difference. It would be impossible to tell the difference.

If consciousness was a universal substrate to existence it would be reasonable to consider that these two beings were one being in two places at the same time.

Indeed in Eastern philosophies enlightened beings do just this (apparently).

 

[yy2bggggs]

Yes I agree, perhaps this is what IacopoV is addressing.

Say there were two identical universes,

Given your constraints, what is the difference between saying there are two universes, one universe, or fifty?

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes I agree, perhaps this is what IacopoV is addressing.

Say there were two identical universes

Fail.

 

[Darat]

Yes I agree, perhaps this is what IacopoV is addressing.

Say there were two identical universes, deterministic for the sake of argument.
There would be two identical IacopoV's doing exactly the same thing. You could theoretically swap them over and neither of them would notice the difference. It would be impossible to tell the difference.

If consciousness was a universal substrate to existence it would be reasonable to consider that these two beings were one being in two places at the same time.

Indeed in Eastern philosophies enlightened beings do just this (apparently).

No.

You seem to have missed the maths in my post - I know it was very esoteric, I mean I even got it wrong in a previous post but let me try it again: 1+1=2.

If you make a copy of anything you end up with 2 of that thing. So in your example there are two beings, even if we can't tell them apart except by which universe they are in. They are no more "one" than two identical apples are "one" apple.

yy2bggggs' post above gives a long explanation of what this means: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=7962850#post7962850, I'll try to give a shorter example using your duplicated universes hypothetical.

We start with one universe with a single "Darat" in it and we say to Darat "In a moment we will replicate the universe and then whisper the name of an animal into your ear and then ask you what animal we whispered".

We press the button and quicker than you can say abracadabra we have two universes identical in every way. We decide to call one universe the "lefthand universe" and the other one "righthand universe".

We enter the "lefthand universe" and whisper into LeftDarat's ear "rabbit", we jump to the "righthand universe" and say to RightDarat "What animal's name did we just whisper into your ear?"

RightDarat's answer is "You haven't whispered any animal's name into my ear!"

The reason for this is that there are now two Darats, the fact that they have the same physical make-up doesn't link them in any way. What happens to one Darat will not effect the other Darat.

If you make a copy of one apple you have two apples, if you decide to eat one of the apples it doesn't matter how "physically identical" the two separate apples are eating one of the apples does not effect the other apple.

 

[Nonpareil]

Say there were two identical universes, deterministic for the sake of argument.
There would be two identical IacopoV's doing exactly the same thing. You could theoretically swap them over and neither of them would notice the difference. It would be impossible to tell the difference.

Correct so far.

If consciousness was a universal substrate to existence

And now you've gone off the rails on a crazy train.

 

[punshhh]

Yes, this is my goal: even if someone may continue to add requisites to make a copy of me that would be exactly me, I still may image that all of these requisites could be satisfied somewhere. After all, they happened in this Universe, because I am here!

So, because I believe that what is enough probable to happen once, then is also enough probable to happen two, three, infinite times again (given enough time and/or space), then I conclude that I will born again each time that exactly the same circunstances will happen again.

Max Tegmark imagined something similar in his article about multiverses that you can read at http://www.scribd.com/autodidactic/d/6146247-Parallel-Universes-Max-Tegmark-Scientific-American (even if he don't speak about the personal identity).

Dancing David, I know the double slit experiment and Uncertainty principle, I wrote in some post that I really think that two brains in the same state will diverge in a moment, but with a number large enough of brains in the same state, at least two of them could enter in the same new state and so stay in synch for two moments, etc. Maybe you miss it, but no matter, as you continue to miss that my name is "IacopoV" and not "IcopaV". Anyway, thanks for your english corrections.

All this says nothing about Open Individualism, it just meant to show that I may born again even without the existence of any soul. But according to Open Individualism, it is not necessary to duplicate an intere universe to build two people with the same personal identity, it simply descends by their having the same property of consciousness.

Many of you said that this property must be considered different each time because it applies to different people; in my view, consciousness is like a function that requires an argument, that is not even a person, but a brain state enough complex to allow consciousness. So the function is always the same, but applied each time to different data. This explains why during our lives we can change all our material parts without losing our personal identity, and also how we can have the same personal identity without sharing any memories, nor willingness, nor thought between us.

I am aware that you will not agree, and that these are not proofs. But at least you can see that this model doesn't require any "cosmic soul" or religious concept. Maybe it's not a materialist view, but is not dualist as it doesn't need any kind of quintessence. My view of Open Individualism is based just on information, and everything I consider is only data and functions.

Thank you for having compared your ideas with mine.

Yes I understand your position, its an interesting idea. I use a similar idea based around the Hindu idea of "atman".

All woo woo around here

 

[punshhh]

No.

You seem to have missed the maths in my post - I know it was very esoteric, I mean I even got it wrong in a previous post but let me try it again: 1+1=2.

If you make a copy of anything you end up with 2 of that thing. So in your example there are two beings, even if we can't tell them apart except by which universe they are in. They are no more "one" than two identical apples are "one" apple.

yy2bggggs' post above gives a long explanation of what this means: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=7962850#post7962850, I'll try to give a shorter example using your duplicated universes hypothetical.

We start with one universe with a single "Darat" in it and we say to Darat "In a moment we will replicate the universe and then whisper the name of an animal into your ear and then ask you what animal we whispered".

We press the button and quicker than you can say abracadabra we have two universes identical in every way. We decide to call one universe the "lefthand universe" and the other one "righthand universe".

We enter the "lefthand universe" and whisper into LeftDarat's ear "rabbit", we jump to the "righthand universe" and say to RightDarat "What animal's name did we just whisper into your ear?"

RightDarat's answer is "You haven't whispered any animal's name into my ear!"

The reason for this is that there are now two Darats, the fact that they have the same physical make-up doesn't link them in any way. What happens to one Darat will not effect the other Darat.

If you make a copy of one apple you have two apples, if you decide to eat one of the apples it doesn't matter how "physically identical" the two separate apples are eating one of the apples does not effect the other apple.

I agree with your position on this question.

 

[punshhh]

And now you've gone off the rails on a crazy train.

Perhaps "atman" is more appropriate.

 

[Nonpareil]

Perhaps "atman" is more appropriate.

Then you're still off the rails.

 

[Nonpareil]

I agree with your position on this question.

Which means you either don't understand what's actually being discussed, you fundamentally misunderstood what Darat is saying, or your position on the matter is largely incoherent. I wonder which it is.

 

[Dancing David]

Yes, this is my goal: even if someone may continue to add requisites to make a copy of me that would be exactly me, I still may image that all of these requisites could be satisfied somewhere. After all, they happened in this Universe, because I am here!

So, because I believe that what is enough probable to happen once, then is also enough probable to happen two, three, infinite times again (given enough time and/or space), then I conclude that I will born again each time that exactly the same circunstances will happen again.

Max Tegmark imagined something similar in his article about multiverses that you can read at http://www.scribd.com/autodidactic/d/6146247-Parallel-Universes-Max-Tegmark-Scientific-American (even if he don't speak about the personal identity).

Dancing David, I know the double slit experiment and Uncertainty principle, I wrote in some post that I really think that two brains in the same state will diverge in a moment, but with a number large enough of brains in the same state, at least two of them could enter in the same new state and so stay in synch for two moments, etc. Maybe you miss it, but no matter, as you continue to miss that my name is "IacopoV" and not "IcopaV". Anyway, thanks for your english corrections.

Sorry about that I did not copy it, I just typed it.

However I not that you did not address the argument i presented about why your formulation and POV regarding materialism is false.

The number of brains you would have to have for the brain to re-enter any sort of synch would be most likely larger that 10⁷⁰, which is the estimated number of partcicles in the universe.

All this says nothing about Open Individualism, it just meant to show that I may born again even without the existence of any soul.

Only if you recreate all the conditions that led to you, did you not learn? Are you not conditioned? Did your brain not develop?

But according to Open Individualism, it is not necessary to duplicate an intere universe to build two people with the same personal identity, it simply descends by their having the same property of consciousness.

And as that is an emergent property of the brain, the biochemical processes that produce consciousness are similar but never exact.

Many of you said that this property must be considered different each time because it applies to different people; in my view, consciousness is like a function that requires an argument, that is not even a person, but a brain state enough complex to allow consciousness. So the function is always the same, but applied each time to different data.

Except brain structure creates, channels and screen all of that data, it is based upon the brain structure as it develops.

Two retinas do not have the same cross reference structure between photoreceptors, the optic nerve signals are not the same, the visual cortex is not the same, the patterns of perception are not the same..

This explains why during our lives we can change all our material parts without losing our personal identity,

personal identity is mostly an illusion as any time spent with someone with delusions, dementia or alzheimers will tell you.

We do have bodies that provide the only continuity.

and also how we can have the same personal identity without sharing any memories, nor willingness, nor thought between us.

Unsupported asertion, no evidence.

I am aware that you will not agree, and that these are not proofs. But at least you can see that this model doesn't require any "cosmic soul" or religious concept. Maybe it's not a materialist view, but is not dualist as it doesn't need any kind of quintessence. My view of Open Individualism is based just on information, and everything I consider is only data and functions.

Except that is not the way the brain works, the structure of the brain is crucial to the data.

Thank you for having compared your ideas with mine.

Later dude!

 

[Dancing David]

Yes I agree, perhaps this is what IacopoV is addressing.

Say there were two identical universes, deterministic for the sake of argument.
There would be two identical IacopoV's doing exactly the same thing. You could theoretically swap them over and neither of them would notice the difference. It would be impossible to tell the difference.

If consciousness was a universal substrate to existence it would be reasonable to consider that these two beings were one being in two places at the same time.

Indeed in Eastern philosophies enlightened beings do just this (apparently).

The universe is not deterministic, it is causal.

 

[tsig]

Yes I agree, perhaps this is what IacopoV is addressing.

Say there were two identical universes, deterministic for the sake of argument.
There would be two identical IacopoV's doing exactly the same thing. You could theoretically swap them over and neither of them would notice the difference. It would be impossible to tell the difference.

If consciousness was a universal substrate to existence it would be reasonable to consider that these two beings were one being in two places at the same time.

Indeed in Eastern philosophies enlightened beings do just this (apparently).

Did you ever meet any of these enlightened beings?

 

[punshhh]

The universe is not deterministic, it is causal.

Yes I agree in this case. I was trying to re-frame IacopoV's question.

 

[punshhh]

Which means you either don't understand what's actually being discussed, you fundamentally misunderstood what Darat is saying, or your position on the matter is largely incoherent. I wonder which it is.

IacopoV agreed with my interpretation and I agree with Darat on his position and have each time he has discussed it on other threads.

Perhaps you should look to your own interpretation.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

From an alternate thread with the same conversational identity:

This is a bit of a thread hijack, but I feel a certain amount of the preceding material is necessary for the discussion. In a new thread you'd just have similar people hashing out similar things again before the topic got started anyway.


This is going to elaborate on the idea of "convention" I touched on in the atheism-materialism thread. I can link if you'd like, but basically the universe doesn't care in the slightest if we live or die. If the goop in our heads form brains or bananas.

As self-aware patterns of neural activity, we've evolved a strong instinct for self-preservation. The problem is, we've also evolved the smarts to argue about how we define the self. There are many conventions people use, none of them are perfectly rational in any objective sense (not even yours), nor is any one useful all the time.

A common convention which works 90% of the time is material continuity. If you go brain-dead on the operating table for a minute and come back, it's nice to not be considered a different person. But that has problems because (like you mention) quantum thingummies are restating their spins or whatever every instant, and while that doesn't affect anything so far as we can tell, parts of your brain are in a slow churn of die-off and replacement (other parts just die), and that does. Plus there's the blasted Ship of Theseus paradox that muddies the water further.

Another convention, my preferred one, is pattern continuity. This certainly has problems, as our minds are stopped (which doesn't happen when you sleep, by the way: your mind keeps going, you just don't remember it) much more often than they get replaced. The aforementioned operating table for instance. I'm still drawn to it, however, by the potential application of software version system analogies.

Yet a third, which it seems you switched to when ditching the first, is... I don't know what to call it. But as long as there's still someone in the universe who can legitimately call himself you (by some standard, opinions wildly differ here), what happens to you you is inconsequential. This is no more rational than the other two: what if, to use the teleporter hypothetical, the person who steps through the In gate is not instantly disassembled but instantly copied, then slowly tortured to death for the amusement of the alien race who runs the teleporter? From your point of view it will be the same - the you leaving the Out gate would remember going through the In gate and nothing more. Would you still be so eager?


I like your second hypothetical situation better, because it stands a good chance of not being so hypothetical in a few decades' time. Assuming there were a method of whole brain emulation which could accurately replicate minds to your satisfaction, but doing so involved tearing the donor brain into tiny little bits of flesh examined under the microscope for their content, would you do it? After all, you've got less than a century left on Earth, but memento mori means little in silico.

I'm curious what the responses of the wider audience in this thread would be.

Personally I'd see the situation as similar to dying so that a close relative might live; a very close relative indeed. I'd do it eventually, but I'd wait until I had a good reason: terminal cancer or Alzheimer's or such.

We actually discussed this quite a bit here. In fact, that thread seems to be an appropriate place to move the discussion if you want to hash it out.
Agree that this doesn't work.
I'm not sure what you mean by pattern continuity here; based on the problem you cite, it seems you're holding a sort of axiom that there should be some "always on" computer, and if it's ever shut off, the pattern ends, and any reboot is a different thing altogether. Given this description, I don't think this works either.

This one seems to assume that somehow you can be in two places at once, and I don't think it works for that reason.

Given at least my interpretation, I don't like either of the above--no wonder you find them irrational!

I propose a fourth alternative--informational continuity. Specifically, there are certain kinds of things that only I am privy to, and I can develop memories of these sorts of things. In situations where those sorts of memories are genuine, I should have all rights to claim that I remember being that person.

I think this is the critical invariant for continuity, and it dodges all three of your problems. For the Ship of Theseus issue, it really doesn't matter what molecules are in my body--it matters more what the mental states represent, and whether the represented states have a "correct" causal relationship to what they represent. As for the pattern issue, so long as the information got carried, it's not a problem if everything stopped--if you were frozen in carbonite and reconstituted, you still have rights to claim to be the same person.

The cloning part of the infamous teleporter is the "tricky" one, but it's not really too bad if you think about it. This makes two bona fide separate individuals; each should care about the other just as they would their twin. Neither can claim to be the other, because neither is causally linked to the other's subjectivity in the right way. However, both can claim to have been the original, because they were both causally related in the appropriate way to their past counterparts.

This actually seems the least rational, as it does not require even similar material or processing as a human brain, but merely sufficient understanding of such to extract all relevant information. If the teleporter aliens who torture In-goers do so to extract their ssssecretsss, does that make them you? I hope I'm not strawmanning when I answer "of course it doesn't, though they can seriously screw my credit rating at that point" for you, a response which is most easily reasoned by falling back on any of the other alternatives.

Yes, it's a straw man. I pointed to another thread. Do you really want to discuss it here instead?

Well, punshh found this thread too, so the signal to noise ratio is going to be crap in any case. I'll copy the posts over, but I'd like for you to explain how I'm wrong. You did specify information, not information-and-material or information-and-pattern. Although now I'm wondering if a "pick any two" approach might not be the ticket after all.

"Strawman," incidentally, implies a disingenuous motive on my part to willfully misinterpret your position. I don't do that, so if I do misinterpret your position rest assured it'll be a genuine mistake, unless I can sprinkle it with enough humor to make it clear I'm being hyperbolic. In return, I'd appreciate it if j'accuse did not figure prominently in your responses, thanks. If I wanted a mudslinging fight I'd actually bother to engage punshh or westprog or kblood or their ilk.

 

[yy2bggggs]

From an alternate thread with the same conversational identity:

Alright, so I don't have much time, but I'll highlight; I'll invest more time later.

To start with my post is only pointing towards the right frame of mind--it is not a full definition of self, but rather, it is describing the critical element for continuity of self, in terms of your conventions. When I'm referring to a particular kind of thing in that thread, I'm referencing, not defining (so it's as if I said that water is the kind of thing that comes from faucets; if you treat this as a definition, you can object by raising the point that alcohol comes from some faucets, and is certainly not water). See post #159 for an example. I'd also like to encourage you to read this thread (which was part of the point of referring to it).

I would like to see a definition of what you mean by pattern before I proceed, or at least explicit acknowledgement that my general impressions are correct. If my understanding is correct, then I don't think what you mean by "pattern" is even necessary.

Finally, what I'm talking about is essentially a set of criteria we can use to define whether or not we are the same person as a person in the past. The informational flow that I'm talking about is the same kind of requisite informational flow that is necessary to establish knowledge of any phenomenon--and the information content that I'm talking about is the same sort of information content that we use to conceive of ourselves as cohesive and separable entities (i.e., individuals) in the first place.

In other words, I say that you are a person if you remember being the person, and all I'm doing is qualifying what I mean by "being the person" and "remembering being the person".

Your alien example simply disqualifies for this kind of information. I picked a number from 1 to 1000 to use as an example yesterday, and never told anyone that number. But I remember picking the number. That's the idea. It would be surprising if you knew the number (knew in a sense that avoided the Gettier problem) without my telling you, since you're not the same guy as I am. But it would not be surprising if I told you the number and you knew it as a result, so that kind of thing wouldn't count. What you're describing with the alien is forced information extraction, so it falls into the latter category.

"Strawman," incidentally, implies a disingenuous motive on my part to willfully misinterpret your position.

I only meant this in terms of a misrepresentation of my position.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Well, I got impatient, so sorry if I misrepresent your quick off the cuff arguments.

It seems though, that you're talking about the other side of the coin iacopov is equivocating. Equivalence rather than identity. Which is dandy, but it seems more like an adjunct than an alternative. I doubt we'll be able to have your informational continuity without having one of the others as well.

Would you mind if I pump you for information by extending a hypothetical? Imagine the teleporter question. Now imagine that the person who leaves the teleporter isn't exactly you by the other metrics. When you walked into the tele, your memories were disassembled and spooled out onto some other medium, then spun into a flash-grown clone of you, such that the clone "lived" your life in a fraction of a second. Everything you remember, he remembers, only because the brain is a stochastically self-assembled piece of work, his brain looks nothing like your brain. At that level you're as different as two people can be, despite both coding schemes covering the same information.

Is he you? Why/why not?