Proof of Immortality III

[jond]

I just saw these two videos a few days ago, and I'll share because they are relevant to the topic at hand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trqDnLNRuSc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17WiQ_tNld4

Very short, entertaining overviews on the philosophy of personal identity. They specifically address the transporter problem.

I should say that these issues are actually far more complex than they initially appear. However, Jabba isn't even scratching the surface (getting past the basic stuff), and instead inserting his own ideas about what's really going on, while displaying his own ignorance in every way he knows how.

Cool, thanks!

 

[Jabba]

It would be a person exactly like you. There would be no difference between them. The two selves would be exactly the same.

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

 

[JayUtah]

The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference.

And that's just abstract identity, conveyed by the fact that cloning would necessarily produce two organisms and two objects necessarily cannot be one. We've been over this many times.

It's not a big difference. You can clone Mt. Ranier, and the clone wouldn't be the original Mt. Ranier, but it would have all the characteristics of the original. Thus the difference in identity matters only if you can show that there exists something that ought to be shared, but cannot be via duplication. Mere identity isn't enough.

It would not have my awareness, my identity.

Asked and answered. It would have its own identity and awareness that would be equivalent in all respects to the original. Now you're trying to co-opt "identity" to mean soul. Identity means a specific thing in philosophy, and it isn't a soul.

 

[abaddon]

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

And you would not be the new self either. Where does that leave you?

It leaves you staring individuality in the face. We have been over and over and over this again and again and again.

Linguistic gymnastics will not change this.

 

[Mojo]

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

It would have an awareness, an identity, exactly the same as yours. It would think is was you, and you would be unable to prove that it wasn't.

 

[godless dave]

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

It would have an awareness and identity that were exactly the same as yours.

In what way would it be different?

 

[sackett]

If the 2 Jabbas went to lunch together, they might agree on all sorts of things, perhaps everything.

Until the check came. Then, think I, they'd start to diverge, and soon prove to be quite different Jabbas, never to coalesce.

 

[The Sparrow]

I think that's basically it, yeah. Each musical recording is a unique immaterial object, that gets bound to a single CD at a time. Two CDs can't share the same recording.

Facinating! Tell me more on how we can use sheep's bladders to predict weather.

 

[Filippo Lippi]

Jabba, like a alchemist staring at a turd, mumbling, "if only I can find the right form of words, I'll be rich. Rich! Rich, I tells ya!"

 

[I Am The Scum]

What if I borrow $20 from Jim and then a week later he clones himself. Which Jim do I pay back? Whoah!

 

[abaddon]

What if I borrow $20 from Jim and then a week later he clones himself. Which Jim do I pay back? Whoah!

Neither. You can now no longer identify to whom the debt is owed.

 

[jsfisher]

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

No, it would be exactly you. There would be two of you, and neither one of you would be able to determine which was the original (if that question even made sense).

You are still trying to insert as a "given" that some sort of soul exists. That is why words continue to fail you.

 

[JayUtah]

You are still trying to insert as a "given" that some sort of soul exists. That is why words continue to fail you.

That, and Jabba's propensity to recycle the argument at each step by introducing new ambiguity to counter the clarity provided by his critics. As long as the argument remains ambiguous, Jabba doesn't have to admit defeat. And he can attribute ambiguity to some sort of supposedly inherent problem of language or conceptualization. It's almost as if he isn't listening to his critics when the point out the fairly obvious ongoing obfuscation.

 

[Nonpareil]

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

Yes, we said this. It would, however, be you in the sense that a copy of a CD is another instance of that CD, which is all that anyone actually cares about.

You are either trying very clumsily to say that it would not be the same instantiation of you, which is true and exactly what everyone else has been saying, or trying very clumsily to say that it would somehow be a fundamentally different person, which you have failed to establish.

And you are still no closer to establishing the existence of a soul. You are, once again, just basing your extraordinarily nonsensical arguments off of the assumption that it exists, which is not going to convince anybody.

 

[JayUtah]

You are, once again, just basing your extraordinarily nonsensical arguments off of the assumption that it exists, which is not going to convince anybody.

Especially with the denouement in which he says, in his own way, that he must have a soul because he knows one when he sees one, and if you don't agree with him then you just haven't gotten in touch with it. The problem is not that he lacks the words to express the concept in which he believes. The problem is exactly the opposite: words are too exact to allow him to maintain the ambiguity he so desperately wants to persist.

 

[carlitos]

Jabba, like a alchemist staring at a turd, mumbling, "if only I can find the right form of words, I'll be rich. Rich! Rich, I tells ya!"

Funny, but he is already Rich.

 

[jsfisher]

Funny, but he is already Rich.

I see what you did there.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

Yes, it would be you. It would have your awareness and your identity.
In fact, knowing you, you two would be bickering for the next couple of decades about who was the real you ... and get nowhere.

Hans

 

[Agatha]

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

No, that's not correct. The new self in this hypothetical would be an identical, but separate, you. Neither of the two selves would be able to know which was the original as both would have the same memories, the same awareness and the same identity at the moment of replication.

In the moments following replication, the two separate-but-identical "yous" would start to diverge and develop (because each of the yous cannot occupy the same space as the other separate-but-identical you) , just as the Jabba that existed at the beginning of this interminable thread is not identical to the Jabba at this precise moment. They would both believe, and continue to believe themselves to be the original you.

 

[Jabba]

Dave,
- The two selves would be exactly the same -- except, the new self would not be me. That's a big difference. It would not have my awareness, my identity.

It would have an awareness and identity that were exactly the same as yours.

In what way would it be different?

Dave,

- Either you and your associates are virtually blind to some aspect of reality, or I'm hallucinating...
- If I'm not hallucinating, I must be trying to convey a concept that is -- at the very most -- almost impossible to communicate to someone who hasn't already experienced it...

- What I suspect is that the concept is real (the concept is not a null class), but that it is recognized only through holistic data processing (thinking), and you guys are so dominated by analytic data processing that you virtually cannot process the data holistically (you can't see the forest for the trees) -- and consequently can't appreciate what I'm trying to say...
- The "who" I'm trying to convey is a forest.

- I haven't given up yet, but I need to go rev up my helicopter. When I come back, I'll see if I can lift you above the trees.
- I bet you guys just love my audacity here...