[Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction]

[Brent Meeker-2]

Review of a book that may be of interest to the list.

Brent Meeker

-------- Original Message --------

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

2009-02-26 : View this Review Online
<http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15326> : View Other NDPR Reviews
<http://ndpr.nd.edu/>

David Shoemaker, /Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction/,
Broadview Press, 2009, 296pp., $26.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551118826.

*Reviewed by Amy Kind, Claremont McKenna College*

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although there are many excellent texts dealing with the metaphysics of
personal identity, Shoemaker's /Personal Identity and Ethics/ is the
first book I know to tackle in such an extended way the question of the
relationship between personal identity and our practical concerns. It is
a very welcome addition to the philosophical literature. While even
experts on the subject of personal identity will undoubtedly learn
something new from this rich discussion, I expect the book's primary use
will be in undergraduate (and perhaps graduate) classes, and its
exceptionally clear presentation of some very thorny issues makes it an
excellent choice for this purpose.

Shoemaker has divided his discussion of the relationship between
personal identity and our practical concerns into two broad parts. The
first half of the book focuses on our self-regarding practical concerns.
Which theories of personal identity make it rational for us to
anticipate an afterlife? More generally, when is it rational for someone
to anticipate, or have self-regarding concern about, a future
experience? The second half of the book focuses on other-regarding
practical concerns. What light can theories of personal identity shed on
ethical issues at the beginning of life, such as abortion, genetic
intervention, and the creation of life through cloning? What light can
they shed on ethical issues at the end of life, such as the legitimacy
of advance directives? What can they tell us about the proper treatment
(or "cure") in cases of multiple personalities? What role should
theories of personal identity play in our assessment of moral
responsibility? What is the relationship between personal identity and
ethical theory, and in particular, do certain theories of personal
identity make certain ethical theories more plausible?

Shoemaker's first chapter focuses on the question of whether an
individual can survive the death of her body, and he frames his
discussion around John Perry's /Dialogues Concerning Personal Identity
and Immortality/. (Those adopting Shoemaker's book for classroom use
would likely want to assign these /Dialogues /along with it.) He also
introduces four different theories of personal identity -- the Soul
Criterion, the Body Criterion, the Memory Criterion, and the Brain-Based
Memory Criterion -- each of which is ultimately dismissed as inadequate.
Though Shoemaker argues that the last three views suffer from serious
problems that prevent them from being plausible accounts of our identity
over time, he offers a different sort of argument against the Soul
Criterion: There are good practical reasons to "insist on a tight
connection between the nature of personal identity and our practical
concerns, and thus reject any theory of personal identity -- like the
Soul Criterion -- that denies this connection." (33) Even if souls
exist, we lack any kind of epistemic access to them; rather, we
reidentify individuals in terms of their bodies and/or their
psychologies. Thus, souls are irrelevant to the practical issues under
consideration, and this irrelevance is taken to justify the rejection of
the Soul Criterion. Whether we're right to insist on such a tight
connection between the nature of personal identity and our practical
concerns is a question that recurs throughout the book, but which
Shoemaker addresses in the concluding chapter. I'll return to this issue
below.

In the second chapter, which deals primarily with the problem of when we
can rationally have self-regarding concern about a future experience,
Shoemaker discusses what he takes to be the "two most sophisticated
theories of personal identity on offer" (112): the Psychological
Criterion and the Biological Criterion, often called /Animalism/. Like
the book as a whole, this chapter is admirably clear as it rehearses the
standard considerations for and against each of the two views. Having
argued that proponents of these criteria end up in a kind of stand-off
-- each view faces a set of problems that are overall roughly equal in
seriousness -- Shoemaker uses the third chapter to introduce two
alternative approaches: the Narrative Identity Criterion and the
Identity Doesn't Matter view (IDM).

Unlike the previous theories considered, the Narrative Identity
Criterion proposed by Marya Schechtman aims to explain what makes an
individual who she is rather than to offer a theory of her numerical
identity over time. On this view, an experience or action can be
properly attributed to an individual only if it is correctly
incorporated into the self-told story of her life. This criterion seems
tailor-made to account for our rational anticipation and self-concern;
as Shoemaker puts it, "rational anticipation requires the kind of
personhood and psychological unity that only narrative identity
delivers." (95) However, Shoemaker suggests that the Narrative Identity
Criterion fails to account for other practical concerns, such as our
ability to reidentify other individuals, and sometimes has trouble even
accounting adequately for rational anticipation and self-concern. When I
am concerned about whether I will survive a medical procedure, for
example, I may want to know whether whoever wakes up from that procedure
will be /me/, a question that seems to depend on numerical identity.
Finally, Shoemaker also suggests that the Narrative Identity Criterion
suffers from some fundamental unclarities, for example, whether it is
meant to be a prescriptive or descriptive theory. So, while he deems
this alternative to traditional theories of personal identity worthy of
our continued consideration, the view appears to face its own set of
problems which are as serious as those of the Psychological Criterion or
the Biological Criterion.

Shoemaker reaches a similar conclusion about IDM, Derek Parfit's view
that what matters for survival is not identity but rather psychological
continuity. Unlike identity, psychological continuity is not a 1:1
relation; an individual at time t1 may be psychologically continuous
with two individuals at time t2. But, as Shoemaker explains, the IDM
view claims that it can be rational for the first individual to
anticipate both of the two later individuals' experiences, even though
the first individual will be identical to neither of them:

What matters in ordinary survival -- what I look forward to in
day-to-day survival -- is that the person who wakes up in my bed, say,
will remember my life, act on my intentions, see and approach the world
as I would have, love and take care of the things I love and take care
of, and so forth. And whether or not there is one person or there are
two people who will do this is -- at least to some extent --
unimportant. (107-8)

Furthermore, because psychological continuity comes in degrees, the IDM
view implies that our practical concerns themselves may be matters of
degree. For example, a teenager likely has considerably more
psychological continuity with her middle-aged self than with her
retirement-age self, so according to the IDM view, she should care more
about her middle-aged self. Following Mark Johnston, Shoemaker
criticizes the IDM view for this radical implication. The IDM view is
motivated in large part by consideration of fission cases, which we
never confront in real life. Thus, though there might be possible
situations in which identity doesn't matter, given the actual situation
in which we find ourselves, it seems reasonable for us to ground our
practical concerns in facts about numerical identity.

The subsequent chapters on other-regarding concerns in the second half
of the book suggest, however, that Shoemaker does not find this
objection compelling. More generally, although Shoemaker aims to remain
neutral throughout the book about which of the four contending theories
(the Psychological Criterion, the Biological Criterion, the Narrative
Criterion, and the IDM view) we should adopt, his discussion at times
seems to betray a sympathy for the IDM view. In Chapters Four and Five,
for example, after surveying various ethical issues concerning the
beginning of life, Shoemaker reaches the tentative conclusion that
whichever metaphysical theory turns out to be correct, there are no
identity-based objections to the morality of practices such as abortion,
stem cell research, genetic intervention, or cloning. This finding
relates to a general strategic approach he cautiously recommends for
dealing with ethical issues: "we might get more traction in applying
metaphysics to morality if we perhaps focused less on identity per se
and more on the direct psychological and physical relations in which
identity might consist." (173) This strategy seems directly to favor the
IDM view.

Consider also his rebuttal of Don Marquis' influential anti-abortion
argument. On Marquis' view, the wrongness of killing an individual can
be explained in terms of the value that her future has to her; he then
argues that abortion is morally impermissible because a fetus has a
valuable future just as we do. Against this, Shoemaker suggests we can
best understand the value of an individual's future in terms of facts
about her psychological continuity with her future self. In looking
ahead to the future, I want someone to exist who is psychologically
continuous with me -- who remembers my experiences, who will care about
and carry out my current plans, and so on. Whether or not I am identical
to that person is less important than whether she bears the right
psychological relations to me. But if what matters for having a valuable
future is psychological continuity, then fetuses cannot have valuable
futures like ours; since they lack basic psychological capacities, they
cannot have any psychological continuers. Thus, according to Shoemaker,
Marquis' argument fails. Importantly, however, Shoemaker's discussion
relies on intuitions about various hypothetical fission cases to
motivate his claim about what makes our futures valuable, and someone
disinclined to accept the IDM view might not share his intuitions about
the fission cases -- or might, like Johnston, worry that these
intuitions do not generalize. Though I myself am inclined to agree with
Shoemaker's general line of response to Marquis, I do not always share
his intuitions about the cases he uses to motivate this response, and I
thus wish the discussion did not rely so heavily on those cases.

Chapter Six, which takes up questions about the legitimacy of advance
directives and about the proper way to treat Dissociative Identity
Disorder (DID), is to my mind one of the richest in the book. As
Shoemaker himself notes, when DID is invoked in discussions of personal
identity, it is usually in the context of the "one body/one person"
principle. The distinct personalities of someone with DID, which may
seem to correspond to distinct persons, pose a challenge to this
principle. Shoemaker takes up a related but different issue, namely,
that if these multiple personalities are distinct persons, then certain
kinds of psychiatric treatments seem to be morally questionable.
Attempts to eliminate some of the personalities, or even to integrate
them, might be akin to murder. In Shoemaker's discussion of this issue,
he manages to navigate through some difficult philosophical terrain
without getting unnecessarily bogged down, and also without
oversimplifying. I can easily see the material on DID stimulating lively
conversation in an undergraduate class, perhaps in conjunction with the
material on the Christine Beauchamp case in Kathleen Wilkes' /Real
Persons/ (which Shoemaker cites). I expect the discussion of advance
directives would likewise make for compelling classroom dialogue. Though
most of us share the strong intuition that an individual has the moral
authority to dictate the terms of her future medical treatment, it turns
out to be enormously difficult to find the grounds for that moral
authority. Shoemaker's treatment of the issue does an excellent job of
making this difficulty vivid.

This chapter also raises an intriguing methodological question --
namely, what role our moral intuitions should play in our evaluation of
theories of personal identity. If a theory of personal identity cannot
account for our intuition about the moral permissibility of advance
directives, for example, then does this count against the theory? Or, if
we have a theory that otherwise does quite well in accounting for
personal identity, should we re-evaluate our intuition about advance
directives? This general methodological question about the role of
intuitions (which arises again in Chapter Eight, "Personal Identity and
Ethical Theory") relates to another intriguing methodological question
that recurs throughout the book, arising most prominently in Shoemaker's
discussion of moral responsibility in Chapter Seven: "should we simply
try to account for our practices as they are, or should we insist that
our practices must depend on the metaphysical truth, whatever that turns
out to be?" (238) These methodological questions, having been explicitly
set aside for most of the book, are finally taken up in the concluding
chapter, "Notes on Method." To my mind, however, this chapter falls a
bit short of expectations. Given the importance of these methodological
questions to the enterprise in which Shoemaker is involved, I had hoped
that he would be able to provide more of a defense of his own
methodological assumptions -- why, for example, certain intuitions that
we have about practical concerns are treated as virtually untouchable.

It turns out that when we try to clarify our intuitions, as Shoemaker
himself recognizes, they may turn out to be inconsistent -- or, even if
they can be made consistent, it is still hard to see how they could all
be compatible with a single theory of personal identity, or indeed, with
a single theory of the relation between personal identity and ethics. I
would have thought that this is a reason to reevaluate these intuitions,
i.e., that we have compelling grounds to give some of them up, even if
they are deeply held. But Shoemaker draws a different, and to my mind,
surprising conclusion. In his view, we should adopt pluralism about the
relation between identity and ethics, that is, we should accept "that
there is no single relation between identity and ethics, but instead
there are multiple relations, each depending on the methodological
approach one takes to the relation." (283) If I understand what he means
by this, however, it implies that there is no single correct criterion
of personal identity. Rather, the question of numerical identity -- "is
X at time t1 identical to Y at time t2?" -- is ambiguous; sometimes we
mean X and Y qua agents, sometimes X and Y qua human animals, etc.
Different practical concerns require us to read the question in
different ways.

In his brief defense of pluralism, Shoemaker acknowledges that the view
"is all fairly complicated, messy, and disunified." But, as he says, "it
could well be that the truth about the relation between personal
identity and ethics, like persons themselves, is complicated, messy, and
disunified." (284) Though I recognize that we cannot always clean up the
philosophical messes in which we find ourselves, I think we must be sure
not to give up too easily. Particularly in light of the many instances
throughout the book where the messy issues were explicitly put on hold
until the final chapter, I had high expectations for the methodological
discussion -- expectations that unfortunately were not met. I should be
clear, however, that my disappointment with the concluding chapter does
not alter my opinion that the book as a whole is an excellent treatment
of the relationship between personal identity and ethics, and one that I
would highly recommend to any professor looking for a textbook for a
class addressing these issues.


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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/2/20 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...> wrote:

>
> Review of a book that may be of interest to the list.
>
> Brent Meeker
>
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
>
> 2009-02-26 : View this Review Online
> <http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15326> : View Other NDPR Reviews
> <http://ndpr.nd.edu/>
>
> David Shoemaker, /Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction/,
> Broadview Press, 2009, 296pp., $26.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551118826.
>
> *Reviewed by Amy Kind, Claremont McKenna College*

Thank-you for alerting us to this book. I'll pick out just one passage
from the review for comment:

> Though Shoemaker argues that the last three views suffer from serious
> problems that prevent them from being plausible accounts of our identity
> over time, he offers a different sort of argument against the Soul
> Criterion: There are good practical reasons to "insist on a tight
> connection between the nature of personal identity and our practical
> concerns, and thus reject any theory of personal identity -- like the
> Soul Criterion -- that denies this connection." (33) Even if souls
> exist, we lack any kind of epistemic access to them; rather, we
> reidentify individuals in terms of their bodies and/or their
> psychologies. Thus, souls are irrelevant to the practical issues under
> consideration, and this irrelevance is taken to justify the rejection of
> the Soul Criterion.

Predominantly on this list we use the psychological criterion of
personal identity, originated by Locke and developed using various SF
thought experiments by Derek Parfit. This criterion is assumed true if
you are to agree to teleportation or replacement of your brain with a
functionally equivalent electronic analogue, and is contrasted with
non-reductionist theories involving the existence of a soul. If I have
a soul, it might not be transferred in the copying process even though
the copy acts the same as the original. I can understand this if the
copy is a philosophical zombie for lack of a soul, but it seems that
according to Shoemaker's usage the soul is not identical with the mind
or consciousness. This leaves open the possibility that my copy might
both behave *and* think the same way I do but still not be the same
person. But if that is so, then as Shoemaker says, that would make the
soul irrelevant.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Stephen Paul King-2]

Hi Stathis,

    A question : Is is incorrect of me to infer that the psychological
criterion of personal identity discussed in Shoemaker's book and, by your
statement below, used by a predominance of members of this list is one that
treats conscious self-awareness as an epiphenomena arrising from a Classical
system and that it is, at least tacitly, assumed that quantum effects have
no supervenience upon any notion of Consciousness?
    While I welcome the rejection of notion of "Souls" which are in
principle non-verifiable, could we be endulging in meaningless chatter about
computerizing consciousness if we do not first determen that consciousness
is a purely classical epiphenomena? After all we are repeatedly told that it
is the classical view of the Universe and all within it is a theory long ago
refuted.

Kindest regards,

Stephen


----- Original Message -----
From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathisp@...>
To: <everything-list@...>
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 8:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A
Brief Introduction]

>
> 2009/2/20 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...> wrote:
>>
>> Review of a book that may be of interest to the list.
>>
>> Brent Meeker
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>>
>> Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
>>
>> 2009-02-26 : View this Review Online
>> <http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15326> : View Other NDPR Reviews
>> <http://ndpr.nd.edu/>
>>
>> David Shoemaker, /Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction/,
>> Broadview Press, 2009, 296pp., $26.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551118826.
>>
>> *Reviewed by Amy Kind, Claremont McKenna College*
>
> Thank-you for alerting us to this book. I'll pick out just one passage
> from the review for comment:
>
>> Though Shoemaker argues that the last three views suffer from serious
>> problems that prevent them from being plausible accounts of our identity
>> over time, he offers a different sort of argument against the Soul
>> Criterion: There are good practical reasons to "insist on a tight
>> connection between the nature of personal identity and our practical
>> concerns, and thus reject any theory of personal identity -- like the
>> Soul Criterion -- that denies this connection." (33) Even if souls
>> exist, we lack any kind of epistemic access to them; rather, we
>> reidentify individuals in terms of their bodies and/or their
>> psychologies. Thus, souls are irrelevant to the practical issues under
>> consideration, and this irrelevance is taken to justify the rejection of
>> the Soul Criterion.
>
> Predominantly on this list we use the psychological criterion of
> personal identity, originated by Locke and developed using various SF
> thought experiments by Derek Parfit. This criterion is assumed true if
> you are to agree to teleportation or replacement of your brain with a
> functionally equivalent electronic analogue, and is contrasted with
> non-reductionist theories involving the existence of a soul. If I have
> a soul, it might not be transferred in the copying process even though
> the copy acts the same as the original. I can understand this if the
> copy is a philosophical zombie for lack of a soul, but it seems that
> according to Shoemaker's usage the soul is not identical with the mind
> or consciousness. This leaves open the possibility that my copy might
> both behave *and* think the same way I do but still not be the same
> person. But if that is so, then as Shoemaker says, that would make the
> soul irrelevant.
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou

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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/2/21 Stephen Paul King <stephenk1@...>:

>
> Hi Stathis,
>
>    A question : Is is incorrect of me to infer that the psychological
> criterion of personal identity discussed in Shoemaker's book and, by your
> statement below, used by a predominance of members of this list is one that
> treats conscious self-awareness as an epiphenomena arrising from a Classical
> system and that it is, at least tacitly, assumed that quantum effects have
> no supervenience upon any notion of Consciousness?
>    While I welcome the rejection of notion of "Souls" which are in
> principle non-verifiable, could we be endulging in meaningless chatter about
> computerizing consciousness if we do not first determen that consciousness
> is a purely classical epiphenomena? After all we are repeatedly told that it
> is the classical view of the Universe and all within it is a theory long ago
> refuted.

The psychological criterion of personal identity is, or should be,
agnostic on the question of how consciousness is actually generated.
It says simply that if I am destroyed here and a copy of me with the
same psychological properties is created there, then I will suddenly
find myself there. It is possible to accept this criterion but deny
that the right sort of psychological properties could be duplicated in
a computer, or by any physical means at all if there is a supernatural
element involved in consciousness. What I find incoherent is the idea
that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
cannot be duplicated.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Brent Meeker-2]

Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Hi Stathis,
>
>     A question : Is is incorrect of me to infer that the psychological
> criterion of personal identity discussed in Shoemaker's book and, by your
> statement below, used by a predominance of members of this list is one that
> treats conscious self-awareness as an epiphenomena arrising from a Classical
> system and that it is, at least tacitly, assumed that quantum effects have
> no supervenience upon any notion of Consciousness?
>     While I welcome the rejection of notion of "Souls" which are in
> principle non-verifiable, could we be endulging in meaningless chatter about
> computerizing consciousness if we do not first determen that consciousness
> is a purely classical epiphenomena? After all we are repeatedly told that it
> is the classical view of the Universe and all within it is a theory long ago
> refuted.
>  

There's no inconsistency between the universe being quantum mechanical,
while human thought processes are essentially classical.  The classical
world emerges from the quantum in the limit of large action.

Brent Meeker



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[Stephen Paul King-2]

Some parts of this message have been removed. Learn more about Nabble's security policy.

Hi Brent and Stathis,

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Brent Meeker" <meekerdb@...>

To: <everything-list@...>

Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 1:35 AM

Subject: Re: Personal Identity and Ethics

snip
>>  
> There's no inconsistency between the universe being quantum mechanical,
> while human thought processes are essentially classical.  The classical
> world emerges from the quantum in the limit of large action.
>
> Brent Meeker

 

    Ok, my difficulty lies in the notion of "copying". If we are going to use a method X to derive a conclusion, does it not make sense that X must be sound? QM forbids the cloning or copying of states:

 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem

 

"The no cloning theorem is a result of quantum mechanics which forbids the creation of identical copies of an arbitrary unknown quantum state. It was stated by Wootters, Zurek, and Dieks in 1982, and has profound implications in quantum computing and related fields.

The state of one system can be entangled with the state of another system. For instance, one can use the Controlled NOT gate and the Walsh-Hadamard gate to entangle two qubits. This is not cloning. No well-defined state can be attributed to a subsystem of an entangled state. Cloning is a process whose end result is a separable state with identical factors.

.....

"No-cloning in a classical context

There is a classical analogue to the quantum no-cloning theorem, which we might state as follows: given only the result of one flip of a (possibly biased) coin, we cannot simulate a second, independent toss of the same coin. The proof of this statement uses the linearity of classical probability, and has exactly the same structure as the proof of the quantum no-cloning theorem. Thus if we wish to claim that no-cloning is a uniquely quantum result, some care is necessary in stating the theorem. One way of restricting the result to quantum mechanics is to restrict the states to pure states, where a pure state is defined to be one that is not a convex combination of other states. The classical pure states are pairwise orthogonal, but quantum pure states are not."

 

  How does a limit of large action change this? 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathisp@...>

To: <everything-list@...>

Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 1:19 AM

Subject: Re: Personal Identity and Ethics

> The psychological criterion of personal identity is, or should be,

> agnostic on the question of how consciousness is actually generated.
> It says simply that if I am destroyed here and a copy of me with the
> same psychological properties is created there, then I will suddenly
> find myself there. It is possible to accept this criterion but deny
> that the right sort of psychological properties could be duplicated in
> a computer, or by any physical means at all if there is a supernatural
> element involved in consciousness. What I find incoherent is the idea
> that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
> nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
> cannot be duplicated.
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou

 

 

 In the Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem we find:

 

"Imperfect cloning

Even though it is impossible to make perfect copies of an unknown quantum state, it is possible to produce imperfect copies. This can be done by coupling a larger auxiliary system to the system that is to be cloned, and applying a unitary transformation to the combined system. If the unitary transformation is chosen correctly, several components of the combined system will evolve into approximate copies of the original system. Imperfect cloning can be used as an eavesdropping attack on quantum cryptography protocols, among other uses in quantum information science."

  

   Does this allow us to recover our method X? No, because unless the copy is "identical", not just "approximate",  we can not conclude that any notion of continuance of consciousness might obtain.

 

 

Onward!

 

Stephen

 

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[Johnathan Corgan]

On Sat, 2009-02-21 at 15:25 -0500, Stephen Paul King wrote:

> Does this allow us to recover our method X? No, because unless the
> copy is "identical", not just "approximate",  we can not conclude that
> any notion of continuance of consciousness might obtain.

It is possible (I think likely) that there is a many-to-one relationship
between exact quantum states and one "conscious state", or observer
moment.  To put into Bruno's terminology, the your digital substitution
level would then be at a higher level than the exact quantum state.

If this is the case, then the method X of copying only needs to ensure
that the resultant quantum state stays within the common higher level
state to ensure continuity.

To use a thermodynamic analogy, which I find increasingly useful to
visualize these sorts of things, if the above many-to-one hypothesis
holds true, then multiple "microstates" map to a single "macrostate".
Continuity of personal identity would allow a change in microstates
(i.e., quantum states) during copying, as long as the resultant
microstate still belonged to the same macrostate (observer moment).  

Of course, what the defining function of membership of quantum states
within an observer moment that would preserve personal identity is
unknown.  Still, as long as there is a many-to-one relationship, then
the no-cloning theorem does not rule out transfer of identity through
your method X.

Johnathan Corgan



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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/2/22 Stephen Paul King <stephenk1@...>:

>     Ok, my difficulty lies in the notion of "copying". If we are going to
> use a method X to derive a conclusion, does it not make sense that X must be
> sound? QM forbids the cloning or copying of states:
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem
>
> "The no cloning theorem is a result of quantum mechanics which forbids the
> creation of identical copies of an arbitrary unknown quantum state. It was
> stated by Wootters, Zurek, and Dieks in 1982, and has profound implications
> in quantum computing and related fields.
>
> The state of one system can be entangled with the state of another system.
> For instance, one can use the Controlled NOT gate and the Walsh-Hadamard
> gate to entangle two qubits. This is not cloning. No well-defined state can
> be attributed to a subsystem of an entangled state. Cloning is a process
> whose end result is a separable state with identical factors.
>
> .....
>
> "No-cloning in a classical context
>
> There is a classical analogue to the quantum no-cloning theorem, which we
> might state as follows: given only the result of one flip of a (possibly
> biased) coin, we cannot simulate a second, independent toss of the same
> coin. The proof of this statement uses the linearity of classical
> probability, and has exactly the same structure as the proof of the quantum
> no-cloning theorem. Thus if we wish to claim that no-cloning is a uniquely
> quantum result, some care is necessary in stating the theorem. One way of
> restricting the result to quantum mechanics is to restrict the states to
> pure states, where a pure state is defined to be one that is not a convex
> combination of other states. The classical pure states are pairwise
> orthogonal, but quantum pure states are not."

But the brain changes from moment to moment due to chemical reactions
and thermal motion and we still remain the same person. If tolerances
were so tight that the no-cloning theorem is relevant then the brain
couldn't possibly function.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Brent Meeker-2]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> 2009/2/22 Stephen Paul King <stephenk1@...>:
>
>  
>>     Ok, my difficulty lies in the notion of "copying". If we are going to
>> use a method X to derive a conclusion, does it not make sense that X must be
>> sound? QM forbids the cloning or copying of states:
>>
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem
>>
>> "The no cloning theorem is a result of quantum mechanics which forbids the
>> creation of identical copies of an arbitrary unknown quantum state. It was
>> stated by Wootters, Zurek, and Dieks in 1982, and has profound implications
>> in quantum computing and related fields.
>>
>> The state of one system can be entangled with the state of another system.
>> For instance, one can use the Controlled NOT gate and the Walsh-Hadamard
>> gate to entangle two qubits. This is not cloning. No well-defined state can
>> be attributed to a subsystem of an entangled state. Cloning is a process
>> whose end result is a separable state with identical factors.
>>
>> .....
>>
>> "No-cloning in a classical context
>>
>> There is a classical analogue to the quantum no-cloning theorem, which we
>> might state as follows: given only the result of one flip of a (possibly
>> biased) coin, we cannot simulate a second, independent toss of the same
>> coin. The proof of this statement uses the linearity of classical
>> probability, and has exactly the same structure as the proof of the quantum
>> no-cloning theorem. Thus if we wish to claim that no-cloning is a uniquely
>> quantum result, some care is necessary in stating the theorem. One way of
>> restricting the result to quantum mechanics is to restrict the states to
>> pure states, where a pure state is defined to be one that is not a convex
>> combination of other states. The classical pure states are pairwise
>> orthogonal, but quantum pure states are not."
>>    
>
> But the brain changes from moment to moment due to chemical reactions
> and thermal motion and we still remain the same person. If tolerances
> were so tight that the no-cloning theorem is relevant then the brain
> couldn't possibly function.
>  

Exactly.  Anything that is going to produce useful information
processing must ultimately be classical.  Even quantum computers must
have their results projected out classically.  Tegmark and others have
shown that brain processes involve actions many orders above Planck's
constant - so a most quantum effects would produce small random effects.

Of course if you reject the idea that thinking is information
processing, then you could attribute it some other aspect of quantum
state evolution and ride off on Depak Chopra's horse.

Brent

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[John Mikes]

Stephen,

you've hit a nerve with 'copying':

 

Fundamental questions:

1.WHO (what) is copying and HOW?

2.INTO what(?) is copying being done?

 

Then are continuing questions:

3. Does the 'COPY'  (to be considerably identical) have identical interconnective circumstances as does the 'original'? (Interconnections, - interrelations -influence all discernible qualia and functions)

 

...and the main question:

 

4. Occurrence occurs by relation (anybody a better formula how any function or activity can be figured?) and a 'relation' to itself is passive at best. How is such passive state activated into the action of a copying?

(If we consider the intrinsic identity notion a relation with itself, it is an additional - different - view of self-observation as an outside observer).

 

I have the feeling of slipping into the 'armchair view' of the early universe (Big Bang theories) of the "scientist" - observing the fiery globe of the universe in his ashtray sitting at the fireplace. "WE" look at copying?

John M

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 3:25 PM, Stephen Paul King <stephenk1@...> wrote:

Hi Brent and Stathis,

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Brent Meeker" <meekerdb@...>

To: <everything-list@...>

Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 1:35 AM

Subject: Re: Personal Identity and Ethics

snip
>>  
> There's no inconsistency between the universe being quantum mechanical,
> while human thought processes are essentially classical.  The classical
> world emerges from the quantum in the limit of large action.
>
> Brent Meeker

 

    Ok, my difficulty lies in the notion of "copying". If we are going to use a method X to derive a conclusion, does it not make sense that X must be sound? QM forbids the cloning or copying of states:

 

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem

 

"The no cloning theorem is a result of quantum mechanics which forbids the creation of identical copies of an arbitrary unknown quantum state. It was stated by Wootters, Zurek, and Dieks in 1982, and has profound implications in quantum computing and related fields.

The state of one system can be entangled with the state of another system. For instance, one can use the Controlled NOT gate and the Walsh-Hadamard gate to entangle two qubits. This is not cloning. No well-defined state can be attributed to a subsystem of an entangled state. Cloning is a process whose end result is a separable state with identical factors.

.....

"No-cloning in a classical context

There is a classical analogue to the quantum no-cloning theorem, which we might state as follows: given only the result of one flip of a (possibly biased) coin, we cannot simulate a second, independent toss of the same coin. The proof of this statement uses the linearity of classical probability, and has exactly the same structure as the proof of the quantum no-cloning theorem. Thus if we wish to claim that no-cloning is a uniquely quantum result, some care is necessary in stating the theorem. One way of restricting the result to quantum mechanics is to restrict the states to pure states, where a pure state is defined to be one that is not a convex combination of other states. The classical pure states are pairwise orthogonal, but quantum pure states are not."

 

  How does a limit of large action change this? 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathisp@...>

To: <everything-list@...>

Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2009 1:19 AM

Subject: Re: Personal Identity and Ethics

> The psychological criterion of personal identity is, or should be,
> agnostic on the question of how consciousness is actually generated.
> It says simply that if I am destroyed here and a copy of me with the
> same psychological properties is created there, then I will suddenly
> find myself there. It is possible to accept this criterion but deny
> that the right sort of psychological properties could be duplicated in
> a computer, or by any physical means at all if there is a supernatural
> element involved in consciousness. What I find incoherent is the idea
> that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
> nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
> cannot be duplicated.
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou

 

 

 In the Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_cloning_theorem we find:

 

"Imperfect cloning

Even though it is impossible to make perfect copies of an unknown quantum state, it is possible to produce imperfect copies. This can be done by coupling a larger auxiliary system to the system that is to be cloned, and applying a unitary transformation to the combined system. If the unitary transformation is chosen correctly, several components of the combined system will evolve into approximate copies of the original system. Imperfect cloning can be used as an eavesdropping attack on quantum cryptography protocols, among other uses in quantum information science."

  

   Does this allow us to recover our method X? No, because unless the copy is "identical", not just "approximate",  we can not conclude that any notion of continuance of consciousness might obtain.

 

 

Onward!

 

Stephen

 

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[John Mikes]

Stathis,

 

I usually appreciate the wisdom in your posts. Now I have a retort:

 

>"...What I find incoherent is the idea
that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
cannot be duplicated."<

 

If you accept the topic (to be discussed) of the unidentifiable imaginary "soul", than you have to accept that "IT"(???) can be duplicated as well.

Once we are in Wunderland we are in Wunderland.

 

And if "you find yourself there" you have no notion of your destoyed identity "here" and you  A R E the copied fake (I call it 'fake', because it is extracted from your 'here'-relations which constitute the essential content of your identity. The "there" YOU is either another one with relations to the "there" circumstances or a fake replica of what you were 'here' (and have no knowledge (memory) of it. Or is the duplicate homesick?

 

Wunderlandistically yours

John M

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp@...> wrote:

2009/2/21 Stephen Paul King <stephenk1@...>:
>
> Hi Stathis,
>
>    A question : Is is incorrect of me to infer that the psychological
> criterion of personal identity discussed in Shoemaker's book and, by your
> statement below, used by a predominance of members of this list is one that
> treats conscious self-awareness as an epiphenomena arrising from a Classical
> system and that it is, at least tacitly, assumed that quantum effects have
> no supervenience upon any notion of Consciousness?
>    While I welcome the rejection of notion of "Souls" which are in
> principle non-verifiable, could we be endulging in meaningless chatter about
> computerizing consciousness if we do not first determen that consciousness
> is a purely classical epiphenomena? After all we are repeatedly told that it
> is the classical view of the Universe and all within it is a theory long ago
> refuted.

The psychological criterion of personal identity is, or should be,
agnostic on the question of how consciousness is actually generated.
It says simply that if I am destroyed here and a copy of me with the
same psychological properties is created there, then I will suddenly
find myself there. It is possible to accept this criterion but deny
that the right sort of psychological properties could be duplicated in
a computer, or by any physical means at all if there is a supernatural
element involved in consciousness. What I find incoherent is the idea
that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
cannot be duplicated.


--
Stathis Papaioannou
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[Bruno Marchal]

On 20 Feb 2009, at 14:01, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> 2009/2/20 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...> wrote:
>>
>> Review of a book that may be of interest to the list.
>>
>> Brent Meeker
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>>
>> Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
>>
>> 2009-02-26 : View this Review Online
>> <http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=15326> : View Other NDPR Reviews
>> <http://ndpr.nd.edu/>
>>
>> David Shoemaker, /Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief  
>> Introduction/,
>> Broadview Press, 2009, 296pp., $26.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781551118826.
>>
>> *Reviewed by Amy Kind, Claremont McKenna College*
>
> Thank-you for alerting us to this book. I'll pick out just one passage
> from the review for comment:
>
>> Though Shoemaker argues that the last three views suffer from serious
>> problems that prevent them from being plausible accounts of our  
>> identity
>> over time, he offers a different sort of argument against the Soul
>> Criterion: There are good practical reasons to "insist on a tight
>> connection between the nature of personal identity and our practical
>> concerns, and thus reject any theory of personal identity -- like the
>> Soul Criterion -- that denies this connection." (33) Even if souls
>> exist, we lack any kind of epistemic access to them; rather, we
>> reidentify individuals in terms of their bodies and/or their
>> psychologies. Thus, souls are irrelevant to the practical issues  
>> under
>> consideration, and this irrelevance is taken to justify the  
>> rejection of
>> the Soul Criterion.
>
> Predominantly on this list we use the psychological criterion of
> personal identity, originated by Locke and developed using various SF
> thought experiments by Derek Parfit.

See also Dennet and Hofstadter's Mind'I for further references.


> This criterion is assumed true if
> you are to agree to teleportation or replacement of your brain with a
> functionally equivalent electronic analogue, and is contrasted with
> non-reductionist theories involving the existence of a soul.

This "constrast" is misleading. Parfit believes in Token and tokens  
identity. He overlooked the subjective indeterminacy and the reversal  
consequence. That is why he finds natural to call his teleportation  
preserving identity a "reductionist" thesis like if it were reducing  
the notions of "souls" and consciousness to organized piece of matter.  
But the idea of betting we can survive digital substitution is really  
reductionist in the other way round. This view, (at least that is was  
the UDA is supposed to explain) leads to a reduction of matter to soul/
consciousness and eventually to machine-nameable and machine-
unnameable relations.
Concerning "soul" the comp idea is even antireductionist; it prevents  
any theory (third person communicable) to give a name to it, without  
eliminating it.




> If I have
> a soul, it might not be transferred in the copying process even though
> the copy acts the same as the original. I can understand this if the
> copy is a philosophical zombie for lack of a soul, but it seems that
> according to Shoemaker's usage the soul is not identical with the mind
> or consciousness.




 From a logical point of view Shoemaker is right. You can say "no" for  
many reasons to the doctor.
The copy will not even behave as you.
The copy will behave like you, but is a phi-zombie.
The copy behaves like you and as a soul/personality/consciousness, but  
yet is not you (and you are dead)
The copy is you (in Parfit sense: that it is as better than you).
And,
the copy can be you in deeper and deeper senses (roughly speaking up  
to the unspeakable "you = ONE").
I talk here on the first person "you". It is infinite and unnameable.
Here computer science can makes those term (like "unnameable") much  
more precise.



> This leaves open the possibility that my copy might
> both behave *and* think the same way I do but still not be the same
> person. But if that is so, then as Shoemaker says, that would make the
> soul irrelevant.

The word "soul" is charged with history. I use it usually in the sense  
of the knowing first person, and assuming the comp hyp, or weaker  
hypothesis with similar self-copying quality, you cannot dispense from  
the existence of such a soul. In arithmetic this will be related to  
the fact that the theaetetical idea of defining knowledge of P by  
justification of P when P is true lead to a modality which acts like  
"pure justification" but reasons like a knower. It is the same  
arithmetical part of truth, but it is "seen" differently, necessarily  
so by incompleteness(*). Eventually this is important because it  
justifies a purely scientific (third person communicable) notion of  
soul, and matter will be generated by that soul.
Note that such a theory of soul is verifiable.

I appreciate Parfit, but he remains stuck by  its "Aristotelian  
Theology" (like so many, of course), and that is why, I guess, he  
calls "comp" (or weaker a-like) a reductionist view, where I would  
pretend such a view is more like a vaccine against many (if not all)  
reductionist conception of the person.

Bruno

(*) G* proves Bp <-> (Bp & p) for each p. But there are proposition k  
such that G does not prove Bp <-> (Bp & p).


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/2/23 John Mikes <jamikes@...>:

> Stathis,
>
> I usually appreciate the wisdom in your posts. Now I have a retort:
>
>>"...What I find incoherent is the idea
> that the psychological properties might be able to be duplicated but
> nevertheless there is no continuity of identity because the soul
> cannot be duplicated."<
>
> If you accept the topic (to be discussed) of the unidentifiable imaginary
> "soul", than you have to accept that "IT"(???) can be duplicated as well.
> Once we are in Wunderland we are in Wunderland.

I don't believe in the soul so perhaps someone who does can comment
(Tom Caylor?): is it that it can't be copied at all, i.e. not even God
could make a soul-copying teleporter, or is it just that it can't be
copied via physical means?

> And if "you find yourself there" you have no notion of your destoyed
> identity "here" and you  A R E the copied fake (I call it 'fake', because it
> is extracted from your 'here'-relations which constitute the essential
> content of your identity. The "there" YOU is either another one with
> relations to the "there" circumstances or a fake replica of what you were
> 'here' (and have no knowledge (memory) of it. Or is the duplicate homesick?

By that argument you could also say you are a copied fake of the John
of a year ago, since most of the matter in your body has been
replaced.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/2/23 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:

>  From a logical point of view Shoemaker is right. You can say "no" for
> many reasons to the doctor.
> The copy will not even behave as you.
> The copy will behave like you, but is a phi-zombie.
> The copy behaves like you and as a soul/personality/consciousness, but
> yet is not you (and you are dead)

This last is the problematic one. If it is valid, then it is also
valid to say that I only live for a moment and continuity of identity
is only an illusion. Actually, I have no objection to this way of
speaking, but we would then just have to say that this illusion of
continuity is just as good as what we hitherto thought was real
continuity.

> The copy is you (in Parfit sense: that it is as better than you).
> And,
> the copy can be you in deeper and deeper senses (roughly speaking up
> to the unspeakable "you = ONE").
> I talk here on the first person "you". It is infinite and unnameable.
> Here computer science can makes those term (like "unnameable") much
> more precise.

I don't see how the copy could be me in a deeper sense than having all
my thoughts, memories etc. It would be like saying that if I wave my
magic wand over you you will become specially blessed, even though
nothing will actually change either subjectively or objectively.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Günther Greindl]

Hi Stathis, Bruno, List,

>> the copy can be you in deeper and deeper senses (roughly speaking up
>> to the unspeakable "you = ONE").
>> I talk here on the first person "you". It is infinite and unnameable.
>> Here computer science can makes those term (like "unnameable") much
>> more precise.
>
> I don't see how the copy could be me in a deeper sense than having all
> my thoughts, memories etc. It would be like saying that if I wave my
> magic wand over you you will become specially blessed, even though
> nothing will actually change either subjectively or objectively.

You must take into account Bruno's Plotinian interpretation: the One,
the Intellect, and the Universal Soul. In this sense, you can become
more "you" in that you penetrate false knowledge "Maya" and realize your
true nature (the Dao, if you like, roughly the ONE in Plotinus).

@Bruno:
What I have come to wonder: you take the Löbian Machine to be the model
of a person - say, a human. But what if the Löbian Machine is actually
(and only) the ultimate person - the universal soul, in Plotinus'
terminology.

This would account for the infinite (continuum!) histories (lived
through the lives of all beings in the multiverse), the "universal soul"
forgetting itself in a cosmic play, sort of -  but also for COMP
immortality - immortal would be the _universal soul_, but not
necessarily "concrete" persons (as we conceive them, which requires at
least some continuity of memory etc)

Cheers,
Günther

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 23 Feb 2009, at 00:39, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> 2009/2/23 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:
>
>> From a logical point of view Shoemaker is right. You can say "no" for
>> many reasons to the doctor.
>> The copy will not even behave as you.
>> The copy will behave like you, but is a phi-zombie.
>> The copy behaves like you and as a soul/personality/consciousness,  
>> but
>> yet is not you (and you are dead)
>
> This last is the problematic one. If it is valid, then it is also
> valid to say that I only live for a moment and continuity of identity
> is only an illusion.

I don't think so. Unless you assume comp, but then to say the copy is  
not you has no meaning at all.
This last is not really problematic, it is just equivalent with the  
negation of comp.
It is brought by non-comp-people who, on the contrary insist a notion  
of continuity which is broken by digital substitution.
For a computationalist, the "continuity" is given by the comp history,  
and is not broken by teleportation and the like, not even self-
differentiation through self-duplication.






> Actually, I have no objection to this way of
> speaking, but we would then just have to say that this illusion of
> continuity is just as good as what we hitherto thought was real
> continuity.


I think we agree. Just note that when I don't write "assuming comp" I  
consider also the case when comp is false. Perhaps I shouldn't.

>
>
>> The copy is you (in Parfit sense: that it is as better than you).
>> And,
>> the copy can be you in deeper and deeper senses (roughly speaking up
>> to the unspeakable "you = ONE").
>> I talk here on the first person "you". It is infinite and unnameable.
>> Here computer science can makes those term (like "unnameable") much
>> more precise.
>
> I don't see how the copy could be me in a deeper sense than having all
> my thoughts, memories etc. It would be like saying that if I wave my
> magic wand over you you will become specially blessed, even though
> nothing will actually change either subjectively or objectively.

The copy could be you in the deeper sense that it could be you even in  
the case where he loses some memory, all memories, or in case he got  
new memories, including false souvenirs. But then it is like in the  
movie "the prestige", your brother can be you. This path leads to the  
idea that we are already all the same person. It is "not being the  
other" which is an illusion in that case. I don't insist on this  
because we don't need to see that arithmetic is the theory of  
everything (and that physics comes from there). But it is needed for  
the "other hypostases" and the whole theological point.

Bruno


http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Quentin Anciaux-2]

2009/2/23 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

The copy could be you in the deeper sense that it could be you even in
the case where he loses some memory, all memories, or in case he got
new memories, including false souvenirs. But then it is like in the
movie "the prestige", your brother can be you. This path leads to the
idea that we are already all the same person. It is "not being the
other" which is an illusion in that case. I don't insist on this
because we don't need to see that arithmetic is the theory of
everything (and that physics comes from there). But it is needed for
the "other hypostases" and the whole theological point.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

If the "copy" has no memory of being me then It's not me... or you mean there is something which is not memory but which is "me" (and render memory useless as primary property of the self) ?

It is a matter of semantic but if you accept that memory is not what can be ascribe to "you" then "you/I/..." doesn't mean anything... in that sense you are me and vice-versa, and everyone is everyone but I don't see this as a theory of self identity.

Regards,
Quentin

 

[Brent Meeker-2]

Quentin Anciaux wrote:

>
>
> 2009/2/23 Bruno Marchal <marchal@... <mailto:marchal@...>>
>
>
>
>     The copy could be you in the deeper sense that it could be you even in
>     the case where he loses some memory, all memories, or in case he got
>     new memories, including false souvenirs. But then it is like in the
>     movie "the prestige", your brother can be you. This path leads to the
>     idea that we are already all the same person. It is "not being the
>     other" which is an illusion in that case. I don't insist on this
>     because we don't need to see that arithmetic is the theory of
>     everything (and that physics comes from there). But it is needed for
>     the "other hypostases" and the whole theological point.
>
>     Bruno
>
>
>     http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>     <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/>
>
>
> If the "copy" has no memory of being me then It's not me... or you
> mean there is something which is not memory but which is "me" (and
> render memory useless as primary property of the self) ?
>
> It is a matter of semantic but if you accept that memory is not what
> can be ascribe to "you" then "you/I/..." doesn't mean anything... in
> that sense you are me and vice-versa, and everyone is everyone but I
> don't see this as a theory of self identity.
>
> Regards,
> Quentin

I tend to agree with Quentin that memories are an essential component of
personal identity.  But that also raises a problem with ideas like
"observer moments" and "continuity".  Almost all my memories are not
being remembered at an given time.  Some I may not recall for years at a
time.  I may significant periods of time in which I am not consciously
recalling any memories.  So then how can memories and continuity be
essential?  I practice we rely on continuity of the body and then ask,
"Does this body have (some) appropriate memories?"

Brent

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[Stephen Paul King-2]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brent Meeker" <meekerdb@...>
To: <everything-list@...>
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A
Brief Introduction]

>
> Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>
>> If the "copy" has no memory of being me then It's not me... or you
>> mean there is something which is not memory but which is "me" (and
>> render memory useless as primary property of the self) ?
>>
>> It is a matter of semantic but if you accept that memory is not what
>> can be ascribe to "you" then "you/I/..." doesn't mean anything... in
>> that sense you are me and vice-versa, and everyone is everyone but I
>> don't see this as a theory of self identity.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Quentin
> I tend to agree with Quentin that memories are an essential component of
> personal identity.  But that also raises a problem with ideas like
> "observer moments" and "continuity".  Almost all my memories are not
> being remembered at an given time.  Some I may not recall for years at a
> time.  I may significant periods of time in which I am not consciously
> recalling any memories.  So then how can memories and continuity be
> essential?  I practice we rely on continuity of the body and then ask,
> "Does this body have (some) appropriate memories?"
>
> Brent

Hi Brent and Quentin,

    Could it be that it is the continuous possibility of recall from memory
itself and not just the occasional recall acts that are important to
continuity of P.I.?

Stephen


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[Brent Meeker-2]

Stephen Paul King wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brent Meeker" <meekerdb@...>
> To: <everything-list@...>
> Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 11:51 AM
> Subject: Re: [Fwd: NDPR David Shoemaker, Personal Identity and Ethics: A
> Brief Introduction]
>
>
>  
>> Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>    
>>> If the "copy" has no memory of being me then It's not me... or you
>>> mean there is something which is not memory but which is "me" (and
>>> render memory useless as primary property of the self) ?
>>>
>>> It is a matter of semantic but if you accept that memory is not what
>>> can be ascribe to "you" then "you/I/..." doesn't mean anything... in
>>> that sense you are me and vice-versa, and everyone is everyone but I
>>> don't see this as a theory of self identity.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Quentin
>>>      
>> I tend to agree with Quentin that memories are an essential component of
>> personal identity.  But that also raises a problem with ideas like
>> "observer moments" and "continuity".  Almost all my memories are not
>> being remembered at an given time.  Some I may not recall for years at a
>> time.  I may significant periods of time in which I am not consciously
>> recalling any memories.  So then how can memories and continuity be
>> essential?  I practice we rely on continuity of the body and then ask,
>> "Does this body have (some) appropriate memories?"
>>
>> Brent
>>    
>
> Hi Brent and Quentin,
>
>     Could it be that it is the continuous possibility of recall from memory
> itself and not just the occasional recall acts that are important to
> continuity of P.I.?
>
> Stephen

Sure.  But what provides that possibility - the causal (physical)
continuity of the brain and body.

Brent

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