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Perplexed comments on Notion of valued Identity — Physically - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (16)
Ok, just to clarify what the question is:
Suppose I am trying to decide whether to swallow an anti-aging pill which introduces some nano-bots into my bloodstream.
My doctor informs me that the bots will remove plaque from my arteries, amyloid deposits from my brain cells, and brown fat deposits from my abdomen. "Makes you look and feel ten years younger, and adds fifteen years to your life expectancy. But there are some side effects, including personality changes."
"Well doc," I answer, "the important thing to me is that I keep my sense of humor. That, more than anything else, is my VI. If the pill preserves my sense of humor, then any other changes it might make to my personality are tolerable."
"Just a second," interjects nurse HoverHell, who had been lurking nearby. "You need to define your VI physically. After all, we aren't dualists here."
"But I don't know how to define my sense of humor physically," I reply. "I define it operationally, by which TV shows I like, which jokes I laugh at, whether I come up with the snappy comeback and whether anyone smiles when I do."
"The nanobots work at the physical level," says HoverHell. "So we have to have a physical definition of 'sense of humor' in order to answer the question of whether the nanobots preserve it."
"Nonsense!" I reply. "You need an operational definition, so you can administer behavioral sense-of-humor tests to people before and after they take the pill, interview friends and families, and characterize the side-effect at the behavioral level. Claims that something is preserved (within certain tolerances) at the physical-level don't help me at all, since what I am really interested in is whether or not my sense of humor changes."
I'm not sure how the dialog proceeds from this point.
Madness.
To elaborate, I'm suggesting to use material (physical) definition here for avoiding vaguesness (typical to philosophy); if whatever you say does not seem to be vague (or possibly misunderstood with noticeable certainty), then it might not be necessary to build up the definition from most basic known physical model.
In this case, I'd consider something like “[a cognitive agent with same / similar] humor detection function” sufficiently precise, though mostly because I'm not interested in details of that direction.
A worthy goal. But does that work? When philosophers "build up the definition from most basic known physical model", does that really reduce vagueness? Particularly in a field like cognition where there don't yet exist any good (i.e. not speculative) physical models?
My experience is that this reductionist move does not help. If it has any effect at all, it provides a pseudo-dissolution of the question - leading to someone reframing the question in an even more indirect and mysterious form - one which is more resistant to being dissolved.
Sounds promising. I'm myself an anti-realist; but please ignore because I am not really sure what that is.
I'm trying to poke all directions I know about that have at least noticeable chances of working.
Additionally, here I am asking about view on identity specifically from materialistic basis, to at least get vague descriptions with non-vague basis (ontology) instead of vague descriptions from vague basis.
This looks like a quite pathetic atttempt to trolling to me. What did you actually want to express with that?
Oh, and on the outcomes: what I see here is mostly behaviouristic definitions; one reference to the “hard problem of consciousness” was mentioned, but not even here; and, not very surprisingly, I don't see any different points mentioned (not even something about continuity, or continuity of a process specifically).
It was more of a pathetic attempt at humor. Absolutely no hostile intent in that line. I will admit to a tiny bit of hostility (or more accurately exasperation) in the rest of my responses. That is probably the source of your intuition that I am trolling you.
The reason I am a bit exasperated is that you are asking people to address a very difficult problem that we do not yet have the scientific knowledge to solve. You seem to be asking for a reduction of our intuitions of personal identity. As far as I can tell, it is an unsolved problem, though almost all philosophers of mind mention it, and philosophers interested in issues like AI and 'uploading' mention it frequently.
My own outlook on this is that the problem is premature. Either it will be dissolved with all the other puzzles of mind when we reduce mind to brain - or it will not. If it will be resolved, we waste time now speculating about it. If it will not be resolved, we still waste time now speculating about it, because after a successful reduction the problem will be completely transformed.
On the other hand, if someone invents something like a matter transporter before we have completed the reduction, and we need answers quickly, I think that my brand of phenomenological empiricism is about the best we can come up with.
If you are looking for wisdom in an internet forum, the second best way to find it is to politely ask for it. The best way is to just say something wrong, and then to pick the best of the corrections you receive.
If you are dissatisfied with the results of asking the question, why not try supplying your own favorite answer and seeing what happens?
It will not resolve itself; and the problem I'm looking around is less likely to be resolved if significant portion of people think there is no problem (and indeed there is no problem with copying behaviour, though; and I see but cannot yet explain a mistake in that view as well), and another significant portion says that those are wrong but don't even try to find a successful way of explaining why exactly.
Modern controversial problem is related to already available cryonics; though you probably know this side of the story already.
I already did. Results vary between getting called “nonsensical” and getting called “vague”; the “vague” part I'm slowly and carefully trying to correct. That's why I'm looking all around for ideas and bits that might be useful in that.
And, I'm not looking for ready-to-be-used answers (or wisdom). Rather, I'm trying to build an understanding of others' understanding (that by itself says something about the complexity, of course).
Why would you want to get rid of brown fat but not white fat?
Don't ask me. I didn't design the pill. I'm just a patient. :) But it appears, upon doing a little research, that you are probably right that the bots are mis-targeted.