From: 18084TM@msu.edu (Tom)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Uploaders' fate
Date: 15 Oct 92 22:50:49 GMT
Article-I.D.: cs.Bw6q71.J4q.1
Distribution: sci
Organization: [via International Space University]
X-Added: Forwarded by Space Digest
Original-Sender: isu@VACATION.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU

>>When you say 'personality', do you mean that it's behavior, in all possible
>>circumstances will be the same as mine, or do you mean that the experience
>>of being 'it' is identical to being 'me'?

>As any good physicalist philosopher will tell you, there is no way of
>confirming the second apart from by the first (well, apart from brain analysis
>I guess, but we have already asumed that). The 'experience of being' is known

But, any good (or even bad :-) concious being will tell you there is
a difference.  Sure, you can't tell the difference in me, nor I in you,
but if you can't tell the difference in yourself, you aren't concious.

That's why the question, since your question, and the whole of the uploading
fate thread seem to imply the objectification of the subject.  So, if you
are going to objectify the subject, you sure do need to determine
the difference.  If you can't, how will we know if uploading is actually
successful?

>in philosophical jargon as qualia, and most good physicalists (including
>functionalists, who are the guys who believe in uploading most strongly) are
>of the opinion that qualia are just a way of saying 'innate perception', like
>a sense that is a part of your brain.

'Qualia' is also a way of saying 'me'.  If you can't tell the difference,
then uploading degenerates into a way of making highly complex robots,
not replicas of people, which, I think, takes away most of it's value.

>   When you start talking about the connection between two 'I's, then you
>are on much less philosophically complex territory. It is testable, we can
>eventually construct a duplicate, and see if this 'connection' effect occurs.

What 'connection effect'?  It's a subjective experience.  Can you show that
my colorblindness is a reality, rather than just something I make up as
a party game?

>I think not. As I side note, a creature with a truly identical mind really has
>to have received pretty much identical senosry impressions.

'Indentical mind' is pretty vague.  The only identical thing in the world
is the thing itself, so of course it would have recieved the same
sense impressions.  If you mean by identical 'unable to tell the difference
between the two' then you mean that the difference in sense impressions
is undetectable, from the impressions they left on the mind.  Whatever
the ratio between sense experience and changes in the mind is, I'm pretty
sure that 'low error' and 'identical', in term of juding other beings
experiences, from the objective evidence left over in the structure of
their brains, is vastly different.

This is pretty vague territory, isn't it?  Am I going to see a lot
of this on this list?

-Tommy Mac
------------------------------===========================================
Tom McWilliams               | Those who beleive        ' are the  ".   |
18084tm@ibm.cl.msu.edu       | in the      ,  .        .  ones  .*'  .  |
(517) 355-2178 -or- 353-2986 | Balance   '. '  . .        that , don't  |
a scrub Astronomy undergrad  |   of            ,        +         get   |
at Michigan State University | Nature                  '.  , .' eaten   |
------------------------------===========================================
Newsgroups: sci.space,talk.politics.space