I have no idea what you mean. I am not talking about anybody looking back. — Mijin

Perhaps I don't fully understand the concept of “no continuity”.

I think you mean that you only have a relationship with yourself through the memory of who you were, i.e., in retrospect.

But that doesn't say anything about who you will be after the transport.

You should explain exactly what “no continuity” means in the context of the transporter.

I don't know what you mean by no continuity being "not possible to refute" other than you cannot think of a refutation. Nor can I, and that's the point. — Mijin

If you are standing at a fork in the road and I ask you which path you will take, you don't answer A or B.

You say that after you have walked the path, you will look back and see where you came from. That cannot be refuted, but it is also not an answer to the question.

The scenario is very boring. I will stay with arthritis. The clone is the clone and just someone else. Cryonics is definitely more interesting.

What's your argument against no-continuity? Upthread I begged someone, anyone to come up with a counter-argument to it. I don't want it to be true. But before this thread I never heard an argument against it and that continues to be the case. — Mijin

It is not possible to refute, because you can define it as always true, but it is incomplete. It doesn't answer who you will be after being transported or after cryonics.

It's like answering "grass is green, please refute".

What is the issue with cryonic sleep? — RogueAI

Would you expect to see the world in a hundred years (if cryonics is working well) or would it be just your copy claiming being you?

It's as clear an answer as I can give: I don't know, but the best supported theory of consciousness right now is that there is no such thing as continuity of consciousness. I am (numerically) not the same consciousness as went to bed last night, or began this sentence, and I won't be the being that wakes up from cryonics later.
— Mijin

You think the you that's waking up tomorrow morning isn't really you? That if you go on a bender, you won't have to suffer the hangover? Someone else will? That's so obviously wrong. — RogueAI

I think you understand better than the thread starter.

What is your opinion on "cryonic sleep"?

The person that wakes up in a hundred years' time isn't me, but nor is the person that will finish this sentence that I am typing now. — Mijin

Excuse me, but I don't think you understand your own question. That's not an answer.

Cryonics costs many thousands of dollars. You expect to see the world in a hundred years, not a copy of yourself walking around.

You also expect to wake up in the same body after you sleep. And there are two possibilities: waking up or dying in your sleep.

if I could freeze all neural activity in your brain and restart it, is that the same instance of consciousness?
— Mijin
Are you freezing it by freezing time?
— Patterner

Does it matter? What is the rule you're going by for deciding if there's continuity of consciousness? — Mijin

Why not expand the thread with cryonics? That's much more feasible than the transporter.

If I have myself frozen, will I wake up in a hundred years, or will it be my copy?

That's not something you experience when you get into the transporter. — SolarWind

No-one said it was. I don't follow the point you're making. — Mijin

I thought it was about the “path of the first-person perspective”. And that path either leads somewhere or into nothingness (death).

If person X has the memories of person Y implanted, are they then the continuation of person X or person Y? — SolarWind

If you're asking my opinion specifically on memories, no, I don't consider memories to be the critical factor in determining instances of consciousness. — Mijin

What else?

3. Nothing I do could possibly make my consciousness persist. Even if I don't take the transporter, consciousness doesn't have persistence, only the illusion of it, because it inherits memories.
I may as well let the next guy holiday on Mars. — Mijin

That's not something you experience when you get into the transporter.

Incidentally, the illusion is also confusing in the “Total Recall” scenario. If person X has the memories of person Y implanted, are they then the continuation of person X or person Y?

If you want to say it's important that we reduce it just to the thoughts of the person going into the transporter then sure: the person going into the transporter is me, and I think there are three scenarios to consider. — Mijin

Of course, I'm interested in the first-person perspective; the third-person perspective is well-known and boring.

You go into the transporter. Please describe your three possible experiences.

I am not aware of any arguments against Perpetual_Death. Other than it's a very unpleasant option. You would be doing us all a favor if you could find some flaw with it. — Mijin

From the perspective of the beaming person, there are two possibilities: either (version plus) they see the destination after beaming, or (version minus) they are dead.

The whole thing is indistinguishable from a third-person perspective, but it is distinguishable from a first-person perspective.

Perpetual_Death does not say anything about this, but only that the destination person says they are the source person, which they do in both cases.

Thus, Perpetual_Death is not false, but meaningless.

So, as I say, the simplest option right now is to question the assumption itself. If an instance of consciousness is merely an instant of consciousness, with no persistence, just the illusion of being the same person by virtue of inheriting the memories of the last guy, all the problems disappear. — Mijin

No, they don't. I'm now going to talk about the Star Trek transporter. The question is whether you would allow yourself to be beamed and whether you would assume that you would be the target person. So the question arises before the beaming.

Why's that? What's special about the atoms? — Mijin

If all atoms are different, then there is no physical connection between the source person and the target person. The target person only claims to be the source person. Furthermore, they could happen to be created (for example, something like a Boltzmann brain) at a spacelike interval (-> relativity).

Right now, as I say, the most bulletproof position is to basically say that there's never continuity and personal identity is basically an illusion. — Mijin

I don't think this is a sensible position: whose illusion? On the contrary, my subjective experience and its continuity are the only certainties in the world.

Regarding transporters: there are two types, the Star Trek transporter (matter transport) and the information transporter (non-matter transporter).

In the first case, the self could be transported, in the second case it could not.

There would already be a solution that determines whether you are the target person or not.

I call this concept “self-particle”. If this particle is in the target person, then you are it, otherwise it is a copy.

He will say that the pebbles like being part of an iPhone.

Since everyone can define it however they want, panpsychism is devaluated.

We would have to take into consideration all things that we otherwise consider inanimate. We would have to know what would be pleasant or unpleasant for things (e.g., a stone).

@fishfry:

"Not defined" does not mean that you are free to choose the result.

Which solution has n = n+1?

Certainly not 42.

Suppose Icarus writes the number of the step on a piece of paper with each step, erasing the previous number. What number will be on the paper at the end?

It cannot be finite. If it were n, why not n+1?

It cannot be infinite because no step has the number infinite.

Icarus reaches an infinitely distant location after one minute. This place can be named with a number with an infinite number of digits before the decimal point, e.g. ...444444 . You can add or subtract one to this number, but you can't get back to finiteness with a finite number of steps.

I don't understand.

The task is quite simple. Name a few amounts that are in a set of envelopes and it becomes quite clear where the paradox is.

You can be sure that the expected value for the other envelope is 5/4 of that of the one you have.

The math is completely OK.

But the experiment cannot be set up because the distribution of the envelopes is not producible.

Give an example of a set of envelopes and I'll demonstrate.

Sensory information passes through different layers of processing in the brain and the conscious part is just on of those layers. — Harry Hindu

But nowadays artificial neural networks do the same. Can a feeling also develop on the layers of an artificial neural network?

The hard problem is resolved by a monistic view that information or process is fundamental - not matter and/or mind. — Harry Hindu

This does not explain why information-processing organic matter has feelings and information-processing inorganic matter does not.

That is not true. A rock absorbs sunlight, heats up on this side and processes this information through heat conduction. How do you know it doesn't feel that?

From the logic there is no experiment to separate subjective from objective. We only have a "similarity principle", which says that what is objectively more similar to us, is also subjectively more similar to us.

Monism and dualism share the same problem. They have to determine the limit above which complexity subjectivity arises.

If you want to explain the hard problem to John Doe, just ask him which animals and which plants feel something.

Obviously, it's not a bogus problem because it affects people's behavior, one is an animal rights activist, another is an animal abuser, the next doesn't care.

Nothing I've written claims or implies that "animals (are) non-sentient machines". — 180 Proof

It is part of the "hard problem" whether animals have sentience or not. So much would be easier if they didn't have any. And if human political opponents didn't have sentience either, then you could dispose of them without a guilty conscience.

"The hard problem" is a pseudo-problem due to assuming an unwarranted confusion / conflation of an ontological duality with semantic duality compounded subsequently by observing that polar opposite terms "subjectivity" and "objectivity" cannot be described in terms of one another, which amounts to framing the "problem" based on a category mistake. There isn't an "hard problem" to begin with, schop. — 180 Proof

"The hard problem" is not only a real problem, but even extremely important. If you see animals as non-sentient machines, there is no reason at all for animal welfare for the sake of animals, and you could recycle the animals as we do with plants

Do you really think demented people have no feelings?

..., but consciousness is always a process of intelligence. — Jackson

Does a person with dementia have no consciousness?

The idea I'm contemplating is that the "suddenness" of the onset of conscious experience may be due to the nature of conscious experience, rather than to the sudden crossing of some threshold. — Daemon

The assumption that something is conscious or not is based solely on the idea of being an entity. You can probably imagine yourself to be another human being, maybe a dog, but not a stone.

There is no conception of being half an X.

The potential for superconductivity is there. — Daemon

There is no contradiction between potential and jump point. The potential for superconductivity results from the material, below a certain temperature superconductivity suddenly occurs.

Zero is not a number; it’s a limit. — Possibility

If I have nothing in my wallet, then there are zero dollars. That's not a limit, that's a fact.

If one has no consciousness, then the objective time runs infinitely fast opposite the subjective time (like divide by zero), one is "beamed" directly to the awakening, i.e. one has felt no subjective time in between. If one feels something, then one also feels subjective time.

I like to compare consciousness with superconductivity. At a certain constellation the electric resistance suddenly jumps to zero, the conductivity accordingly to infinite.

Again when certain types of anaesthetic are administered we can see a gradual diminution in neuronal activity, corresponding to a greying out of conscious experience. — Daemon

Either the awareness is there or it is not. Consciousness is also present in a dampened state. It is like numbers, a number is either zero or not zero. There is nothing in between.

For me, this is by process of elimination - it's the only theory of consciousness that doesn't have fatal objections. — bert1

However, essential questions are not answered. What does panpsychism say about the consciousness of plants? What about subsets of consciousness, e.g. do the two hemispheres of the brain each have their own consciousness? Then there would already be three of me, my two brain hemispheres and both together.

But your broader point, which is commonly stated by skeptics is this - why does an all good, all knowing, all loving God allow innocent people (especially children) to suffer and die in their millions?

This might demonstrate some contractions (but not disprove) in a literalist, fundamentalist version of the Christian god. But that's not a difficult thing. — Tom Storm

This is a very very difficult thing for an aaa god.

:up:

"Hamlet" is a string not a character.

The first is the third character and the third is the first character. Thus any x2x is solution with x<>2.

Or the special solution 111.