Imagine a situation when a person waits a execution in a remote fortress. If we use self sampling assumption, SSA, we could save him, if we create 1000 his exact copies in safe location. SSA tells us that one should reason if he is randomly selected from all of his copies. 1000 copies are in safe location and 1 is in fortress. So the person has 1000 to 1 chance to be out of the fortress, according to SSA. It means that he was saved from the fortress. This situation is called indexical uncertainty.
Now we apply this method of saving to the past observer-moments when people were suffering.
I see. Like I explain in the other comment that I just wrote, I don’t believe SSA works. You would just create 1000 new minds who would feel themselves saved and would kiss your feet (1000 clones), but the original person would still be executed with 100% chance.
Indexical uncertainty implies that consciousness can travel through space and time in between equal substrates (if such thing even exists considering chaos theory). I think that’s a lot weirder than to simply assume that consciousness is rooted in the brain, in a single brain, and that at best a clone will feel exactly the same way you do, will even think he is you, but there’s no way you will be seeing through his eyes.
So yes, memory may not be everything. An amnesiac can still maintain a continuous personal identity, as long as he’s not an extreme case.
But I quite like your papers btw! Lots of interesting stuff.
Consciousness does not need to travel as it already there. Imagine two bottles with water. If one bootle is destroyed, the water remains in the other, it doesn’t need to travel.
Someone suggested to call this “unification theory of identity”.
This is not what I meant.
Imagine a situation when a person waits a execution in a remote fortress. If we use self sampling assumption, SSA, we could save him, if we create 1000 his exact copies in safe location. SSA tells us that one should reason if he is randomly selected from all of his copies. 1000 copies are in safe location and 1 is in fortress. So the person has 1000 to 1 chance to be out of the fortress, according to SSA. It means that he was saved from the fortress. This situation is called indexical uncertainty.
Now we apply this method of saving to the past observer-moments when people were suffering.
I see. Like I explain in the other comment that I just wrote, I don’t believe SSA works. You would just create 1000 new minds who would feel themselves saved and would kiss your feet (1000 clones), but the original person would still be executed with 100% chance.
It comes with cost: you have to assume that SSA and informational identity theory are wrong, and therefore some other weird things could turn true.
Indexical uncertainty implies that consciousness can travel through space and time in between equal substrates (if such thing even exists considering chaos theory). I think that’s a lot weirder than to simply assume that consciousness is rooted in the brain, in a single brain, and that at best a clone will feel exactly the same way you do, will even think he is you, but there’s no way you will be seeing through his eyes.
So yes, memory may not be everything. An amnesiac can still maintain a continuous personal identity, as long as he’s not an extreme case.
But I quite like your papers btw! Lots of interesting stuff.
Thanks!
Consciousness does not need to travel as it already there. Imagine two bottles with water. If one bootle is destroyed, the water remains in the other, it doesn’t need to travel.
Someone suggested to call this “unification theory of identity”.