This point of view assumes functionalism, but it feels like you only desire to commit to physicalism. If there are physicalist theories in which personal identity is not a functional property, then your claim would not hold.
So try to check for perspectives either in philosophy of mind which are physicalist but not functionalist, or else in which personal identity is not a functional property.
For instance, Derek Parfit, by far the person in the world who dedicated most time to the question, does not conceive of Personal Identity as a functional property, but instead as a misguided intuition made of three distinct things, two of which functional.
Daniel Dennett, a commited naturalist, and an AI friendly physicalist monist if there ever was one, also does not consider personal identity to be a functional property.
For those who are reading this who have always been on board with the Lesswrong assumption that physicalism and functionalism are both correct and that personal identity is a functional property, I hope knowing that Dennett and Parfit both don’t think this question of you-ness is as straightforward as you’d like gives at least a reason for pause.
But maybe your brain already is dying to use its cached thoughts about the generalized p-zombie principle and the uselessness of philosophy. In which case I suggest changing your reference class of who comments in these threads to be mostly non-mysterianists, and update on that.
It refers to cases in which if you knew all the facts about the functions being performed by the systems that compose you (as seen from the outside) you would know all the facts about personal identity.
Other way of saying this is that there would be no way of changing personal identity without a change in function as well.
This point of view assumes functionalism, but it feels like you only desire to commit to physicalism. If there are physicalist theories in which personal identity is not a functional property, then your claim would not hold. So try to check for perspectives either in philosophy of mind which are physicalist but not functionalist, or else in which personal identity is not a functional property.
For instance, Derek Parfit, by far the person in the world who dedicated most time to the question, does not conceive of Personal Identity as a functional property, but instead as a misguided intuition made of three distinct things, two of which functional.
Daniel Dennett, a commited naturalist, and an AI friendly physicalist monist if there ever was one, also does not consider personal identity to be a functional property.
For those who are reading this who have always been on board with the Lesswrong assumption that physicalism and functionalism are both correct and that personal identity is a functional property, I hope knowing that Dennett and Parfit both don’t think this question of you-ness is as straightforward as you’d like gives at least a reason for pause.
But maybe your brain already is dying to use its cached thoughts about the generalized p-zombie principle and the uselessness of philosophy. In which case I suggest changing your reference class of who comments in these threads to be mostly non-mysterianists, and update on that.
Does this ‘functionalism’ in the context of personal identity refer to views where your personal identity is determined by pragmatic considerations?
It refers to cases in which if you knew all the facts about the functions being performed by the systems that compose you (as seen from the outside) you would know all the facts about personal identity.
Other way of saying this is that there would be no way of changing personal identity without a change in function as well.
Thanks. What is Parfit’s non-functional thing?