Quote:
Originally Posted by wstewart
Quote:
Originally Posted by wstewart
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidm
I don't see how magic is required. "Passage" in this context is defined by materialism, but it also may just be a manner of speaking. Perhaps it's wrong to say Old Paul has passed to New Paul.
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New Paul has initiated the objective/subjective transition that ends an unfelt time-gap. If Old Paul's unfelt time-gap ends with that transition, he encounters passage to New Paul, subjectively. If not, he doesn't. Passage should be understandable in these terms.
Do you accept these terms? Do you still think Old Paul passes to New, in these terms?
Of course in my view the transitions are necessary and sufficient for the passage. In your view something else is required. Some unspecified, apparently "un-reconfigured" portion of New Paul's brain, which somehow does something to enable the passage from Old Paul to New.
I've no idea what that addition could be. Whatever it is, it would need to have some definite, relevant and vital function which explains its necessity. |
If no such brain function is present in the Old/New Paul scenario, how could the same-brain requirement possibly apply?
An external function, such as a comparison, maybe? That is, some comparison of the part's composition at both ends of the unfelt time-gap, to verify that the unchanging part is truly unchanged. This would entail some agency, to record composition at both times, compare them, and make enforceable judgment. Or I suppose records would be unnecessary if the agency were able to compare across time, but that would involve time-travel. And of course external agency and any record-keeping, time-travel or other actions would themselves need explanation, to put it mildly. The explanation would almost certainly lead to Occam's "needless multiplication of entities". |
I've already posited an even more extreme scenario, that evil scientists rip Old Paul's brain out of his head, completely destroy it, and then insert a new brain. In one version of the scenario, the new brain is a blank slate, and New Paul wakes up in Old Paul's body, but with the mental outlook of a newborn infant, and of course no memories. In Scenario 2, the refurbished brain has a false set of consistent memories, so that on waking, New Paul feels as if he were just waking from ordinary sleep, from an unfelt time gap, and his memory reaches back to his existentially perceived, but utterly counterfeit, past.
For the purely materialistic point of view, there is no account in these two scenarios of existential passage even in principle, though we can say in a loose sense that Old Paul has "passed" to New Paul in virtue of the fact that they share the same body and one was changed into the other through physical means.
The problem with these "unfelt time gaps," as I see it, is this: the very use of "gap" presupposes an end to the gap, for that is what a gap is: a temporary abridging. But we already know, even under existential passage, that when x dies, the gap never ends for x
as x, so x, as x, can never, as it were, come to the opposite shore. As for y, who is born later than the death of x, there is no "ending of the gap," since for y, there is only a fathomless void prior to his first becoming aware, and he has no memory of any personal past or "prior point of view." Given these states of affairs, which definitely obtain under existential passage, I submit again that there simply is no functional distinction between the claim of EP and that of standard materialism. Everything looks exactly the same for everyone under both EP and SM, so why invoke EP? if x "passes" to y, x will never experience or feel this fact; and if y passed from x, y will never be able to feel or know this in any way. How is this different from just saying, "x died and y was born," and leave it at that?