Dar al-Hikma

[davidm]

Wayne, we can grant that Old Paul passes to New, for whatever reasons you say. We can also grant that Nicos passes to Thanos. But as Kael asked, succinctly, so what?

Is it not the case that everything looks exactly the same for everyone involved, under existential passage as under standard materialism?

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by davidm

The discussion of the biology and philosophy of the relation between Old and New Paul is certainly interesting....

But you've again invoked parsimony is ruling out ceptinos. Agreed! But that was ceptimus's point. Ceptinos are unparsimonious -- in fact superfluous -- which is why we wouldn't care about them even if they existed...

The noted arguments against Old Paul's passage to New, including your own, are "unparsimonious" in comparison with essay reasoning. Mutually incompatible, too. So do those arguments all fall under Occam's Razor together?

I realize you and some others want to race ahead to existential passage and much else, and you'll do what you want. But while confusion afflicts interpretation of the Old/New Paul scenario in this forum, it seems foolish to race ahead.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by wstewart

The noted arguments against Old Paul's passage to New, including your own, are "unparsimonious" in comparison with essay reasoning. Mutually incompatible, too. So do those arguments all fall under Occam's Razor together?

I realize you and some others want to race ahead to existential passage and much else, and you'll do what you want. But while confusion afflicts interpretation of the Old/New Paul scenario in this forum, it seems foolish to race ahead.

Yes, but I'm saying: Let's grant everything you say. Let's say Nicos passes to Thanos. I'm asking you, is it not the case that even if we grant that this happens, nothing looks different to anyone involved, than it does under standard physicalism?

[davidm]

Wayne, this is the post I think you need to answer. We don't need to debate whether existential passage is possible. We even grant that it is true. But, as Kael notes:

Originally Posted by Kael

Here's the thing, though. So what? Even if we take the whole argument at face value, such as it is, then we're left with person A being connected, continued, to person B in a way that makes no difference to the experience of persons A, B, or anyone else for that matter. It's a distinction without a difference, a 0-point advantage, a platitude, "it is what it is," or "everything's connected, man..."

So, you tell me, and let's say for a moment that I believe, that when I die I will pass to some new life, but in a way that I cannot detect and cannot affect me, before or after, even in principle. So... what?

Everything else is a distraction. Again, we don't need to debate whether EP is true. We grant it's true. It's the above post that cuts to the heart of the matter.

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by davidm

Yes...

I'll pause a moment at "Yes."

I wonder how many others in forum now concur, or might concur after a pause for reflection.

Comments?

[Spacemonkey]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Isolating one essay scenario,

and placing it under the spotlight,

I'll ask:

Does Old Paul pass to New?

Hello wstewart. Thank you for posting here and sharing your material. It is certainly far better presented and argued than the nonsense we've been getting from Peacegirl in the other thread, but then you don't have her mental impairment to contend with. It does seem to be the same basic idea that her father struggled to express, though it's hard to be sure with Peacegirl still refusing to actually share her father's chapter.

I've read through chapters 8 & 9, though I'm afraid I don't find the argument convincing. Maybe you can help clarify a few things for me. In chapter 8 you cover memory, continuity, and subjectivity criteria for personal identity, concluding that all three have a corporeal basis. I have no problem with that conclusion, but which criterion do you actually endorse? The criteria of memory, body/brain continuity, and psychological continuity are standardly taken as competing accounts, yet you seem to endorse all three collectively without explaining how they relate to each other or which takes precedence when they conflict.

Before expressing my concerns with the argument for existential passage, I will briefly summarize what I take the argument to be saying. Please correct me if necessary. Your argument compares two cases, and argues that the same existential passage should be thought to occur in both. In the first case, Paul suffers an extreme stroke leaving the new post-stroke Paul unable to link back via memory or any other psychological link to his pre-stroke self, and yet it is argued that we can still see from an external perspective that the new Paul remains a continuation of the old pre-stroke Paul. In the second case Nicos dies, survived by his wife who then gives birth to his son Thanos, who is said to be the recipient of the consciousness of Thanos via the same existential passage across an unfelt time-gap as in the case of Paul.

Originally Posted by wstewart

But going further: what if Paul's stroke should prove even more severe? What if it were to entirely destroy the tissues of long-term memory during a coma blackout, and leave him unable to recall his past upon waking? In this extreme case his power of remembrance would be helpless to "reconnect" his past: he would wake as an amnesiac. Upon waking he would have to discover himself anew, as a new man. And if Peter were to relate some stories from Paul's past which seemed to the new man unpleasant or embarrassing, this new man might even be inclined to separate himself from Paul by changing his appearance and behavior, or by taking a new name. I'll refer to this transformed man as "New Paul," in contrast with "Old Paul," who would be no more.

In this passage you seem to be endorsing a memory criterion for personal identity and arguing that it has here failed for Paul, resulting in his replacement by a new Paul numerically distinct from the previous and effectively deceased Paul.

Originally Posted by wstewart

Even so, we might wonder if our Old Paul yet requires something of the new: some psychological debt to be paid, or vow to be kept. Let's consider the question from an observer's perspective. We, being outside observers, can still remember the man whom the new Paul has forgotten. We know that the old Paul has passed imperceptibly into the new. Our objective vantage allows us to see that this passage has happened.

Yet here you seem to be endorsing a bodily continuity criterion for personal identity and arguing that whatever Paul himself may think, he has in fact survived the stroke passing from the old Paul to the new Paul as the numerically same person. You seem to be arguing that from the internal perspective of Paul personal identity has failed due to the stroke, and that from the external perspective personal identity has not failed at all. So which view, on your account, is actually correct? Is Paul the numerically same person after the stroke or not?

Originally Posted by wstewart

But this opinion would likely be mistaken. [...] By this reasoning we may decide, correctly I think, to grant independence to the new Paul.

Here you seem to reject the second option above in favor of the first, claiming the breakdown of memory is sufficient to render post-stroke Paul a new person. But then there is no passage or link of any kind to be considered. Personal identity has failed. One person has ended, and a new person has begun. So where is the existential passage? What is the link between the two Pauls if it is not a link of personal identity? If they are different people, then how is it a continuation? What is it that is continuing?

Originally Posted by wstewart

We do not fail to grasp that the new, waking Paul is a continuation of the old, forgotten Paul. The new Paul cannot know this, as his subjective vantage restricts his view to the stream of thought continuous with his new memories of self. But from our objective vantage we see enough to understand that the old Paul has passed through an instantaneous amnesia to the new.

Here you seem to reject the first option in favor of the second, claiming that the new Paul is a continuation of the old Paul, suggesting personal identity has not failed. The only way I can see of avoiding contradiction here between these conflicting views is to interpret you as claiming that identity for the person has failed, but that identity for the underlying consciousness (which was that person) has not failed but has instead continued as a new person. But to me this sounds like a distinction without a difference, as the person and the consciousness are just the one and the same. Why posit separate identity criteria for people and for consciousnesses? And what criterion justifies speaking of pre- and post-stroke Pauls as the same consciousness?


Moving on to the comparison between Paul's case and that of Nicos & Thanos, my chief concern with the argument for existential passage is that the only grounds present for Paul for maintaining personal identity (or consciousness identity) across the time-gap are clearly absent for Nicos. If we only judge Paul to have survived the stroke as the numerically same person (perhaps wrongly given the breakdown in psychological continuity) due to his bodily continuity, then this seems perfectly sufficient grounds for denying continued personal identity (or consciousness identity) between Nicos and Thanos where such continuity is absent.

If we adopt a memory/psychological continuity criterion, then personal identity clearly seems to fail for both cases. Yet if we adopt a brain/bodily continuity criterion, then personal identity holds for Paul but fails for Nicos/Thanos. And if you are speaking instead of survival of the numerically same consciousness but not of the person, then again the only grounds supporting this for Paul is bodily continuity which is absent for Nicos/Thanos. So what criterion of personal/consciousness identity are you appealing to in the case of Paul?

Originally Posted by wstewart

But to say that Nicos "no longer lives" is to state a purely objective, external view of his death. Nicos' subjective, internal view would at this time be entirely ignorant of the view without. By the understanding we have developed in previous chapters we can say with good reason that Nicos' subjective view must be quite different from the objective view — our modern understanding of personal identity requires this distinction.

This part does not seem correct to me either. When Nicos has died, ending all possible criteria for personal identity, his subjective view does not differ from an objective view. There is no subjective view at all for Nicos, from either an internal or an external perspective. It doesn't exist to be compared with anything else. His self and subjectivity have ended. And if his subjectivity no longer exists then it doesn't need to find a new home.

Originally Posted by wstewart

The direct inference: Nicos' supposedly interminable time-gap has actually reached its end with Thanos' birth. Nicos has passed, imperceptibly, to Thanos; and the amnesiac new man who is Thanos lives unknowingly as a continuation of the life of his father Nicos.

When you say that Nicos has passed to Thanos, this sounds like a continuation of personal identity, but this can't be the case as you have said that "All three criteria of personal identity have now failed him." But then what is it that has passed on? Is the link one of identity over time of the underlying consciousness or subjectivity? If so, then what is your criterion for this, and why bother distinguishing this from the person?

Originally Posted by wstewart

But why exactly do we think that Old Paul must pass imperceptibly into the new? The stream of thought concept helps us here again:

We may suppose in this case that Old Paul's stream of thought has been disrupted momentarily — in toto — by the stroke. We take it to be an extreme situation, one in which a complete break in thought can be hypothesized to occur during life. The break throws Old Paul into a deep, utterly unfelt time-gap until the damaged brain can restore its swirl of neural current. When the restoration is finished he can awake. He wakes as the amnesiac New Paul.

In this story Old Paul's stream of thought has halted momentarily within his body. Shortly thereafter New Paul's stream of thought has commenced within that same body. Subjectively, an unfelt time-gap begins when Old Paul's stream of thought halts, and it ends when New Paul's stream of thought commences. These two terminals[9] of the unfelt time-gap (its beginning and ending coordinates) define the time-gap uniquely. Between the terminals lies a period of inactivity: a full cessation of thought.

To my mind, the first question here is never adequately answered, and the second bold part conflicts with the third. If there is a complete psychological break in thought, then why is it only a temporary break between parts of the same person or consciousness? According to the memory criterion, this complete break makes for two different people, so what is it that continues? What grounds are there for linking the pre- and post-stroke Pauls (as people or as consciousnesses) in any way at all other than by the bodily continuity which is not going to be present for the Nicos/Thanos case?

Originally Posted by wstewart

We can build a reply to this objection by making use of a prior result, in which we found that personal identity is fashioned out of the three Great Criteria exclusively: emerging through the bodily dynamics of continuity, subjectivity, memory — and nothing else. Insofar as personal identity appears to be wholly dependent upon those corporeal criteria for its being, it must follow those criteria where they lead. If the three criteria operate within a particular body, personal identity adheres faithfully to that body: it has no choice but to do so. If the three criteria should fail in one body and emerge anew at a later time in another, the experience of personal identity would then have no choice but to transition from one body to the other. This is only a consequence of the supposed primacy of the three criteria.

This passage makes little sense to me either. Personal identity cannot transition over a complete break in all three criteria that might be thought to compose it. But of course you speak rather of the experience of personal identity continuing - which raises the question of what justifies speaking of the one experience of personal identity as being numerically the same as another, and also of how numerically distinct people can share the numerically same subjectivity/experience of personal identity.

The only clue I can find is here:

Originally Posted by wstewart

Subjectivity, however, is a universal: a ubiquitous and purposeful neuropsychological state. (This understanding is supported by the functional knowledge I've cited in the previous chapter.) Subjectivity comes to fruition always by common means and with common traits, as any universal must.

In daily life subjectivity's universality is entrained continuously within the particulars of an individual: subjective awareness brings to mind the individual's unique thoughts, such as the events of episodic memory. Each subjective time-gap is felt by the individual, and each pertains to the unique individual only — in daily life.

But your argument is not linking universal subjectivity to itself, but rather linking particular loci of subjectivity - distinguished from other simultaneous subjective selves such as Casta - to each other over time. That is a link between particulars, and it requires a criterion of identity over time. Yet I don't see how this is a different question from that of personal identity which you seem to agree fails to hold, or what grounds there are for maintaining this identity of particular subjectivity over the unfelt time-gaps which will be present in both cases.

Originally Posted by wstewart

It is important to state again that no incorporeal substance is posited as transferring between Nicos and Thanos. Any suggestion of incorporeality would be duplicitous at this point, in light of what has been said heretofore. So incorporeal transfers are not to be inferred.

Much the same restriction must be placed on physical transfers. Thanos is Nicos' posthumous son, but this filial link is not relevant to the metaphysical event. Nicos' spermatic seed conveys no memory of Nicos' life to the newborn. We still assume Nicos' memories to have been lost irretrievably at death. No "thing" is imagined to have transferred any memory, or personality, or soul, or any psychic entity whatsoever from Nicos to Thanos.

The passage is understood as unfelt time-gap, with nothing superadded — rather, and critically, with individuation subtracted. All that has "passed" is a shift of perceived existential "moment" — a natural relocation of the awareness of existence. It is in this sense an "existential passage" which Nicos encounters, and I will refer to it as existential passage in subsequent chapters of this essay.

So other than purely verbally, as a mere choice of words, how does this existential passage differ from a case of one person and subjective self ending and another new person and subjective self beginning? What more are you doing other than choosing to call the new person and old person the 'same' consciousness/subjectivity?

[Spacemonkey]

As before no "thing" transfers through the existential passage, either from Nicos to Thanos, or else from Magnus to Thanos. The existential passage remains purely subjective.

This is another bit I don't get. Given that there are no links of memory or psychological continuity, how is the passage subjective? It's not as if the passage will be experienced as such. So how does this 'subjective' passage differ in subjective terms from no passage at all?

[Vivisectus]

Originally Posted by davidm

Wayne, this is the post I think you need to answer. We don't need to debate whether existential passage is possible. We even grant that it is true. But, as Kael notes:

Everything else is a distraction. Again, we don't need to debate whether EP is true. We grant it's true. It's the above post that cuts to the heart of the matter.

I do not think you can call EP "true". Unless you also call the statement "All phenomena are caused by undetectable fairies who make everything work, for all intents and purposes, as if all phenomena are caused by different things" true.

[Kael]

Exactly. As Carl Sagan so aptly puts it in The Demon-Haunted World, "Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?"

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by wstewart

What definition? And how would it apply to Old and New Paul specifically?

The 'subjective state' would be equivalent to our conscious awarness of our surroundings and each person's awareness is their own and cannot be shared diredtly with others. One person can tell another person what they preceive, but that other person cannot directly receive the impulses to the brain that transmit these preceptions.

Or, are you suggesting some form of connection is possible from one brain directly to another brain?

[ceptimus]

By now you may have gathered that I'm a bit of an analogy addict - so here goes:

I have a computer I call Sam running a program - let's say the program is Microsoft Word.

There is a lightning strike that crashes the computer; not only does the program stop running, but there is some hardware damage: when I reboot the computer, any sounds played through the sound system are a bit crackly, and there are a few dead pixels on the display; nevertheless Sam does still work so I'm able to reload Microsoft Word and continue working.

Has anything passed from Old Sam to New Sam?

Same scenario, but I don't load Microsoft Word and instead run Microsoft Excel: now has anything passed from Old Sam to New Sam?

---

A few weeks later I'm running Microsoft Word on my trusty Windows laptop that I've affectionately named 'Spiros'. The laptop dies, so I go out and buy a new one - but I decide to get an Apple MacBook this time instead of a PC: I name the new MacBook, 'Demitri'. I install the OSX version of Microsoft Word on Demitri and away I go...

Has anything passed from Spiros to Demitri? Would anything have passed if I run Safari on Demitri, instead of Word?

---

I hope that my analogy helps to make clear my suspicion that the hidden topic here is dualism.

With PCs, the division between the hardware and the program that runs on that hardware is clear - when it comes to PCs everyone is a dualist. We are all able to agree that in the case of Old Sam and New Sam that the hardware is exactly the same (though slightly damaged) and that the program is exactly the same if we choose to load Word on New Sam, but different if we load Excel instead. With Spiros and Demitri, we say the hardware is different, but while the two versions of Word that run on the PCs are similar, nothing has passed from Spiros to Demitri, and it doesn't even look as though anything has passed from Spiros running Word to Demitri running Safari.

Now with PCs we have a mechanism - USB flash drives or writeable optical disks that allow us to transfer programs, plus the data used/displayed by those programs from one PC to another.

With humans, we don't, right now, have a (technological) mechanism to save/restore/transfer the 'program' (identity or consciousness). Some dualists believe that such a mechanism exists naturally or supernaturally and comes into effect during reincarnation.

My own position is that I don't believe a natural or supernatural means of transferring identity from one brain to another exists. I don't believe in dualism either.

I'm prepared to believe that a future technology might be able to record the contents of a brain somehow and somehow transfer those contents to another brain or create a working copy of the brain or even 'run' the contents on different hardware altogether - maybe in a silicon based computer.

I think some aspects of a person's identity and consciousness depend not just on the brain, but on other parts of their body. So unless the entire body could be copied (or accurately simulated) then I wouldn't expect the 'transferred' person to behave exactly like the original.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Evidence? Well, for example, clinical self-report, after coma, noting unawarenesss of the passage of time. Preferably the self-report would be augmented by staff observation and scans.

There's always the possibility that a self-report could confuse a period of memory loss with an unfelt time-gap; both could produce the same self-report, after. But in that case observation would distinguish, by noting awareness during that time period.

Why do you ask?

I am consciously unaware of the passage of time when I am asleep but as I have stated elsewhere my 'internal clock' keeps going and I will wake up when needed. Is this 'internal clock' stopped for people in coma? If any person, who has this facility to wake up automatically, experienced a coma and has their internal colck been disrupted? If so that would indicate that even internally the body was not aware of the passage of time 'Unfelt time-gap', however if the 'internal clock' was not disrupted the body continued to be aware of the passage of time, a 'felt time-gap'.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Arguments against Old Paul's passage to New do fail, as you're seeing presently in the confusion of this forum. Essay argument for Old Paul's passage is not as complicated as the attempted arguments against, and no one has demonstrated irrationality in the essay argument.

So what's Sherlock's take on that?

I am seeing that there is some confusion on this forum, but I do not see the argument against passage failing.

With Old to New Paul adding the "passage" adds complication rather than simplifying it. It would be simpler to just say that Old Paul becomes New Paul without anything passing between them. The body and brain are carried over in both casses, memories and experiences are lost in both cases, "passage" only adds complication to the process.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by davidm

Yes, but I'm saying: Let's grant everything you say. Let's say Nicos passes to Thanos. I'm asking you, is it not the case that even if we grant that this happens, nothing looks different to anyone involved, than it does under standard physicalism?

Are you sure this isn't a Peacegirl Sock, not wanting to move on to the next "discovery" till everyone agrees with the current "non-discovery"?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by Vivisectus

I do not think you can call EP "true". Unless you also call the statement "All phenomena are caused by undetectable fairies who make everything work, for all intents and purposes, as if all phenomena are caused by different things" true.

I"m granting it's "true" for the sake of argument. What I am asking Wayne to address -- and so far he has not -- is how existential passage, from the point of view of the subjects and outside observers, differs in any way from standard physicalism. Clearly, it does not; and so even if we grant it's "true" arguendo, it ends up, like ceptimus's postulated ceptinos, on the cutting room floor of Occham's metaphysical film editing studio.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

This is another bit I don't get. Given that there are no links of memory or psychological continuity, how is the passage subjective? It's not as if the passage will be experienced as such. So how does this 'subjective' passage differ in subjective terms from no passage at all?

It doesn't. Nothing differs for anyone from the usual old, x is born and y dies. If Wayne thinks otherwise, please elucidate.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by davidm

Yes, but I'm saying: Let's grant everything you say. Let's say Nicos passes to Thanos. I'm asking you, is it not the case that even if we grant that this happens, nothing looks different to anyone involved, than it does under standard physicalism?

I can go along with this for now, any thing in question afterwards can be returned to. there doesn't need to be 100% agreement by everyone for the discussion to move on.

[Angakuk]

Synchretistic Heretic!

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

Synchretistic Heretic!

Show Off, You and your big 50 cent words.

I am embarresed for you.

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by wstewart

I'll pause a moment at "Yes."

I wonder how many others in forum now concur, or might concur after a pause for reflection.

Comments?

And I have other reasons for pausing today. (Literal) crowbar work, etc. Will consider posts after.

Some work music

.

[thedoc]

I'll see your Vivaldi and raise you a Tchaikovsky.

Arabella Steinbacher - Tchaikovsky Violin...

[thedoc]

Oh, Please define the use of the 'crowbar'?

[Angakuk]

I wonder, is it a rusty crowbar?

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

I wonder, is it a rusty crowbar?

I certainly hope so.

BTW, VBS wraped up today, how did your's go?

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by wstewart

And I have other reasons for pausing today. (Literal) crowbar work, etc. Will consider posts after. Some work music.

That's it! If you die listening to a particular piece of music the next person born to that piece of music is you. That was easy, Next world changing problem?