Dar al-Hikma

[thedoc]

And now for something very much similar.

Claude Debussy: La Mer; Philharmonia Orchestra,...

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

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.

Re: personal identity criteria

Generally speaking it's not so much a question of precedence or conflict, as of relevance wrt whatever aspect of personal identity is at issue. For temporal limits of personal identity, subjectivity is the most relevant criterion because it is subjectivity that delimits, as with unfelt time-gaps.

The Old/New Paul scenario delimits two (arguably two) personal identities with subjective/objective transitions. This sort of explicit delimiting is not common in textbook personal identity scenarios, which typically explore the aspects of only a single personal identity. This difference may have sparked some of your questions, which I'm thinking about. For the moment I'll just note that it's not easy to write literal and complete statements about subjective/objective transitions, not least because standard subject-verb-object syntax is poorly equipped for conditions that undermine the subject/object distinction required by the syntax.

Re: Moving from Old/New Paul to Nicos and Thanos

The Old/New Paul scenario shows us something: unfelt time-gaps can be expected to occur, irrespective of the degree of personal identity loss, even to the ultimate limit. Failure of all criteria can occur, and still the reasoning for the unfelt time-gap makes more sense than reasoning against the unfelt time-gap; as we've seen in this thread.

So Old Paul likely passes to New, despite loss of personal identity criteria. In this initial scenario the only body is Old/New Paul's, so the question of "existential passage" is deferred. The scenario just exercises the essay's prior concepts, using neutral terms that seem to do the job for most readers. Old Paul passes to New, and it's a busy day if a reader objects to as much as terminology. E.g. thedoc prefers "Old Paul becomes New Paul," to "Old Paul passes to New Paul." OK. It's just a choice of expressions. The objections are rarely greater than that.

And then the essay introduces Nicos and Thanos.

And then objections fly in from every corner of the compass.

I've found that these objections are often just as applicable to Old/New Paul as to Nicos and Thanos. (E.g., asserting that memory is necessary for unfelt time-gaps.) When I point this out, the nascent objection is abandoned, possibly because the neutral terms of the Old/New Paul scenario favor careful reasoning. Repeated experience with this approach persuaded me to keep Old/New Paul in the spotlight in this thread, so that objections could be cleared as quickly as possible. I think the approach helped.

Now we can turn the spotlight to Nicos and Thanos. Now only those differences unique to this scenario need be addressed. Objections applicable to Old/New Paul have been addressed, and should not be revisited in new form with Nicos and Thanos. This simplifies the problem - or it can, if thread participants remain careful in reasoning. Granting existential passage merely "for the sake of argument", as some do, simply ignores the reasoning. More importantly it hides counter-argument reasoning behind a veil of suspended disbelief. Reasoning must be brought out from behind that veil, into the spotlight. Your own post provides decent example of spotlit reasoning, with everything out in the open. I'll return to it directly.

[thedoc]

I see that "selective reading" is the MO on this thread.

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by thedoc

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.

"Passing" adds no complication relative to "becoming"; it's just a different way to express "becoming". You imagine some unnecessary complication, but you're not going to demonstrate it with a thesaurus.

I notice you're not much bothered by the complications, confusions and evident failures of previous arguments against passage of Old Paul to New. (And mutually incompatible arguments force failure, unavoidably, and perhaps obviously.) You were saying something about... "selective reading"?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by wstewart

For the moment I'll just note that it's not easy to write literal and complete statements about subjective/objective transitions, not least because standard subject-verb-object syntax is poorly equipped for conditions that undermine the subject/object distinction required by the syntax.

This is correct. You should consider that the reason it's hard to do this is because the claims may not be coherent.

I've found that these objections are often just as applicable to Old/New Paul as to Nicos and Thanos. (E.g., asserting that memory is necessary for unfelt time-gaps.)

As I've pointed out, memory is necessary to realize that one has been in an unfelt time gap. Without memory, there was, subjectively, no gap; just a sudden "finding oneself present in the world." Similiarly, if Old Paul, qua Old Paul, does not continue as himself beyond the gap, then it's not a gap. It's simply the permanent cessation of Old Paul. Gaps are not permanent by definition; they are temporary.

Granting existential passage merely "for the sake of argument", as some do, simply ignores the reasoning.

No it doesn't. I'm asking, granting arguendo that existential passage is true, how does it differ -- from the point of view of the subjective people who are dying and being born, and from the point of view of outside observers who watch this happening -- in any way from standard materialism (i.e., Nicos dies and Thanos is born, full stop).

It doesn't, which means existential passage runs afoul of Occham's razor, unless you can demonstrate otherwise.

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by davidm

Another thing that neither Lessans, Clark nor Stewart address is this: assuming generic subjective continuity is a coherent idea (Stewart calls it "existential passage,") why does the locus of awareness shift from one individual human consciousness to another? Why doesn't it shift to a bird, a beetle, a dog or an alien on a distant planet?

Questions I've attempted previously, publicly, and at some length.

E.g., 1 2 3 and 4.



How much of the essay have you read?

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by davidm

This is correct.

So remember it and try to improve your own text, viz.:

Originally Posted by davidm

As I've pointed out, memory is necessary to realize that one has been in an unfelt time gap. Without memory, there was, subjectively, no gap; just a sudden "finding oneself present in the world."

Again you confuse memory of an event with the event itself. Repetition doesn't make the confusion true.

Also this repetition reasserts your attempted argument against Old Paul's passage to New, effectively retracting your previous concession to Occam's Razor. Your posts are simply inconsistent on this point.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by davidm

No it doesn't. I'm asking, granting arguendo that existential passage is true, how does it differ -- from the point of view of the subjective people who are dying and being born, and from the point of view of outside observers who watch this happening -- in any way from standard materialism (i.e., Nicos dies and Thanos is born, full stop).

It doesn't, which means existential passage runs afoul of Occham's razor, unless you can demonstrate otherwise.

Agreed, if you are to apply 'Occham's Razor' to Nicos' death, the simple statement is death is the cessation of all, and nothing passes. The passage of anything physical or spiritual only complicates the process.

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by thedoc

Agreed, if you are to apply 'Occham's Razor' to Nicos' death, the simple statement is death is the cessation of all, and nothing passes. The passage of anything physical or spiritual only complicates the process.

Nothing "physical or spiritual" need be passed, and nothing in essay steps outside of metaphysical naturalism. The essay just has a view of unfelt time-gaps that is less restrictive than the view of some forum posters. These restrictions are largely implied or assumed, and unargued. When such arguments are made explicit, they eventually run into some intractable difficulty, and fail. This occurs with arguments forbidding Old Paul's familiar passage, as with arguments forbidding Nicos' less familiar passage. Or "becoming", if you like.

Try and see.

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"...

[Spacemonkey]

Still waiting for you to address my objection.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Nothing "physical or spiritual" need be passed, and nothing in essay steps outside of metaphysical naturalism. The essay just has a view of unfelt time-gaps that is less restrictive than the view of some forum posters. These restrictions are largely implied or assumed, and unargued. When such arguments are made explicit, they eventually run into some intractable difficulty, and fail. This occurs with arguments forbidding Old Paul's familiar passage, as with arguments forbidding Nicos' less familiar passage. Or "becoming", if you like.

Try and see.

Nothing "Incorporeal" passes from Nicos to Thanos, and no thing passes from Nocos to Thanos. This in essence eliminates the possibility of an 'unfelt time-gap' that indicates a continuance of "something", as yet undefined in any real sense. The "Preceived existential 'moment'" and the 'Awareness of existance' is extinguished at death, there is no 'existential passage', the 'unfelt time-gap is an artificial construct, that only complicates a simple process of extinguishing a life.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Spacemonkey

Still waiting for you to address my objection.

I seem to remember you waiting in much the same way for Peacegirl to respond.

Have you noticed that the more Wstwart posts the less Peacegirl posts. It must be too much strain to maintain 2 distinct persona's.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Questions I've attempted previously, publicly, and at some length.

E.g., 1 2 3 and 4.



How much of the essay have you read?

Virtually all of it, from the start, twice; though admittedly I skipped over this chapter because it didn't seem relevant to my concerns. You should also realize that not everyone is going to read your book, or they will read some parts of it but not others. And so you should be prepared to answer these kind of questions, or point to the specific source material that answers the questions.

Does the chapter in question specifically answer why a human must "pass" to a human and NOT to a space alien or a great ape?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by wstewart

So remember it and try to improve your own text, viz.:

Again you confuse memory of an event with the event itself. Repetition doesn't make the confusion true.

Also this repetition reasserts your attempted argument against Old Paul's passage to New, effectively retracting your previous concession to Occam's Razor. Your posts are simply inconsistent on this point.

Wayne, what am I confused about? I believe, sincerely, that it is you who is confused instead.

I am NOT confusing "memory of an event" with "the event itself." If the event is Nicos going out of business permanently qua Nicos, and the next event is Thanos struggling into awareness qua Thanos, then under your own argument, Thanos has no memory of having had a previous subjective point of view called Nicos. Is that not right? Now to say, as you seem to, that there WAS such an event as "previous point of view Nicos," but Thanos can't recall it, is just a string of words. It's simply no different from saying Nicos died and Thanos was born later, full stop. Is that not right? Is it not the case that for subjective experiencers, and objective outside observers, there is no distinguishable difference between your existential passage and standard materialism? This question has been asked of you repeatedly, and not just by me; it has been asked by Kael, ceptimus, theDoc, and Spacemonkey. Can you answer it?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Nothing "physical or spiritual" need be passed, and nothing in essay steps outside of metaphysical naturalism. The essay just has a view of unfelt time-gaps that is less restrictive than the view of some forum posters. These restrictions are largely implied or assumed, and unargued. When such arguments are made explicit, they eventually run into some intractable difficulty, and fail. This occurs with arguments forbidding Old Paul's familiar passage, as with arguments forbidding Nicos' less familiar passage. Or "becoming", if you like.

Try and see.

We understand that nothing physical or spiritual passes. In essence, that's the problem. You can say, if you wish, that personal subjectivity passes, but in the final analysis, what's it mean? Under your EP, Nicos does not feel himself pass to Thanos. Thanos does not feel himself passing from Nicos. Thanos recalls no "point of view Nicos," and Nicos will not even in principle anticipate "point of view Thanos." How does this differ for anyone involved in simply saying, "Nicos died and Thanos was later born, full stop?"

What is the reason for invoking a process that no one can experience or observe even in principle?

[ceptimus]

I asked earlier (maybe it didn't get moved from the other thread), paraphrasing:

If nothing physical or spiritual passes from Thanos to Nicos then what, if anything, is different between the two cases:

1. Nicos is born some time after Thanos dies.
2. Nicos is born before Thanos dies.

?

[davidm]

Wayne, could you please address this post? If you've already done so and I've missed it, please link me to your response. Thanks.

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?

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by davidm

Virtually all of it, from the start, twice; though admittedly I skipped over this chapter...

Three chapters, addressing your questions directly. You're looking at a summary table that answers several of your questions point-blank. But you have to acquaint yourself with the essay's essential scientific and philosophical material in order to interpret that table. Apparently you haven't done that. Else you wouldn't be demanding an answer re: great apes, for example, when I've just placed the essay's answer in front of you.

You've been talking about this essay for years, often very critically. Your posts should be better informed than those of first-pass readers.

[wstewart]

Originally Posted by davidm

Wayne, could you please address this post? If you've already done so and I've missed it, please link me to your response. Thanks.

Utility is not the best motive for philosophy, but the philosophy appears to have some potential utility. Briefly:

• Some ethical benefits are proposed in Ch. 18.
  
  
• Some speculative benefits are proposed in Ch. 20.
  
  
• Formal consonance with the Catholic word of God is sketched in my brief address to the Magisterium.

Does any of that resonate?

[Kael]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Utility is not the best motive for philosophy, but the philosophy appears to have some potential utility. Briefly:

• Some ethical benefits are proposed in Ch. 18.
  
  
• Some speculative benefits are proposed in Ch. 20.
  
  
• Formal consonance with the Catholic word of God is sketched in my brief address to the Magisterium.

Does any of that resonate?

I'll read through, but I'm already spotting some problems. First, none of the shortcomings of the few schools of ethics critiqued finds its simplest solution in existential passage - we can modify or replace reciprocism, for example, in ways that address the critique without positing this new (and still apparently superfluous) mechanism. Second, it seems to address potential problems of self-interest-oriented ethics by doing nothing more than expanding the 'self' part, an approach which always seems to leave a sour taste for me, but without any tangible incentive to do so, which strikes me as a poor approach with the self-interest crowd. At least with spiritualism you have some concrete connection, at least a claimed direct and experiential transfer bridging your current interests and those of your potential future self. Here, one is offered nothing more than is already present in ethical frameworks revolving around empathy, save the bald assertion that you will actually be one of the beings you might empathize with (but not in any way that might actually affect your consciousness), so it's actually self-interest, see?

So far, not much resonation, no.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Three chapters, addressing your questions directly. You're looking at a summary table that answers several of your questions point-blank. But you have to acquaint yourself with the essay's essential scientific and philosophical material in order to interpret that table. Apparently you haven't done that. Else you wouldn't be demanding an answer re: great apes, for example, when I've just placed the essay's answer in front of you.

You've been talking about this essay for years, often very critically. Your posts should be better informed than those of first-pass readers.

I haven't been talking about the essay for years, Wayne. I talked with you about it Dawkins board for a brief time, and that's it.

I skipped over the chapter about passage in other species because I didn't deem it relevant to consider until we establish whether this concept of passage makes sense to begin with. That is the question that has not been answered to anyone's satisfaction here, at any rate.

At face value, your chart only seems to indicate that passage can occur from great ape to great ape, and from human to human. (btw, humans are great apes, so you might want to use a different example) But the chart does not seem to say why, for instance, nicos, on death, must "pass" to Thanos. Why can't there be cross-species passage or passage to a space alien? I don't see anything in the chart, taken at face value, that addresses this point.

[davidm]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Utility is not the best motive for philosophy, but the philosophy appears to have some potential utility. Briefly:

• Some ethical benefits are proposed in Ch. 18.
  
  
• Some speculative benefits are proposed in Ch. 20.
  
  
• Formal consonance with the Catholic word of God is sketched in my brief address to the Magisterium.

Does any of that resonate?

The question is not about utility. Once can envisage all sorts of scenarios if one came to believe in existential passage, as I've already noted. One could, for instance, become a total nihilist: since passage is purely a crap shoot, and nothing I do in this life ensures a reward in the next (as under various forms of karmic reincarnation) why bother being good? For I could be Mother Teresa in this life and then when I die I could pass to a future sociopathic killer, right? So who cares about being good?

Also, I could foresee weird cults springing up that try to make as many people alike in traits that the cult finds desirable, on the theory that maximizing these traits through the population increases that odds that on death, I shall "pass" to a person possessing those traits.

But none of this is the issue. The issue remains this:

Standard Physicalism (SP) v. Existential Passage (EP)

1. SP says that Nicos qua Nicos dies and is permanently subjectively and objectively kaput. EP agrees with this. Yes?

2. SP says that Thanos qua Thanos has, upon being born and struggling into consciousness and self awareness, no memory of having possessed some prior point of view. EP agrees with this. Yes?

3. SP says that for outside observers, Nicos dies and later Thanos is born. EP agrees with this. Yes?

Bottom line: there is no subjective or objective difference at all between SP and EP. On both accounts, everything looks exactly alike for everyone involved. Is that not so?

Since there is no subjective or objective functional distinction between the two, EP must yield to the razor because it postulates a superfluous and wholly unverifiable or unfalsiable claim that adds nothing to our understanding of life and death. If not, why not?

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by wstewart

Questions I've attempted previously, publicly, and at some length.

E.g., 1 2 3 and 4.



How much of the essay have you read?

There is a problem with this chart in that you have made all creatures with a central nervous system, equivalent when they clearly are not. Then you assert that all creatures with a CNS can participate in the exesential passage, this also is problematical. The conscious awareness of these different creatures are not equivalent and they would not be compatable for passage. You have used the lowest common denominator and this will not work. The differences must be taken into account. If Passage is real it will only work from human to human, other animals probably do not pass, or if they do it is within species. .

[Angakuk]

Originally Posted by thedoc

I certainly hope so.

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

Ours starts on Monday. It probably won't go well seeing as how I am in charge.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

Ours starts on Monday. It probably won't go well seeing as how I am in charge.

Go with a package deal, and let someone else do it. My church did the 'Kingdom Rocks' thing this year. In the old days, churches made up their own programs. I supplied some of the material for the sets for the program. Corregated cardboard that was painted to look like castle stone walls, and I'm getting it all back when they are done. Then I'll have simulated stone walls for my attic.