Re: The role of consciousness (Re: The GLUT and functionalism)

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@rawbw.com)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2008 - 17:23:18 MDT


Stathis wrote
Sent: Tuesday, April 08, 2008 5:37 AM
Subject: Re: The role of consciousness (Re: The GLUT and functionalism)

> ... my point was, at least teleportation where the original is
> instantaneously destroyed should be uncontroversial, being
> more or less equivalent to walking.

That has to be correct. Entirely correct.

> Strange things happen when we grapple with
> weird duplication scenarios using brains that have
> evolved to believe absolutely that there can only
> ever be one copy of us travelling forward through time.

But we "have been evolved" to believe all sorts of
nonsense. We have been evolved to believe that
for every inside there must be an outside. We have
been evolved to believe that *down* is a particular
universal direction in 3D space. The list is endless.

*But* we have also evolved the means to reason
past such "evolved beliefs", and especially with the
help of certain memes, we should not only do so,
but we should completely embrace the results!
Therefore we *ought to* and *must* believe that
a certain speed (the speed of light) cannot be
exceeded, that a certain temperature cannot be
lowered, and so on and on.

Yes, we may have, as you write "been evolved to
believe absolutely [sic] that ther ean only ever be
one copy of us travleing forward through time",
but our reason and logic shows that to be utterly
false. So, just as in QM and relativity theory, we
simply have to GET USED to it.

Lee



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