From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Mon Mar 02 2009 - 14:21:03 MST
Johnicholas Hines wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 12:11 PM, Charles Hixson
> <charleshixsn@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> Good point. I've been choosing "12. All of your future light cone."
>> implicitly, but it's good to make it explicit.
>>
>
> Um, you may have misunderstood. "All of your future light cone"
> includes things like the sound of your footsteps, photons from your
> body heat warming a tree you happen to be passing, the butterfly that
> was sitting on the tree, the butterfly deciding the tree is too warm
> and taking off, and the tornado six months hence caused by the
> butterfly's takeoff. It's a pretty radical notion of personal
> identity.
>
Yeah, I misunderstood. My meaning is based around episodic continuity
of consciousness and memory. (Episodic, because there are gaps.
Continuity because I can fill in the gaps with smoothing. I don't
remember putting on my shoes this morning, but I'm wearing shoes now,
and I wasn't wearing them in bed last night, so I fill in that I put my
shoes on.)
>
>> "13. All of my (current) future light cone that has the potential to
>> remember being me."
>>
>
> Interesting. An alien (or computer program) that maliciously killed
> you and then scanned your brain into its form of episodic memory might
> remember being you.
> Would you call that entity "me", even if it has very different goals
> and emotions from the present you?
>
> Johnicholas
>
>
If it remembered being me, then *it* would call itself me. Given your
description of how that "me" arrived at it's state would cause me to
have qualms about the description...but I couldn't deny the rightness of
it's claim. I'd just prefer to not get there that way...and I might
well prefer to not be there if I were there.
P.S.: I have very different goals and emotions now than I did when I
was 12, but I consider both parts of my timeline to be me.
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