Daniel: What do you think about personal identity?
David: I don’t believe in it. Cogito ergo sum and all that. I believe I dealt a conclusive death blow to that idea in my book.
Daniel: But you weren’t able to refute my “apparent past” argument. (See http://mccomplete.blogspot.com/2010/05/ideas-matter-platonic-dialogue-by-mc.html and http://mccomplete.blogspot.com/2010/04/science-does-not-make-predictions.html).
David: I don’t know if I’m really convinced by it yet, but no, I wasn’t able to refute it. It was very crafty.
Daniel: Thanks. So, for the purposes of the current discussion, would you be willing to assume that my apparent past argument is sound?
David: Only if you give it an ism.
Daniel: What ism?
David: If it’s a philosophical theory, it needs an ism. Every philosophical theory has an ism.
Daniel: Come to think of it, in my last post, I called it “truth-value realism”.
Daivd: Too long-winded. Can you come up with something more succinct?
Daniel: OK, how about “virtualism”?
David: Why “virtualism”?
Daniel: It’s the “apparent” part of the apparent past. The idea is that the world of appearances, let’s call it the virtual reality, shares a lot of information with the real world, whether or not the real world actually exists. So most of our beliefs about science, math, and common sense are well-founded if they are reinterpreted as statements about the virtual world.
David: OK, that’s fine for now, but “virtualism” sounds like it might already be taken.
Daniel: Yeah, I’ll have to check Plato when I get back to my computer.
David: So what does virtualism have to say about personal identity?
Daniel: Well, viirtual objects can be said to exist because they are generalizations over the apparent past.
David: OK.
Daniel: And people are just virtual objects, right?
David: OK.
Daniel: So I’m a virtual object too. Just like everyone else.
David: Well, “David Hume”, “Daniel Dennet”, and “Bob Stalnaker” are all virtual objects. But why is “David Hume” me, while “Daniel Dennet” and “Bob Stalnaker” are not me?
Daniel: Because I never see my face except in a mirror.
David: So that’s the definition of “me”? The person whose face I only see in a mirror?
Daniel: Kind of. I mean, there are all kinds of special things about “me”, i.e. “MC Complete”. If “MC Complete” stubs his toe, I experience pain, but if someone else stubs their toe, I don’t experience pain. The visual memory stream is kind of analogous to a video (although of course there are many differences), and the virtual camera is located more or less at the same place as “MC Complete”’s eyes.
David: Behind my eyelids, apparently, because when David Hume closes his eyes, I don’t see anything.
Daniel: Exactly.
David: Very crafty, as usual. But you’ll notice that I don’t have a brain.
Daniel: What?
David: I’ve seen my hands and my feet. I’ve even seen my face, in a mirror. But I’ve never seen my brain.
Daniel: But people have brains. There’s tons of evidence. Autopsies, dissections, x-rays, surgery...
David: Of course.
Daniel: And I am a person.
David: Of course.
Daniel: Well, therefore I have a brain, don’t I? Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal?
David: Not so fast. In Apparent Pastitstan, that inference is invalid.
Daniel: But I invented virtualism. What do you know about it that I don’t?
David: “People have brains” is a generalization over the apparent past. “David Hume has hands” is a generalization over the apparent past. But “David Hume has a brain” is not a generalization over the apparent past.
Daniel: That kind of sounds right, I guess...
David: As far as I can tell, your virtualism reverses the conventional notions of induction and deduction. Induction is inference from the specific to the general, whereas deduction is inference from the general to the specific. It’s conventionally assumed that deduction is more well-founded than induction. But virtual inductive inferences are very well-founded. They take a set of specific instances and generalize over those instances, without attempting to address anything outside those instances. And conversely, when you take a virtualistic interpretation of “the general”, inference from the general to the specific is simply invalid.
Daniel: That’s kind of cool. I’ll take credit for it.
David: Kind of solves the mind-body problem, doesn’t it?
Daniel: The mind-body problem? I just solved the problem of induction, and now I’ve solved the mind-body problem?
David: Kind of...I mean, think about it. The mind-body problem is really the mind-brain problem, right?
Daniel: Right...
David: But the mind-brain problem is only a problem if people have both minds and brains. And virtualistically speaking, the sets are disjoint. How can there be a mind-brain problem if some people have minds but not brains, i.e. myself, and some people have brains but not minds, i.e. all you zombies?
David: I don’t believe in it. Cogito ergo sum and all that. I believe I dealt a conclusive death blow to that idea in my book.
Daniel: But you weren’t able to refute my “apparent past” argument. (See http://mccomplete.blogspot.com/2010/05/ideas-matter-platonic-dialogue-by-mc.html and http://mccomplete.blogspot.com/2010/04/science-does-not-make-predictions.html).
David: I don’t know if I’m really convinced by it yet, but no, I wasn’t able to refute it. It was very crafty.
Daniel: Thanks. So, for the purposes of the current discussion, would you be willing to assume that my apparent past argument is sound?
David: Only if you give it an ism.
Daniel: What ism?
David: If it’s a philosophical theory, it needs an ism. Every philosophical theory has an ism.
Daniel: Come to think of it, in my last post, I called it “truth-value realism”.
Daivd: Too long-winded. Can you come up with something more succinct?
Daniel: OK, how about “virtualism”?
David: Why “virtualism”?
Daniel: It’s the “apparent” part of the apparent past. The idea is that the world of appearances, let’s call it the virtual reality, shares a lot of information with the real world, whether or not the real world actually exists. So most of our beliefs about science, math, and common sense are well-founded if they are reinterpreted as statements about the virtual world.
David: OK, that’s fine for now, but “virtualism” sounds like it might already be taken.
Daniel: Yeah, I’ll have to check Plato when I get back to my computer.
David: So what does virtualism have to say about personal identity?
Daniel: Well, viirtual objects can be said to exist because they are generalizations over the apparent past.
David: OK.
Daniel: And people are just virtual objects, right?
David: OK.
Daniel: So I’m a virtual object too. Just like everyone else.
David: Well, “David Hume”, “Daniel Dennet”, and “Bob Stalnaker” are all virtual objects. But why is “David Hume” me, while “Daniel Dennet” and “Bob Stalnaker” are not me?
Daniel: Because I never see my face except in a mirror.
David: So that’s the definition of “me”? The person whose face I only see in a mirror?
Daniel: Kind of. I mean, there are all kinds of special things about “me”, i.e. “MC Complete”. If “MC Complete” stubs his toe, I experience pain, but if someone else stubs their toe, I don’t experience pain. The visual memory stream is kind of analogous to a video (although of course there are many differences), and the virtual camera is located more or less at the same place as “MC Complete”’s eyes.
David: Behind my eyelids, apparently, because when David Hume closes his eyes, I don’t see anything.
Daniel: Exactly.
David: Very crafty, as usual. But you’ll notice that I don’t have a brain.
Daniel: What?
David: I’ve seen my hands and my feet. I’ve even seen my face, in a mirror. But I’ve never seen my brain.
Daniel: But people have brains. There’s tons of evidence. Autopsies, dissections, x-rays, surgery...
David: Of course.
Daniel: And I am a person.
David: Of course.
Daniel: Well, therefore I have a brain, don’t I? Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal?
David: Not so fast. In Apparent Pastitstan, that inference is invalid.
Daniel: But I invented virtualism. What do you know about it that I don’t?
David: “People have brains” is a generalization over the apparent past. “David Hume has hands” is a generalization over the apparent past. But “David Hume has a brain” is not a generalization over the apparent past.
Daniel: That kind of sounds right, I guess...
David: As far as I can tell, your virtualism reverses the conventional notions of induction and deduction. Induction is inference from the specific to the general, whereas deduction is inference from the general to the specific. It’s conventionally assumed that deduction is more well-founded than induction. But virtual inductive inferences are very well-founded. They take a set of specific instances and generalize over those instances, without attempting to address anything outside those instances. And conversely, when you take a virtualistic interpretation of “the general”, inference from the general to the specific is simply invalid.
Daniel: That’s kind of cool. I’ll take credit for it.
David: Kind of solves the mind-body problem, doesn’t it?
Daniel: The mind-body problem? I just solved the problem of induction, and now I’ve solved the mind-body problem?
David: Kind of...I mean, think about it. The mind-body problem is really the mind-brain problem, right?
Daniel: Right...
David: But the mind-brain problem is only a problem if people have both minds and brains. And virtualistically speaking, the sets are disjoint. How can there be a mind-brain problem if some people have minds but not brains, i.e. myself, and some people have brains but not minds, i.e. all you zombies?
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment