Frotiw

I agree with John Page.

Also each duplicate will have different phenomenal experiences. That is if I kick my duplicate if will not hurt me only him.

However it is not much of an objection to the points made by dualists and non-reductive positions.

Now I pull out Chalmers again as he points out some of the problems well and seems to support a position many disagree on(including me).

A noteworthy point concerning Chalmers a point that often seems to be forgotton is that he has little doubt that a NCC WILL be found. He doesn't reject the work of coginitive scientists at all on the contrary he finds the theories of again Crick and Koch very plausible. The problem is just that the core of the problem of consciousness, the philosphical problem remains untouched.
He doesn't (initially atleast) disagree with theories presented by e.g. Crick and Koch. His point is that due to the phenenominal character of consciousness(I have presented some arguments earlier) empirical science will have to rely on a bridging principle. The true problem(at least for empirist approaches) is the problem of the bridging principle. The bridging principle is the assumptions that empirisme apparently will have to do..
The problem is that emprisme will simply have to assume that whenever the to be found NCC is observed there is also consciousness as a product of the NCC. Now as a philospher I do not like assumptions and also I find it problematic that empirism and natural science concern themselves with something that cannot be empirically verified. I am quite confident that most empirist will agree that is a problem when somehing is non-verifiabel within empirism. The only imaginable way this problem might be solved is by empirically inverstigation of one self. That is conducting experiments of ones own brain while being consciousness.
I want to emphasize that the NCC is completly uncontroversially verifiable the problem lies in the bridging principle between consciousness and the NCC. The problem is that empirism must rely on external criterias for whenever there is consciousness or not. Consciousness contrary to anything else is not external but happens to be(as the important quality) internal. Therefor empirism must commit themselves to some sort of "leap of belief" that that NCC does correspond to consciousness. This problem is proberly also why congitive science(and the like) so very often seem to be entangled in philosphy.

I hope you understand that I do not with to represent some wide anti-empirical stance. I generaly agree with empirically science but this particular "investigation" differs fundamentally from ALL other "investigations". In this case it is the internal/subjective that is is treated as it is external/objective. Doing that the important quality(internal/subjectivity) escapes explanation. This does not mean that cognitive science is not interesting ofcause, this just mean that there are limitations of what we can expect empirical science to explain. As Chalmers point out we must keep in mind that correlation and explanation is not the same thing.

I suggest reading:
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/papers/ncc.html

In this paper the points made be Chalmers that I have attempted to present in my words are found.

As I have mentioned earlier I am still a materialist I don't think dualism is the conclusion that necessarilly must be drawn from Chalmers aguments. However I think his arguments concerning the bridging principle and others remain valid and effective.

Frotiw

Damn I just realized that this ought to be posted in the mind/brain duality thread. Though not completly irrelevant to this thread I mixed up the threads thinking this was the mind/brain one. Sorry.

John Page

Frotiw:

LOL. I don't know if you posted this deliberately - or maybe it was the other you.

Cheers, John

Nowhere357

Thank you John. Now bear with me please - there IS a difference in the outcome. Right now you are "looking out of your eyes". That would be the original you in the experiment. Your duplicate would seem the same to me, but why wouldn't you notice that the duplicate was someone else? That is, you would still be looking out of your eyes, and you would see another person who looked like you.

This tells me that the objective viewpoint fails to describe the subjective results; that is, emergent theory cannot fully describe the nature of the "self".

I apologize for my lack of sophistication as I try to explain this. I have been reading and studying, and I have a long way to go. I'm making progress however; I can now encounter the word "epistemology", for example, without having to stop and think (although I may have to think about thinking lol).

John Page

Given time to explore the situation I could well discover this.

Also, please note that people change as they move through time, so both myself and the copy can diverge over time.
All viewpoints are subjective, but some are less so than others. Please consider that we have limited ways of entering into each other's minds - it seems that people who become very close can emulate the other's thought processes and second guess them, finish their sentences etc.

I don't think any of us can fully describe or grasp the nature of the "self", to say that the emergent theory approach is inadequate is therefore premature.

Cheers, John

Regarding your final comment, it seems we are all at kindergarten in the ways of the universe!

MyKell

John,
I don't think we die when this interaction stops, but I do think that we lose our sense of selves. It would be really cool if we discovered those physical substrates for the "self" and got to dissociate them with a non-invasive technique somehow. Only transiently I mean.
My approach doesn't use any cortical oscillation as an overlay. I don't think this is the biological correlate of consciouness because it occurs at a millisecond timescale. It is becoming obvious that working memory operates on the level of seconds or even minutes (some forms even on an hours timescale). 40-Hz oscillations are just too fast for that...

John Page

Neat! I understand you now.

crocodile deathroll

You may end up with a scenario like the pendulum swinging between two magnets, you confused between the two of them at first until it settles down to just one and you continue on at the one trajectory until your death. But once you die, then since all the memory acquired since that experiment will be negated and you may instead switch to the other identical self and continue on again.
After all both selves's would have to die for you to be truly dead.

Nowhere357

John, concerning the experiment you said "I am not my duplicate. There would be two similar (but not absolutely identical) instances of the entity that I call "me". "

Thus the scientific understanding fails. There is an actual difference which science is UNABLE to detect. The experiment shows that no PHYSICAL explanation can ever FULLY explain the existence of "self".

Crocadile, you said "You may end up with a scenario like the pendulum swinging between two magnets, you confused between the two of them at first until it settles down to just one and you continue on at the one trajectory until your death. But once you die, then since all the memory acquired since that experiment will be negated and you may instead switch to the other identical self and continue on again.
After all both selves's would have to die for you to be truly dead."

Isn't this the situation which emergent theory would require? That is, the "self" would exist in both bodies simultaneously. This seems wrong to me - wouldn't this allow instantaneous transfer of information?

crocodile deathroll

Yes I do subscibe to the emergent property theory and maybe we will exist in billions of brain entities similtanious in a fetal stage of development until one is randomly selected like a ball landing on a certain number on a roulette wheel.

It sounded a little far fetched a few years ago but this emergent theory of the self is gaining ground.