X-Message-Number: 14893 Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2000 11:51:29 -0500 From: david pizer <> Subject: Pizerism, briefly. Pizerism, in brief. By: david Pizer (I have modestly named my belief, Pizerism. :=) A recent exchange between Henri and Eric has led me to attempt to explain why some immortalists are not able to understand why a specific brain and a different identical constructed brain (same type of atoms in the same spacial relation to all the other atoms thereby having the same identical memories and the only difference is the two separate parts of each brain that "Feel" the memories, and other sensations) cause each whole brain not to be the one and the same person. >>Eric wrote : >>One final frustrating point: occasionally someone here will accuse >>someone who hasn't accepted the new "information paradigm" as being >>someone who thinks there's something mystical or magic going on in a >>human being. >Henri wrote : >Hmm, you seem to love your atoms. OK, you have to right to do so! >Although it is not very rational. >... maybe your hydrogen and carbon atoms are more special than mine! hehe :) It is not the atoms, but the process that the atoms are a part of, that make them special. ============================================================================ ===== ============================================================================ ===== "Pizerism" is my long-standing claim that there is a fundamental and irreducible difference between the basic parts of a conscious process and the same parts, or same type of parts, when they are in a non-conscious activity. At least two of the major differences are the concepts of different effects and different applicable laws: 1. The parts of a conscious process produce different *effects,* then they do outside it. This is axiomatic. So there are some laws that describe the effects of matter in general and different, extended and more complete, laws (not yet understood) that would describe the effects of matter in a conscious process. Just as in some newer physics is the concept that the process of measuring, (for example), can add to the meaning of the effects of the thing being measured, so can the action of being in a conscious process add to the meaning of the effects of the matter in that process. 2. In addition, laws about abstract representations like one concept representing another are ok if one is thinking of, (for example), the number one - but are meaningless if one is thinking about the one-person, (say), David Pizer. You can substitute the concept of the number one in an abstract concept and it is the same concept; there is no evidence that you can substitute one new person for one different person using the same rules you use in abstract reasoning about things that do not have physical reality. The rules for understanding concepts that don't physically exist do not seem that they would be the same for understanding things that have physical reality. Their problem, in a nutshell, is that the non-Pizerists use rules for describing non-physical things to describe physical things. One reason why we need new physics, and more developed epistemology to go with it, is that in trying to define sense impression, and self-awareness interpretations in physical terms, (which is basic before we can describe what a person is, let alone decide if a duplicate can be the original), we realize that the only way to describe physical terms is through sense impressions. We need a non-related method of inquiry to help us. Certainly, before any cautious immortalist will step into the teleporter, he/she is going to want Cartesian certainty that the reassembled person that steps out on Mars is the same person who stepped in on Earth. No one doubts that the person stepping out will have a personal existence, and most will not doubt that the person stepping out will "think" he/she is the other person, but the question is not what the person stepping out thinks, but rather what is the truth about the survival of the person stepping in? (Why we also need better epistemology). Pizerism leads to the claim that the person stepping out can not be known with enough confidence to be a *survival* of the person stepping in (at least with today's limited physics and epistemology); that there seems to be a difference between the two persons and that difference is what makes the two persons not the same person. You do not have the same unique process feeling the identical memories in the two examples; so, you can not know that the two are the same person. David Pizer Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14893