The Relationship Between Math and Physics

I disagree.

My assumptions are the following two:

  1. Space-time is quantized or pixelated.

  2. John Harshman wakes up as the same person who went to sleep last night.

From Premise 1 it follows that no material connection can explain why John Harshman conserves his personal identity.

So,

  • either John Harshman is a personal being always aware that he is, i.e.: capable of stating uninterruptedly “I am”,

  • or there is such a personal being who ensures the conservation of John Harshman’s personal identity,

  • or John Harshman is an absurdity.

Since John Harshman while sleeping is not aware of his existence, we are led to conclude that:

  • either there is a personal being who can always claim “I am” and also ensures the conservation of John Harshman in time,

  • or John Harshman is an absurdity.

In summary either John Harshman is an absurdity or he is a thought of the being whose name is “I am”, that is, YAHWEH, also called God.

On my part I prefer to be a thought of YAHWEH rather than being none.

Sorry, but it doesn’t follow. Everything after that therefore isn’t meaningful.

I reject the 2nd premise. I think the person who went to sleep last night is different from the person that wakes up the next morning. The differences are subtle, but at the very least they include the experiences of having slept for one more night.

I wake up as an almost identical, but not exactly identical person, to the one that went to sleep last night. And there’s a good physical explanation for that. Time has passed, and I have had physical causes affect and alter my physical body during that elapsed time. Cells in my body will have died and been replaced by ever so slightly different ones.

All that needs to happen for maintaining the sensation of persistence of self is that the moment-to-moment changes are subtle enough to be unnoticable, or that the changes that happen do not substantially alter the processes responsible for creating that sense of self.
If a particular type of brain structure creates the activity we describe as a “sense of self”, then in so far as that brain structure is maintained in it’s essential attributes that cause this sense of self to persist, then that would explain the persistence of a sense of self.
Evidently, that is actually the case. While the brain certainly changes over our lifetime as our experiences change and accumulate, there are also clearly a persistence in the overall architecture of the brain that could explain why it would continously generate the “sense of self”, and so why you feel like your identity persists.

How does that follow? It seems obvious to me that it doesn’t follow at all.

Could that go some way towards explaining why patently invalid arguments are persuasive to you? Wouldn’t you agree that what we desire be true has no bearing on what is actually true?

If you do, as I suspect, then why did you even bring up what you desire be the case?

That’s just a social convention.

1 Like

Are you sure?

On November 2018 you posted this:

It looks like if you are claiming you are today the same person as when you were in your “mid twenties”. Changes in beliefs and cells do not seem to entail change in the personal identity of Rumraket. Otherwise your claim in the quotation is nonsensical.

LOL.

“Same person” in the first quote is not the same as “same person” in the last. Language is subtle and sensitive to context.

1 Like

Quite.

The person I am today still has the experience of “being me”. But that “me” has undergone many both mental and physical, though often subtle changes. The “me” of today is not identical to the “me” of yesterday. They’re very similar, but not exactly.

1 Like

Nonetheless you claim:

  1. “I ’m an atheist.”

  2. “I was some sort of christian up until my mid twenties,”

  3. “though in all honesty I never took it very seriously and always had serious doubts about the whole thing.”

In all these 3 Statements you are always using the same personal pronoun ‘I’ .

This proves that you are not referring to three different persons, otherwise you should use the pronoun ‘he’ in the sentences 2 and 3.

In other words, the three statements above reveal your conviction that you are describing the history of one and the same person. You are not a succession of existence pixels popping out from nothing.

Mental and physical changes may enhance your capabilities but do not change your personal identity. This is crucial for defining coherently property rights: So for instance, if today you were no longer the son of your parents, you would not be entitled to be their heir.

This statement brings to light another important hidden assumption you make:

In fact, you don’t yet have a name, you are struggling to make a name for yourself. With your decisions you are defining who you will be forever.

The important question in life is not “to be, or not to be”, but “to be someone or to be none”.

1 Like

True enough!

I am only interested in a truth that allow us to establish sound social conventions and thereby ensures that I can defend my rights in any situation.

As I see it, social conventions are established on a pragmatic basis. Truth is not involved. Many of our pragmatic social conventions are prior to truth.

1 Like

It seems here (as often is the case) that there is an issue over the definition of a key word. In this case, it is “identity.” Is it appropriate and clear enough for this topic to understand “identity” as one’s agreement that they identify with the person named on their passport or driver’s license each and every morning? Or must “identity” be understood as one who is 100% identical to the person he went to sleep as last night? Because, using the second definition, one would literally not be the same person from second to second assuming the loss of cells and particles, right?

2 Likes

No, it doesn’t actually prove that. Presumably even if my personality radically shifted in the interim, whoever I (or "that person) felt like I/it was, Iit would still call my/itself “I”.

And in any case, even in so far as my personality did undergo some radical change, there are still perfectly sensible physical reason to speak of a persistent sense of self rooted in the continued existence of certain physiological brain-and-body structures and activities, which have not been altered substantially enough to have destroyed this sense of identity.

Presumably even if those structures were fundamentally altered, they would still speak of themselves as “I”.

In other words, the three statements above reveal your conviction that you are describing the history of one and the same person .

Yes and I’m giving a physical explanation for that fact. The persistence of certain physical brain and body structures and processes.

You are not a succession of existence pixels popping out from nothing.

I don’t see why I would need to be.

Mental and physical changes may enhance your capabilities but do not change your personal identity.

What does that even mean? What would a changed personal identity even be like? Would that person not still identify as itself?

This is crucial for defining coherently property rights: So for instance, if today you were no longer the son of your parents, you would not be entitled to be their heir.

Being the son of my parents has nothing to do with my sense of self. There are historical and biological ways to demonstrate that connection regardless of what person I might feel like I am. It is noteworthy that personal identity isn’t actually settled by what people say they feel like, but by what they can show with physical evidence. Historical records, DNA tests, documents of identification and so on.

I know that Hollywood has made something of a dollarcow out of movies that speculate on things like exchanged identity, with different people switching their “minds” to different bodies. But they’re fiction, it doesn’t actually happen in reality.

"You honor I just don’t feel like that child’s father, so I just can’t be responsible for paying child support. "

1 Like

I agree with this. I don’t think we can really make progress in this discussion until we agree on some way of defining identity. What is it, exactly, we are seeking to explain the existence and persistence of?

My computer reports a CPU serial number reliably and unaltered every time I turn it on. This is despite the fact that it’s slowly getting older, and that physical changes happen to it. There are probably countless microscopic changes having happened to it’s internal circuitry, and yet it still reports this unaltered “identity”. Does my computer have a CPU serial number soul? It seems to me we can explain it’s continued ability to report the same serial number as a consequence of the persistence of the essential physical attributes that allow this.

1 Like

I especially appreciate this, because it is okay, if only for this discussion, that we agree on a simple definition of identity. If any insist on identity being not even a molecular change, there can be no discussion.

1 Like

For philosophers, this is the problem of personal identity. What makes a person persist in time? What changes can a person undergo without ceasing to exist?

Some ideas on what personal identity arises from:

  • a soul
  • psychological continuity in the right way; that is a causally linked chain of memories, beliefs, desires, character traits, etc.
  • body continuity in the right way;
  • there is no personal identity, although there are persons

They all have issues because of philosophical thought experiments (which all figure in SF plots):

  • memory implants by evil scientists challenge psychological continuity (“Total Recall”)
  • cloning with brain transfer to cloned body challenges body continuity
  • Star Trek teleporters challenge several approaches
  • brain swaps between bodies challenge intuitions about psychological versus body being the essence of personal identity
  • brain uploads which serve as backup in case a body dies challenge psychological continuity
  • fissioning of one person into two copies challenges body and psychological(plot element in several Star Trek)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/

Truth without pragmatic basis is useless.

I would rather say that truth is concomitant of “pragmatic social conventions”.

Truth arises in the context of moral and legal responsibility at the beginning of humanity, at the time when the concept of “right and wrong”, “good and bad” is coined. Significantly, the first vestiges of writings reproduce contracts and property rights. Scientific knowledge is in fact part of a larger story about what is good and what is bad.

1 Like

Thanks for this Michael!

Indeed, as you very well suggest:

“it is appropriate and clear enough …to understand “identity” as one’s agreement that they identify with the person named on their passport or driver’s license each and every morning”.

And you could also add to your definition: the person named on their bank account!

The understanding you propose is appropriate NOT ONLY for this topic! The idea of personal identity is so fundamental that we could not even have this debate if we were not assuming it all the time while reading and answering each other’s comments.

So “the second definition” you refer to is useless and, in my view, even nonsensical.

Human knowledge, and in particular science, arises from the very need and will for assigning rights and duties coherently on a public recognizable basis. Interestingly, the first cuneiform writings are pieces of accountancy establishing property rights: This is the beginning of mathematics, the basis of science! Experimental science itself, especially quantum physics, is accountancy to a large extent. So science is part of a larger story about what is just and unjust, right and wrong, good and bad.

This has an important implication:

We establish personal identity on the basis of the observable continuity in bodily development: You are the same person as the blastocyst’s ICM (Inner Cell Mass), all your present cells are derived from through cell cleavage and metabolic exchange.

Now my point is the following:

Since space-time is discrete or pixelated there is no real material continuous ensuring that you are the same person from second to second.

So if we keep to the conservation of personal identity (without which any legal and social order would break down) we have to acknowledge some non-material support. This is the reason why I said that the “conservation of the personal identity of Dr.@Patrick Trischitta" requires a personal support coming from outside space-time. And since this support cannot be Dr. Trischitta himself, as he is not aware of his identity while he is sleeping, we are led to acknowledge another person who is conscious all the time and ensures that Dr. Tischitta is the same person from second to second.

1 Like

Still a non sequitur, just like every argument you have made so far.

1 Like

Doesn’t this vary between cultures?