IAP Political Forum

In his address to the Ameerican Philo Assoc. in 1986(?)  Donald Davidson came up with Swampman, his 'double'.   In some bizarre event deep in the swamp, his body is annihilated and simultaneously a new replica is produced from different molecules, but in exactly the same chemical configuration as the original.  The replica, Swampman, moves speaks and acts in exactly the same ways as Davidson would, talking to friends and colleagues, going about his daily business, it is indistinguishable from the man himself.

Those of us who watch reruns of VERY old Star Treks recognise this immediately.  Mother Nature has produced a transporter.  The guy has 'moved' from A to B and on he goes....

What do you reckon to the credibility of this idea?  And what of its consequences?

But the individual hasn't moved from A to B has he? The 1st individual has been destroyed and an exact copy has been made from different molecules. So it's not like it's some kind of giant quantum leap (in the sense that the individual's molecules have moved somewhere without being in the intervening space: the 1st individual has ceased to exist.

(http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p123/OswaldTheOsprey/IAP4/doohan.jpg)
Aye, Captain! :laugh: ;)

OswaldTheOsprey

Uh-huh.  So the swampman ISN't Davidson?    But he acts just like him. Is indistinguishable from him.  He of necessity has the same memories, abilities and 'character' as him.  So we have an intuitive problem with the 'identity' thing.

How about the overall credibility - COULD this happen?

Imagine being Davidson. When your body disintegrates does your consciousness continue? Unless you have some kind of magic soul that can flit between bodies then your consciousness must disintegrate with your body.


I wouldn't rule it out.

OK A. I wasn't being totally open, because this is how Donaldson put it in full....


Tjis your intial intuition.  Swampman doesn't have continuity of consciousness with Davidson, therefore he isn't the same person.  But everything we can tell about him, and everything he presumably feels IS identical.  Because what Davidson says seems wrong.  If words don't mean anything to him, how can he use them?  If he can't recognise friends how can he seem to?  How can he perform LIKE a Davidson if he hasn't continuity with Davidson?

Well,your initial intuiton is typical of our pre-theoretical thinking.  WE look for a 'something' that is Davidson, a 'magical soul' to flit between bodies.   So when I brinfg up Scotty and the transporter... is there a 'soul' of portly Jim that has to be transported with his body?  Of course, the transporter DOESN'T 'send' his molecules over to the Vogon ship (wrong book!): it acts like the lightning strike and reconstitutes his body from available molecules there.  But what of his magical soul?  Any offers?

He has no magical soul so it is of no importance. The Swampman's brain and body are identical to davidson's so to anyone but davidson it would appear to be him. Yet Davidson's consciousness would have stopped. He's dead. And a new him has been created.

I agree with part one.  Its the dead/new bit I find difficult to swallow. This how I saw it....

"it can't recognize anything, since it never cognized anything in the first place".  This the Zombie argument in a new guise. I'm not sure what he is trying to imply, but although it seems to be a Locke-an consciousness=identity I think it is more.  I think it is trying to suggest that there is something more than physical things involved in consciousness.  It is this D-factor that actually 'does' the learning/cognising/etc and is the non-physical seat of it all.  Even though the phyical aspects of the mind - the neural structures, synapse activation, etc at the precise moment of Davidson-1's disintegration are precisely replicated, the D-factor isn't.  Davidsons intuition is that something is missing and Swampamn isn't him.

From my intuitions, Swampman is Davidson - he DOES have Davidson's consciousness.  He has all his memories, he has the effects of learning that Davidson denies.  Consciousness is a property of the brain.  Reproduce the brain molecule for molecule and you will have consciousness.  And identity.

"to anyone but Davidson it would appear to be him"  But who is Davidson is at the heart of the quandary....

Try the other thought experiment:  are you happier with the Star Trek transporter? But if you are, shouldn't Kirk, Spock etc all be just replicas.  Don't they too lose thier identities when they are beamed around?  Does that account for the zombie acting, perhaps?  :D

In Star Trek, the "transporter" literally kills you. You cease to exist when you use it, so in effect, Kirk and all of them who have used them are not just clones, but clones of clones who were previously destroyed.

When you enter at transporter, it scans you, dematerializes you, and uses that data to reform you somewhere else. You die when you are disintegrated. However, we do know from some episodes (I forget the name), there was a malfunction wherein the transporter and it produced the clone as well as keeping the original in some type of stasis. I think it had to do with two Rikers running around. If one goes in, is disintegrated, but isn't saved, and a clone pops from the data at the other side, there's obviously a different person there in that case, especially when their experiences diverge. They may look the same, think the same, have identical memories up to the point of departure, but they aren't the really the same being.

Which seems to confirm Aidan's  no soul, no magic view.   Mine too.  Its ironic that when I read Davidsons address, I came to the diametrically opposing intuition to his.  Swampman (and Scotty) proves there is nothing 'extra' to give us consciousness.

The brain is more than just chemicals and molecules...there are various "impulses" (ie: electrical) of differing wavelenths which differentiate various activity...this "static" electrical activity is what our memories are...like a hard drive.

If you place a magnet on the hard drive...or destroy the hard drive and remake it from the parts...the "data" stored on the hard drive is lost.

Yup.  But if you took a map of all the static charges... you can reconstruct the 'memories'.  Ditto, but I guess immensely more difficult, is to take the exact pattern of the neurones firing at the time of replicating - and getting the exact energy levels and cycle states right.  But the thought experiment isn't about the technical practicalities, just the possibilities.    Whyat more do we need to replicate the mind.

BTW we've not considered the problems of replicating the simple anatomical functions exactly... do we reckon they are just child's play?  The exact state of nerve impulses, the hormone levels and gradients, the exact oxygenation levels.  A working body is essential for a working mind, and the two are interdependent.

Is this kind of thing possible? Possibly :D

Did this thing happen? Probably not because of the lack of evidence.

Can we prove it didn't happen? Probably not

The only way to map ALL memories would be to recall ALL memories...how to do that?

I'm not certain thats so.  Memories must be held in some encoded way within the brain - unless you want to subscribe to some extra-physical storage bank.  It may be that they are held as specifically 'active' groups of neuronal cells, or maybe just the pattern of connections across areas of the brain encode them.  I don't pretend to know.  But if you accept that any representation (perception, concept, memory) is held physically, then a complete physical account (and don't ask me to define complete! See above), should get the contents of the mind.   

I should add that I think the WAY in which we each think is also a result of physical organisation of the brain - I can't think LIKE you or vice versa - but luckily the brain (a) understands that other minds exist and can use empathy and (b)  the brain is flexible so that it can both simulate other thought processes to a certain extent (empathy again) and incorporate new ways of thinking if they seem useful.  But given the fact they will be grafted onto a different base, they will never be the same processes.  (There may be an exception here for logic.  I'll think about that)

The point is that both the data and the programs need copying.  And so far we can speculate that these are all physical.

Well truthfully the implications of such an occurrence could depend upon which metaphysics you ascribe to; be it physicalism, dualism, neutral monism etc.

It could be used inversely by assuming physicalism and drawing a conclusion that physicalism is untrue using Reductio ad Absuredum. (Such that the identity of the person creates the contradiction).

The vast expanse that is our "memory" lies dormant until called upon...to "map" the "pathway"(white matter) to the "groups of neuronal cells"(grey matter) that represent a specific memory...the memory would need to be "active"...to map ALL memories...all would need to be activated to accurately map it.



That's OK...I'm playing along for the ride...


part of the "physicality" of the memory would be energy ie:electrical impulse...what is the molecular/chemical property of this "energy?"   


But the interaction between the physical (data and program) requires the energy I speak of above...loss of energy may result in loss of memory.

What now?

I don't think I'm denying any of this.  But I'm not sure that we know enough about the way in which any representations are 'stored' i.e. what the physical make up actually is. So for example, are you saying that not only do we need to have the precise copy, molecule for molecule, cell for cell, synapse for synapse, to be in a position to replicate a memory store in another entity, but that we can only do it if we can also specify the 'energy' requirements?  As in....


I'm no chemist and I'm sure there are others here who could question this answer, but... I thought that the energy was electrochemical i.e. brought about by some chemical combination/gradient.  To my untutored mind I think of it like a battery - give me an anode here and a cathode there and there is a potential that is activated.


I understand what you are saying, I think.  And I am only saying that the energy levels/potentials across all individual synapses at the precise time of replication (or recording for replication) needs to be part of the descrition.  But I am not giving this energy any mystic (i.e. non-physical) proprties - it can be measured and recorded as part of the 'blueprint' for the reconstituted mind.  ('Can' in the sense of it is possible - maybe not with current technology, but with conceivable).

I think it might be helpful to talk about metal cubes for a moment (we take away the complications that using a human involves).

Two identical metal cubes (A and B) are sitting on a table. I create a tiny black hole and A disappears. The one sitting on the table is B agreed?

Now imagine A is sitting on the table. I destroy A. One second later I create B (somehow) from thin air. A is gone now and B is the one on the table.

Now imagine I decrease the time between destroying A and creating B gradually to 0 so that the two events happen at the same instant. When there was a 1 Planck time interval we had B sitting on the table and A disappearing so why should it be any different now the interval is 0? A is destroyed and an identical B is created - yet they are different individual spheres.

The same must be true for Davidson and the Swampman - mustn't it? And with the transporter.

I'm happy that the aspect of the scenarios that you find most interesting is the one of identity.  But your example starts awry with a different use of 'identical'.  If we both have Testarossas, I could say that your car is identical to mine.  But that doesn't mean they share an identity. They are not the same car, they are the same type of car. 

The main aim of the argument, however, by me at least, is to consider the elements of mentality.  I am trying to show that Davidsons mind (and Spock and Kirk's) 'moves' into Swampman.  Now, if you want to take Locke's view of personal identity (over time), then you can deny or argue for them being the same person - at this point I find it a side-issue (! Later I may well come back to it!).  But it is interesting that philosofear sees the issue as a means of denying physicalism.  Of course it isn't a reductio ad absurdum unless you do see things in Locke's way - but this too is arguable.  He was right in pointing out that the two ideas are contradictary - that is all one can say, without further argument.

BTW  Davidsons thought experiment was intended to support an externalist view of language - there is something outside our minds that makes language (specifically names) meaningful. "It can't mean what I do by the word 'house', for example, since the sound 'house' it makes was not learned in a context that would give it the right meaning -or any meaning at all. Indeed, I don't see how my replica can be said to mean
anything by the sounds it makes, nor to have any thoughts". Since Swampy doesn't have a direct causal connection with the naming of 'house' he cannot mean etc. 
 Your example seems to support this - taking a Kripkean view of naming as conferring an 'essentiality' on the named (cube A is named differently from cube B, so they are diffrent).   I'm not sure that this is right, but it follows from (or rather is necessary for) K's possible-worlds interpretation of modal logics.  Maybe thats a problem with that interpretation (a great pity if it is, since p-ws are a beautifully intuitive approach).

Or you could say that they are different instances of the same car. Anyway, I used the term identical to mean that they were the same in every way not that they shared an identity. And the Microsoft Word thesaurus hasn't come up with a better one.


But why would it?

First of all do you mean the mind as something separate from the brain that can somehow fly between bodies? Or is it part of the brain?

If the former then how is that different from the 'soul' which we both dismissed earlier?

If Davidson and Swampman both exist simultaneously do they share the same mind? If you create Swampman and then 1 second later destroy Davidson do they then share the same mind? Then take that 1 sec as 0 instead, is there a difference now?


You'll have to excuse me for not knowing who Locke is or what he said. If it's important to this I'll look it up.


Nonsense. The context in which Davidson learned the word 'house' is contained within his brain/mind (I see the two as synonymous) and since Swampman has an exact copy of Davidson's brain it is in his mind/brain too. So Swampman can obviously mean the same as Davidson when he says 'house' - unless I'm missing something.


Yes, I did do that didn't I? Perhaps if I had said: Two cubes on the table; if I destroy one of them is the cube I destroy still sitting on the table afterwards?

Hey Callum. I was enjoying this thread.  :P