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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.

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Speaker 1: I know you're not a big fan of air travel,

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Speaker 1: so I've got a I've got a question for you,

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Speaker 1: all right, if you wanted to go to, say, somewhere

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Speaker 1: on the other side of the world, you wanted to

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Speaker 1: go to China or go to somewhere in Europe or something,

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Speaker 1: and you still hate air travel as much as you did,

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Speaker 1: and I offered you the chance to go there instantly

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Speaker 1: via a real life teleportation machine that would scan your

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Speaker 1: body and figure out where all the atoms are and

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Speaker 1: then rebuild you in a teleporter pod on the other

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Speaker 1: side of the globe wherever you wanted to go, and

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Speaker 1: you could be there instantly. Would you do it? Oh?

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Speaker 1: This is a fun one, right, because what happens to

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Speaker 1: my my old body is it just destroyed and it's

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Speaker 1: just incinerated on the spot. Well, incinerated has such negative vibes.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's not incinerated, it is turned into its

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Speaker 1: atomic constituents, all right, And then I can't just keep

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Speaker 1: both though I can't double sleeve and have have have

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Speaker 1: one of me here in the States and the end

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Speaker 1: the other me is is in Asia somewhere. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: That seems like it would lead to bad sci fi

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Speaker 1: action movie scenarios where one of you must eliminate the

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Speaker 1: other on the commands of the moon King. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: it's it's tempting still just to to cut out all

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Speaker 1: of that air travel, because air travel can be taxing,

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Speaker 1: it can be exhausting, um and yet at the same time,

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Speaker 1: by virtue of being taxing and exhausting, I'm never quite

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Speaker 1: the same person when I reached the other end of

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Speaker 1: that flight, especially if it's a long flight, right, because

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Speaker 1: I may enter into the flight being a little anxious,

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Speaker 1: but maybe on some level like looking looking forward to

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Speaker 1: that you know, long period in which I can just

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Speaker 1: listen to music and read. And then on the other

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Speaker 1: side then I am I'm potentially tired. I'm actually you know,

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Speaker 1: blust out from you know Xanix and Steve Roach albums, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, three hours plus. But I'm not quite the

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Speaker 1: same person, right, I'm I've changed a little bit, so

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Speaker 1: I might as well be this teleported other self that

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Speaker 1: is Uh, that is a diversion from who I am now.

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Speaker 1: I don't know, when you get to the end of

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Speaker 1: a flight, even if it's been unpleasant, do you really

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Speaker 1: have the sensation that you have died. Uh? It depends

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Speaker 1: I guess how much turbulence I have to endure. I mean,

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Speaker 1: that's always the question about the teleporter machine, right, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's the question that everybody had to start wondering

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Speaker 1: about Star Trek. I guess. I guess there was probably

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Speaker 1: a blissful period early in Star Trek history where nobody

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Speaker 1: wondered if the teleporter machines killed you, But pretty soon

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Speaker 1: people had to catch on, Right, is it just is

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Speaker 1: it just killing you and then making a copy of

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Speaker 1: you somewhere else that will continue with your behaviors, but

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Speaker 1: your life ends when you step in. Yeah. And it's

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Speaker 1: just everyone's gotten to the point where they're cool with it.

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Speaker 1: They just don't think about it. They just step into

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Speaker 1: the teleporter and let's suite annihilation wash over them. I'm

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Speaker 1: just I'm ready to die and make a copy of

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Speaker 1: me somewhere. I don't know, it doesn't seem like people

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Speaker 1: would be like that. I mean, most of the time

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Speaker 1: people have the sensation that their experiences are continuous and

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Speaker 1: they want it to continue to be continuous. I guess

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Speaker 1: in track, as long as there's not an afterlife, you're good, right,

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Speaker 1: So just never know, it's just blind leap of faith, right.

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Speaker 1: And of course, I mean we have, as we've talked

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Speaker 1: about on the show before, we have no idea how

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Speaker 1: the say the baton of consciousness is handed off from

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Speaker 1: past self to present self, to future self and from

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Speaker 1: one moment to the next. I mean, maybe maybe it's

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Speaker 1: the case that every time you go under general anesthesia,

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Speaker 1: you die, and then a different person wakes up with

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Speaker 1: all of your thoughts and memories. Maybe you are the

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Speaker 1: copy that woke up after the last time you went

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Speaker 1: under anesthesia. Maybe that happens every time you fall asleep.

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Speaker 1: You'd really have no way to know. Yeah, that that

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Speaker 1: is certainly a point when the curtain drops and who

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Speaker 1: knows exactly what's going on with the set, right, or

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Speaker 1: at least what's going on with the set is is

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Speaker 1: very much an area of interest to UH, to scientists

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Speaker 1: who study consciousness. Now here's another question for you, Joe,

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Speaker 1: what if you were able to get ahold of a

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Speaker 1: time machine? I'm not talking some sort of realistic uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, time machine like we've talked about discussing, you know,

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Speaker 1: black holes and whatnot. I'm talking to a causality wrecking

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Speaker 1: Hollywood time machine, travel to the past machine, time cop

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Speaker 1: travel to the past machine. That is rough. So if

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Speaker 1: if I were to go back in time and meet

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Speaker 1: a younger me, is that younger me really me? Is

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Speaker 1: this to means? Because the younger means not physically identical

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Speaker 1: to me, It's mind and personality isn't identical to me.

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Speaker 1: So if if a Jean Claude van Damme were to

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Speaker 1: spin kick me into my past self, would I even

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Speaker 1: melt into a screaming pilot Jelley? Well, no, I don't

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Speaker 1: think so, because I don't think travel into the past

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Speaker 1: is possible. But even if it were possible, I assume

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Speaker 1: that if you went into the past, you would just

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Speaker 1: be like another person, like an identical twin, And identical

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Speaker 1: twins don't melt each other into jelly when they collide,

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Speaker 1: at least at least as far as I know. I

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Speaker 1: don't know, we've never seen it happen. Now, we have

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Speaker 1: a lot of wonderful of science fiction to utilize when

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Speaker 1: we we tackle these these questions of identity and self

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Speaker 1: and change. But they haven't always been around in the

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Speaker 1: old days. You had to do depend on listen more

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Speaker 1: traditional stories, uh myths for your your thought experiments. And

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Speaker 1: in fact, one of the oldest thought experiments is that

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Speaker 1: we had that we have is uh is very much

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Speaker 1: in this vein the ship of theseus, the ship of theseus. Right,

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Speaker 1: So this is one of the most classic paradoxes in

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Speaker 1: the history of philosophy. And it also goes to a

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Speaker 1: thing that I think for some reason, it seems the

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Speaker 1: Greeks were particularly interested in, which was the nature and

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Speaker 1: identity of things? I mean, of course, the nature and

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Speaker 1: identity of things is always a topic for philosophers to investigate,

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Speaker 1: but the ancient Greek philosophers seemed really concerned with what

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Speaker 1: made a thing itself? What were the properties or the

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Speaker 1: essences of a thing that gave it its identity? How

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Speaker 1: did you know that you were really Robert? How did

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Speaker 1: you Robert know that you earned that you had the

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Speaker 1: merit of being called Robert? Why why wasn't something else Robert?

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Speaker 1: And so they had these ideas of essences and forms

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Speaker 1: and all this stuff is deeply concerned with what makes

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Speaker 1: something itself and when you can call it what it is.

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Speaker 1: You know, this makes up an interesting side question here.

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Speaker 1: Do you think of yourself as Joe. That's a good question,

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Speaker 1: and there are actually a couple of ways to answer it.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I would say in when I step back

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Speaker 1: and think of myself, I do. I guess I think

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Speaker 1: of myself as Joe as a self. You know, there's

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Speaker 1: some there's some soul Joe out there that is the

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Speaker 1: core of who I think I am and my main

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Speaker 1: qualities and all that. And of course you're not always

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Speaker 1: the best judge of yourself, so other people could probably

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Speaker 1: describe that person better than I could. But but there's

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Speaker 1: there's another sense of how you think of yourself in

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Speaker 1: which I don't think I think of myself as Joe.

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Speaker 1: Moment to moment. I think of myself as the most

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Speaker 1: recent contents of my consciousness. So I'm just a moment

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Speaker 1: to moment, I'm not Joe. Moment to moment, I am

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Speaker 1: whatever I'm thinking about. That's a good way of putting it. Well.

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Speaker 1: When I try and answer the question myself, I think, well,

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Speaker 1: I'm not I don't only think of myself as Robert.

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Speaker 1: I think of myself kind of as the me. You know,

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Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just this I in in a given

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Speaker 1: scenario unless I am like you're you're saying essentially becoming

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Speaker 1: the thoughts that I am having. And then I'm even

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Speaker 1: further away from this when I when I'm forced to

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Speaker 1: think of myself as Robert, it is because, uh, the

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Speaker 1: external world is is making me do it, because that

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Speaker 1: is what they call me, and that is what I

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Speaker 1: continue to be called because I just, I guess, don't

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Speaker 1: feel passionately enough about it to change it. Well, one

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Speaker 1: of the reasons we wanted to talk about the idea

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Speaker 1: of identity in the ship of Theseus is that the

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Speaker 1: external world is increasingly going to be forcing us to

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Speaker 1: think about questions like this because of new technological capabilities

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Speaker 1: that are coming online. So this is yet another conversation

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Speaker 1: that we're having, sort of in the wake of of

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Speaker 1: a conversation you saw in New York this year at

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Speaker 1: the World Science Festival. But this is a great topic

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Speaker 1: that's worth exploring from the bottom up. So I say

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Speaker 1: we go all the way back to theseus and then

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Speaker 1: work our way to the technological and scientific questions. All Right, well,

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Speaker 1: let's start with Theseus. Then, who was a gimme? Theseus?

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Speaker 1: He's essentially the flash Gordon of Greek mythology. You know,

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Speaker 1: he's always the most important, but the least interesting character

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Speaker 1: in a given story. That's my initial response anyway. But

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Speaker 1: he also went into the maze and fought the minotaur, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: not only thought the minotaur, but but what is he

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Speaker 1: is the slayer of the minotaur, solver of the the

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Speaker 1: Maniuan maze as well. Solver that's the corporate speak idea, right,

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Speaker 1: you know, he didn't slay the minotar. He solved that problem.

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Speaker 1: He was able to execute on on strategy, yes, but

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Speaker 1: then he also escaped from the maze right by by

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Speaker 1: virtue of string if I remember. Oh that's right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's a good part, because it's one thing to kill

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Speaker 1: the minotar. I mean, that's pretty impressive in and on itself,

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Speaker 1: But you still have to find your way out of

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Speaker 1: the Manoan maze. How many minimally counterintuitive elements does the

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Speaker 1: story of Theseus and the Minotaur have? Well, we have

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Speaker 1: the minotaur for starters. Is that it is that the

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Speaker 1: only part well the maze I suppose I suppose there

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Speaker 1: could be a real maze or is there something magic

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Speaker 1: about the maze? Well, that's kind of the if I'm

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Speaker 1: remembering correctly from past episode on on mazes and labyrinths. Um.

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Speaker 1: One of the things about the maze is that depends

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Speaker 1: on depends on which telling you're looking at. If you

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Speaker 1: go back far enough, it's less of a maze. It

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Speaker 1: could be something else, something less extravagant. But as the

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Speaker 1: tradition builds, the maze becomes this this fabulous, fabulous dungeons

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Speaker 1: and dragons dungeon scenario, you know, which I love. But

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Speaker 1: but I guess that's always something to keep in mind

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Speaker 1: with with these tales, is it's not it fits in

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Speaker 1: with what we're talking about here today. Mythological story is

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Speaker 1: not this one thing that has been passed on. It

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Speaker 1: is a thing that is built upon, a thing that

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Speaker 1: changes over time. Ah well, well that brings us to

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Speaker 1: the central concept, right the ship of Theseus, so to

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Speaker 1: quote from Plutarch in his his Lives, he wrote you

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Speaker 1: about the lives of illustrious men, And so Plutarch wrote, quote,

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Speaker 1: the ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned,

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Speaker 1: had thirty oars and was preserved by the Athenians down

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Speaker 1: even to the time of Demetrius. Hilarious, for they took

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Speaker 1: away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new

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Speaker 1: and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship

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Speaker 1: became a standing example among the philosophers for the logical

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Speaker 1: questions of things that grow, one side holding that the

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Speaker 1: ship remained the same, and the other contending that it

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Speaker 1: was not the same. So there's your classic dilemma on

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Speaker 1: the ship of Theseus. They have a ship. The ship,

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Speaker 1: of course, like all ships, rots and falls away over time,

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Speaker 1: so you've got to replace parts of it. Now, if

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Speaker 1: you maintain this ship for so long that you've eventually

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Speaker 1: replaced every original board in the ship and no original

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Speaker 1: parts remain, is it the same ship? Is it still

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Speaker 1: the ship of Theseus? Or has it become something else? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the hokey version of this is the or the hokey

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Speaker 1: variant is is Grandfather's Acts, which, imagine a number of

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Speaker 1: our listeners have heard as well, Why is this hokey?

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Speaker 1: It's just it's like it only has two parts to it,

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Speaker 1: Like there's so the Grandfather's Acts is the idea. Hey,

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Speaker 1: here's Grandfather's acts. But the handle rotted away, we had

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Speaker 1: to replace that, and then also the blade brokes we

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Speaker 1: had to replace that. Both parts of this two part

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Speaker 1: tool have been replaced. How can it possibly be grandfather's acts? Well, actually,

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Speaker 1: don't think that's a hokey example, because I think that

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Speaker 1: kind of thing really comes through when when you think about, say, uh,

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Speaker 1: artifacts in a museum, A lot of historical artifacts in

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Speaker 1: a museum them are not going to be exactly the

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Speaker 1: same material constituents as when the artifact was first forged,

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Speaker 1: or especially a lot of like things that are not

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Speaker 1: so much an artifact you can pick up in your hand,

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Speaker 1: but like buildings and installations, a lot of these things

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Speaker 1: have been restored long ago in history. So you might

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Speaker 1: see a thing in a museum that at some point

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Speaker 1: somebody replaced parts of long ago. So are you seeing

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Speaker 1: the real original thing? Yeah? You know, this makes me

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Speaker 1: think of the Parthenon, which of course is in ruins

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Speaker 1: and has been in ruins for a little while. Now

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Speaker 1: should we rebuild it exactly? But if you rebuild it,

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Speaker 1: then yes, you make it look like the thing that

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Speaker 1: once was. But then, like you think, the thing that

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Speaker 1: wants to think, and then you have to choose which

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Speaker 1: era you want to recreate. You know, there's certain eras

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Speaker 1: that they're certainly not talking about recreating. But but then, yeah,

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Speaker 1: once you've restored it, then you also lose the the

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Speaker 1: iconic ruins that exist today that that in that in

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Speaker 1: a way are a more I guess you could say,

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Speaker 1: honest reminder of what was there before. Well, in a

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Speaker 1: way also, the ruins are part of what the Parthenon is.

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Speaker 1: I mean, the Parthenon is a thing that exists over time.

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Speaker 1: And if you take away the ruins, you have in

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Speaker 1: a way destroyed the Parthenon, even if you take them

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Speaker 1: away to rebuild it. I think of that. It makes

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Speaker 1: me think of the Colossi of Memnon that we discussed,

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Speaker 1: which to remind everybody, these were These were a pair

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Speaker 1: of of ancient coloss i. One of them fell over

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Speaker 1: in ancient times. But then what's also restored poorly in

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Speaker 1: ancient times? Uh so what do you do? Do you

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Speaker 1: get up you decide one day that you're just gonna

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Speaker 1: restore them both to how they may have once looked?

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Speaker 1: Do you restore them both to the ruins? I mean

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Speaker 1: they are these are all a part of the essentially

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Speaker 1: the life cycle of these statues over time. Yeah, so

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Speaker 1: this question is actually meaningful. If you want people to

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Speaker 1: be able to experience history, what is the thing that

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Speaker 1: gives them the most authentic experience of history? Is it

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Speaker 1: the de Haid version as it stands or is it

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Speaker 1: a restored version? And the same thing is true of

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Speaker 1: the ship. If you want people to be able to

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Speaker 1: see the Ship of Theseus because it has this great

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Speaker 1: historical significance, do you replace the rotting parts or do

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Speaker 1: you just let it rot? And if you just let

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Speaker 1: it rot, does it eventually disappear? Of course it does.

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Speaker 1: I think that's one of the reasons I like the

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Speaker 1: Ship of Theseus more than I care for a grandfather's acts,

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Speaker 1: because it's more gradual. There's so many more parts involved.

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Speaker 1: There's more of a question of at what point, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, is it more new than old? At which

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Speaker 1: point in this gradual process does it does it lose

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Speaker 1: its identity? Yeah, I see what you're saying. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of incorporates the paradox of the heap into the question

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Speaker 1: of whether a thing that is replaced in the same

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Speaker 1: way as the original thing. Because you're you're you're asking

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Speaker 1: is there a transition point. At what point is you know,

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Speaker 1: if fifty percent of the mass of the ship has

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Speaker 1: been replaced, now, is it no longer the ship of Theseus?

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Speaker 1: Like it's a dollar bill, you know, do you have

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Speaker 1: more than half of it to have it be worth

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Speaker 1: a dollar? Yeah? Like this this comes up some more

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Speaker 1: scenario comes up when we start thinking about species and

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Speaker 1: does speciation. At what point does this cease to be

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Speaker 1: one species and truly become a different species. Well, this

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Speaker 1: just highlights the idea, the fact that species is sort

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Speaker 1: of an artificial distinction. I mean, it has some utility

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Speaker 1: for biologists, but it's a species, not a thing you

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Speaker 1: find in nature. It's just sort of a useful concept,

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Speaker 1: a useful concept to describe something that is an ongoing process,

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Speaker 1: which you know, ultimately, one of the questions we're asking

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Speaker 1: here today is to what extent can the same be

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Speaker 1: said about identity? Now, of course, lots of philosophers have

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Speaker 1: explored the idea of the ship of Theseus. You know,

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Speaker 1: philosophers get real worked up about whether something is what

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Speaker 1: it is. So Plato's Cradlest Dialogue in some ways deals

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Speaker 1: with this concept. Um and Thomas Hobbes dealt with it too, right,

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Speaker 1: that's right. English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, who have fifteen eighty

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Speaker 1: eight through sixty nine. He added another and in my opinion,

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Speaker 1: very fun level of complexity to this thought experiment. He said,

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Speaker 1: what if you not only gradually replaced all of the

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Speaker 1: parts of the Ship of Theseus, but what if you

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Speaker 1: also took all of those old parts and use them

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Speaker 1: to assemble an identical boat. So you took the rotting timber,

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Speaker 1: you replaced that with goodwood, and then you took the

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Speaker 1: rotting timber and made a new boat out of it. Right,

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Speaker 1: And at this point, which is the real ship? Now

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Speaker 1: one is remodeled, the other is reassembled. They're both the

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Speaker 1: same same ship, and yet clearly they are not the

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Speaker 1: same ship. That is a good variation. I've also heard

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Speaker 1: a variation of this where you like gradually steal some

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Speaker 1: sort of masterpiece a piece at a time, and replace it.

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Speaker 1: So if you were just wanted to steal, to say,

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Speaker 1: the Ship of Theseus from a museum, and he sold

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Speaker 1: it piece by piece, you know, swapping out for a

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Speaker 1: counterfeit piece, then do you ultimately do what do you have?

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Speaker 1: Did you actually steal the whole ship or in replace

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Speaker 1: it with a counterfeit or is that still the ship

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Speaker 1: in there? I just got an awesome idea for yet

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Speaker 1: another remake of the Thomas Crown affair. They steal the

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Speaker 1: painting one centimeter at a time with razor blades. Yeah. Now,

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Speaker 1: and and you know another detail that's often thrown in

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Speaker 1: as did theseus ever actually stand foot on this ship?

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Speaker 1: That ends up playing into the identity of it. But

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Speaker 1: back to Thomas Hobbs, so yeah, he's he's saying, you

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Speaker 1: know what, have you took the old pieces and you

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Speaker 1: just reconstructed the ship? But if you you could take

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Speaker 1: that principle and extend it to other scenarios, less less

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Speaker 1: contrived ones. Yeah, yeah, I mean he he ends up

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Speaker 1: pondering this a bit more too. He says, wouldn't this

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Speaker 1: also mean that nothing can be the same? A man

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Speaker 1: standing would not be the same as he was when

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Speaker 1: he was sitting. Water in a vessel would be another

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Speaker 1: example of this. It's in the vessel and then you

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Speaker 1: pour it out. I mean, clearly it's the same water

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Speaker 1: or is it the same water? Based on on this question,

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Speaker 1: he says, uh quote. Wherefore, the beginnings of individualization is

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Speaker 1: not always to be taken either from matter alone or

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Speaker 1: from form alone. And all this gets down to is

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Speaker 1: this idea of identity over time as opposed to identity

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Speaker 1: in a single moment, you know, whatever a single moment is.

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Speaker 1: And there's a lot of philosophical thought on this topic,

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Speaker 1: more than we can possibly summarize in this episode. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I do think it's worth exploring the idea of

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Speaker 1: thinking about um, maybe there, maybe what these paradoxes are doing,

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Speaker 1: like the ship of theseus and Grandfather's acts and the

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Speaker 1: water in a vessel is highlighting some fundamental flaw in

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Speaker 1: our metaphysics. It's showing you hate you're generating paradox is

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Speaker 1: because there's something wrong with the way you categorize things

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Speaker 1: in the world. It's the same way you might know

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Speaker 1: there's something wrong with your physics theory, if it's requiring

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Speaker 1: you to divide by zero or something. You know, something

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Speaker 1: went wrong somewhere along here. Well, it really feels more

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Speaker 1: and more like it's a situation where our metaphysics is

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Speaker 1: largely about figuring out real time events, Like, you know,

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Speaker 1: the soldier is unning at me, what should I do

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Speaker 1: to avoid him? Uh? But then we we end up

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Speaker 1: extrapolating that via mental time travel and memory. But we're

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Speaker 1: taking it into the future. We're taking it into the past,

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Speaker 1: and we're considering knees and hiss and situations that are

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Speaker 1: not identical to the present. That's a great point. But

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Speaker 1: more than that, what would it mean for a thing

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Speaker 1: to be identical to the present? I mean, is there

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Speaker 1: such a thing as an identical moment to the president

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Speaker 1: or the identity of a thing? Even so, I want

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Speaker 1: to talk about a cool article I saw. This was

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Speaker 1: published in Aon magazine in November seventeen by kelso Vaira,

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Speaker 1: and it's called which is more fundamental processes or Things?

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Speaker 1: And it's just a quick, nice little explainer on the

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Speaker 1: difference between what's known as substance metaphysics and process metaphysics.

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Speaker 1: Now metaphysics, of course, it's just our attempt to understand

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Speaker 1: the most basic level of reality or existence. It's the

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Speaker 1: set of principles that's underneath physics. So physics, for example,

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Speaker 1: might be able to tell to you that a thing

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Speaker 1: is a certain mass and a certain velocity and so forth.

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Speaker 1: Metaphysics might ask what does it mean for a thing

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Speaker 1: to exist? Or what does it mean to have a

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Speaker 1: property like mass or velocity. What are properties? And so,

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Speaker 1: to quote from Vyera's article, quote, Western metaphysics tends to

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Speaker 1: rely on the paradigm of substances. We often see the

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Speaker 1: world as a world of things, composed of atomic molecules,

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Speaker 1: natural kinds, galaxies. Objects are the paradigmatic mode of existence,

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Speaker 1: the basic building blocks of the universe. What exists exists

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Speaker 1: as an object. That is to say, things are of

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Speaker 1: a certain kind, They have some specific qualities and well

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Speaker 1: defined spatial and temporal limits. And so you might use

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Speaker 1: the example of like a cat, your cat, Robert, Now,

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Speaker 1: your cat has existed for a certain amount of time.

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Speaker 1: It has certain features that you can list that describe

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Speaker 1: it physically, the color of its fur, the color of

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Speaker 1: its eyes. I don't know how much it likes to

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Speaker 1: jump up on the cow her, how much it obeys

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Speaker 1: you when you tell you to do something. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how much cats ever do that. That's probably not

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Speaker 1: part of cat identity. Yeah, she's not much for obeying.

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Speaker 1: But ve Era argues that perhaps substance metaphysics is just

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Speaker 1: not the best way of thinking about the world, and

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Speaker 1: it actually leads to confusion and paradox and so He

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Speaker 1: gives this example of the question of the you know,

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Speaker 1: you know, the classic do you see this glass of

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Speaker 1: water is half empty or half full? But about that

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Speaker 1: glass of water? Via writes, quote, but what if the

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Speaker 1: isolated frame a glass of water fails to give the

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Speaker 1: relevant information? Anyone would prefer an emptier glass that is

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Speaker 1: getting full to a fuller one getting empty. Any analysis

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Speaker 1: lacking information about change misses the point, which is just

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Speaker 1: what substance metaphysics is missing. So he articulates the view

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Speaker 1: of process philosophers, people who believe that the fundamental constituents

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Speaker 1: of reality are not things but processes. It's not that

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Speaker 1: a thing exists, it's that a process is in a

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Speaker 1: particular state at a particular time. As the philosopher Alfred

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Speaker 1: North Whitehead put it, we should think of the world

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Speaker 1: as a collection of occurrences instead of things. And this

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Speaker 1: resonates with me a lot. I actually think about this

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Speaker 1: view fairly often, especially when I'm reading about fundamental physics.

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Speaker 1: But speaking of the Greeks that I mean, this also

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Speaker 1: has a there's a long tradition of this kind of thought.

427
00:22:24,240 --> 00:22:26,720
Speaker 1: If you go back to hero Clydas, who propounded the

428
00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:30,520
Speaker 1: principle of Panta ray. Everything flows. Existence in a way

429
00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:32,600
Speaker 1: is like a river, and you can't step into the

430
00:22:32,640 --> 00:22:35,959
Speaker 1: same river twice for multiple reasons, not just because the

431
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:39,560
Speaker 1: water of the river has flown past and changed, but

432
00:22:39,680 --> 00:22:42,359
Speaker 1: because you've changed when you step into the river again.

433
00:22:42,760 --> 00:22:44,800
Speaker 1: And I think the important thing about this thing about

434
00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:48,360
Speaker 1: process metaphysics is that this doesn't have to change anything

435
00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:51,199
Speaker 1: about our understanding of the physical laws of nature, and

436
00:22:51,240 --> 00:22:53,600
Speaker 1: as far as far as I can tell, it's totally

437
00:22:53,640 --> 00:22:56,760
Speaker 1: compatible with them, and some would actually say more compatible

438
00:22:56,800 --> 00:22:59,199
Speaker 1: with them. It's also certainly more in keeping with our

439
00:22:59,280 --> 00:23:02,240
Speaker 1: understanding of biology, which tells us that they're not actually

440
00:23:02,320 --> 00:23:06,480
Speaker 1: fixed kinds of animals or plants or bacteria, but there's

441
00:23:06,520 --> 00:23:09,840
Speaker 1: instead this process of change over time, and that the

442
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:14,080
Speaker 1: change produces frequencies of different alleles as its cycles through

443
00:23:14,119 --> 00:23:17,040
Speaker 1: ever changing states. Yeah, and then of course you also

444
00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:20,600
Speaker 1: think about the various chemical reactions that are are necessary,

445
00:23:20,720 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: the various um you know, all the things that that

446
00:23:24,080 --> 00:23:27,280
Speaker 1: that affect our mind stated even any given point of

447
00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:29,320
Speaker 1: the day. You know, when we try and decide who

448
00:23:29,320 --> 00:23:32,119
Speaker 1: we are, we're essentially trying to like pick out what

449
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:36,320
Speaker 1: is the ideal version of me that they manifest at

450
00:23:36,320 --> 00:23:40,320
Speaker 1: any given point in the you know, the currently or

451
00:23:40,359 --> 00:23:43,439
Speaker 1: in the near future or the near past. Is it

452
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:45,720
Speaker 1: the you know, is it the I haven't finished my

453
00:23:45,800 --> 00:23:48,960
Speaker 1: second drink or I'm on my second cup of coffee?

454
00:23:49,040 --> 00:23:51,560
Speaker 1: You know me that that's that's the only version that

455
00:23:51,560 --> 00:23:53,600
Speaker 1: I'm going to account that I'm gonna count. What's the

456
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:56,719
Speaker 1: platonic form of Robert? You're trying to seek out some

457
00:23:56,840 --> 00:23:59,960
Speaker 1: ideal form of yourself that you've created as an abstraction,

458
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:03,000
Speaker 1: and that doesn't actually match who you are or what

459
00:24:03,040 --> 00:24:06,280
Speaker 1: you're doing at any given moment in time. In fact,

460
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:09,399
Speaker 1: try to think of an object that you can identify

461
00:24:09,600 --> 00:24:13,440
Speaker 1: that has an identity that does not fundamentally change its

462
00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 1: former nature over time. A seed turns into a sapling

463
00:24:17,520 --> 00:24:19,480
Speaker 1: and then into a tree, and then it dies, and

464
00:24:19,520 --> 00:24:21,320
Speaker 1: then it rots and goes into the ground. And this

465
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:23,560
Speaker 1: is the case of every biological thing you can think of.

466
00:24:23,600 --> 00:24:26,720
Speaker 1: But then, of course, on a longer time scale, other

467
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:31,399
Speaker 1: things are like that, stars, asteroids, planets, black holes. You know,

468
00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:34,959
Speaker 1: think things change over time, even even black holes evaporate

469
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:37,760
Speaker 1: over time. You've got hawking radiation. Well, just I think

470
00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 1: too about the very stones that we build our monuments

471
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:42,960
Speaker 1: and our grave stones out off. We build things out

472
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:47,080
Speaker 1: of stone because it makes them more permanent. You know

473
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:50,200
Speaker 1: that that that it will live on after we'd gone.

474
00:24:50,400 --> 00:24:53,719
Speaker 1: And that's true. These things tend to to exist on

475
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:58,360
Speaker 1: a scale that goes beyond the limits of of our biology.

476
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:01,480
Speaker 1: Of pure mortal exists. And yet at the same time

477
00:25:01,720 --> 00:25:05,040
Speaker 1: we change the stone to make it into the graves gravestone.

478
00:25:05,400 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 1: And any walk through the cemetery will remind you that

479
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:12,879
Speaker 1: that these things to fade uh and uh and and

480
00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:16,720
Speaker 1: are eroded or are shattered when when tree limbs fall

481
00:25:16,840 --> 00:25:21,960
Speaker 1: upon them. Uh So yeah, everything spoiler, everything changes. It's

482
00:25:21,960 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: great to walk backwards through time in a cemetery, to

483
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:28,040
Speaker 1: start with the fresher graves that have the pristine stones,

484
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:30,240
Speaker 1: and then walk back through time to the older and

485
00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:33,960
Speaker 1: older graves, which often they tend to just disappear into

486
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,160
Speaker 1: the ground. They turn into nubs. You can't read what's

487
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:38,399
Speaker 1: on them anymore. There there there will maybe be just

488
00:25:38,480 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: a kind of rock marker and that's it. Yeah, And

489
00:25:41,119 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 1: then the sun starts going down and the ghouls come,

490
00:25:43,320 --> 00:25:45,359
Speaker 1: and then you realize you've really been wandering in the

491
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:48,160
Speaker 1: graveyard too long and you have changed into a delicious meal.

492
00:25:49,200 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 1: Uh No, I guess the ghouls prefer grave flesh, don't

493
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 1: they do they eat live people? You know, it depends

494
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:59,439
Speaker 1: on the interpretation. But the stories I like, I think

495
00:25:59,480 --> 00:26:01,640
Speaker 1: the girls will go for a live meal if they

496
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:03,720
Speaker 1: can get it, you know, especially if it's somebody that

497
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:07,439
Speaker 1: has become lost in the cemetery and uh and the

498
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 1: sun is setting. It's like the kid who prefers chicken McNuggets,

499
00:26:10,840 --> 00:26:14,160
Speaker 1: but will if they're forced to eat a delicious, fresh

500
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:18,160
Speaker 1: cooked me a lot of produce and all that. But yeah,

501
00:26:18,160 --> 00:26:19,720
Speaker 1: so I was trying to think of an example of

502
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:23,359
Speaker 1: a counter example, right, is there something that doesn't change

503
00:26:23,359 --> 00:26:25,560
Speaker 1: over time? And I was like, well, you know, you've

504
00:26:25,600 --> 00:26:29,160
Speaker 1: got maybe fundamental elementary particles. They don't really they don't

505
00:26:29,200 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 1: have characteristics. They're all identical, they're interchangeable. Maybe they don't

506
00:26:33,320 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 1: change over time. But thinking back to the entire history

507
00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:38,440
Speaker 1: of the universe, that's not actually true. Like during the

508
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 1: Plank Epoch at the beginning of time, as far as

509
00:26:42,480 --> 00:26:45,439
Speaker 1: we know in the local universe, quarks and electrons hadn't

510
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:48,560
Speaker 1: been formed yet. This is a time of hot condensed

511
00:26:48,640 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 1: energy when we did not have quarks, And then later

512
00:26:51,760 --> 00:26:54,400
Speaker 1: you get quark glue on plasma and all that. But so,

513
00:26:55,000 --> 00:26:56,959
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know if you can actually

514
00:26:56,960 --> 00:27:00,240
Speaker 1: think of a thing that is an object that has

515
00:27:00,280 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 1: never changed and will never change. Even in mythology and religion,

516
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,399
Speaker 1: you're often hard pressed to find that one constant that

517
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:10,520
Speaker 1: doesn't change. I think probably, I guess if you if

518
00:27:10,560 --> 00:27:15,159
Speaker 1: you look at you know, Monotheistic, Judeo christian Um and

519
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:18,720
Speaker 1: Islamic interpretations of God, then you have something that is

520
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:22,439
Speaker 1: supposedly unchanging over time from the very beginning to the

521
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:26,560
Speaker 1: very end. But in it's like most other religions and cosmologies.

522
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:30,440
Speaker 1: You know, God's beget begot, God's and and and they

523
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:34,840
Speaker 1: all have these essentially life cycles that they're going through. Well,

524
00:27:34,880 --> 00:27:38,560
Speaker 1: I would say even the fact that monotheistic gods enter

525
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:42,360
Speaker 1: into narratives makes them not exactly unchanging. You can't tell

526
00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:44,840
Speaker 1: a narrative about something that doesn't change. If it enters

527
00:27:44,880 --> 00:27:49,159
Speaker 1: into a new covenant with with humanity, then that's hopefully

528
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:51,560
Speaker 1: a change. Hopefully there was some change in uh, in

529
00:27:51,680 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 1: attitude there that we can view as positive. I'm sure

530
00:27:54,600 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: there are a million ways of splitting that theological hair,

531
00:27:57,320 --> 00:27:59,400
Speaker 1: but uh, but anyway to come back to the idea

532
00:27:59,440 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 1: of philosophy, process metaphysics, thinking of things not as objects.

533
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:05,920
Speaker 1: This is not a world of things, but a world

534
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:09,639
Speaker 1: of processes going through changes. How how should this change

535
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: the way we think about the ship of theseus, so

536
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: Vieira writes. To explain why things change without losing their identity,

537
00:28:16,600 --> 00:28:21,040
Speaker 1: substance philosophers need deposit some underlying core, an essence that

538
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:24,199
Speaker 1: remains the same throughout change. It is not easy to

539
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,080
Speaker 1: pin down what this core might be. As the paradox

540
00:28:27,080 --> 00:28:30,080
Speaker 1: of theseus ship illustrates, and then he explains the ship

541
00:28:30,119 --> 00:28:33,080
Speaker 1: as we already have. But he writes, is this the

542
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:36,239
Speaker 1: same ship, even though materially it is completely different? For

543
00:28:36,280 --> 00:28:40,680
Speaker 1: substance philosophers, this is something of a paradox. For process philosophers,

544
00:28:40,760 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 1: this is a necessary part of identity. Of course, it

545
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 1: is the same ship. Identity ceases to be a static

546
00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:51,480
Speaker 1: equivalence of a thing with itself. After all, without the repairs,

547
00:28:51,520 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: the ship would have lost its functionality. It would have

548
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,000
Speaker 1: become a ruin or a shipwreck. Well, it just wouldn't

549
00:28:57,000 --> 00:29:00,000
Speaker 1: be a ship anymore. Yeah, uh so, Yeah, ships change,

550
00:29:00,080 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: parts get replaced, and that's part of the process of

551
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:05,720
Speaker 1: the ship. There is no thing ship. Ship is A

552
00:29:05,760 --> 00:29:09,480
Speaker 1: ship is an ongoing process of change, just like you

553
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:12,920
Speaker 1: and me are. And Naviera defends against the idea that

554
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 1: processes are just transitions between different fundamental substance realities by

555
00:29:17,720 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 1: pointing out one thing we mentioned a little bit earlier

556
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 1: than the paradox of the heap. Uh, if you've never

557
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:24,760
Speaker 1: read about this before, The paradox of the heap basically says, Okay,

558
00:29:24,760 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: you've got a heap of sand. Now you remove one

559
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: grain of sand at a time, and every time you

560
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 1: remove a grain of sand, you ask is it still

561
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: a heap of sand? And at some point you will

562
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: only have one grain of sand left. That's obviously not

563
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:41,680
Speaker 1: a heap. But you can't point to a moment where

564
00:29:41,680 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 1: suddenly the heap was not a heap anymore. The same

565
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:48,160
Speaker 1: thing happens with biological entities in evolution. One of the

566
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: great images that are Richard Dawkins is used in explaining

567
00:29:51,520 --> 00:29:55,120
Speaker 1: the history of an organism is try to imagine your

568
00:29:55,240 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 1: ancestors going all the way back down the generations, where

569
00:29:59,360 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: you old hands with your mother, and then your mother

570
00:30:02,600 --> 00:30:04,920
Speaker 1: holds hands with her mother, and it goes back like

571
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:08,440
Speaker 1: that forever. At what point where will you find the

572
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 1: moment where a mother gave birth to a daughter of

573
00:30:12,040 --> 00:30:15,719
Speaker 1: a different species than her. It will never happen every

574
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:18,640
Speaker 1: At every point, the mother was giving birth to something

575
00:30:18,680 --> 00:30:21,440
Speaker 1: that was pretty much the same animal she was. But

576
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 1: these changes accumulate over time, and you can't if you

577
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:27,280
Speaker 1: zoom in, you'll never see the change. I mean, at

578
00:30:27,280 --> 00:30:30,000
Speaker 1: some point the thumb is no longer opposable. I guess

579
00:30:30,040 --> 00:30:32,000
Speaker 1: that that might play a role. Well, but it's not

580
00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 1: going to be a transition from opposable to not opposable.

581
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:39,520
Speaker 1: It'll be It'll be a gradual transition. That's something that

582
00:30:39,600 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 1: maybe is not even noticeably less opposable, but does just

583
00:30:42,880 --> 00:30:46,120
Speaker 1: slightly less and eventually it just becomes a fist bump. Oh,

584
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:49,320
Speaker 1: there you go. Can't hold hands anymore, You just fist

585
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:51,720
Speaker 1: bumping mom all the way back to the protozoa. But

586
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:53,960
Speaker 1: that can't be right, right, because the fist bump is

587
00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,240
Speaker 1: the thing you arrive at, not a thing you came from.

588
00:30:56,600 --> 00:30:59,440
Speaker 1: Fist bump is the future. But well, but who's to say.

589
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 1: Who's to say the this bump wasn't the predominant mode

590
00:31:03,240 --> 00:31:06,760
Speaker 1: of greeting in. You know, among our KaiC humans, they

591
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: might have even done the explosion. Who knows, yeah, or

592
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:11,840
Speaker 1: the snail. That's what all those hands on the cave

593
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 1: walls are the explosion. Alright, On that note, we're going

594
00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 1: to take a quick break. But when we come back,

595
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:23,400
Speaker 1: we will summon the swampman. Thank you, thank you. Alright,

596
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:26,480
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've been talking about the ship of dcs,

597
00:31:26,640 --> 00:31:29,120
Speaker 1: the question of what determines the identity of a thing.

598
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: If you take a ship and you replace all of

599
00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: its parts over many years, is it still the same

600
00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 1: ship even if no original part of that ship remains.

601
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:41,720
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that this becomes actually relevant

602
00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 1: to the real world is when we start thinking about minds. Right,

603
00:31:47,040 --> 00:31:50,360
Speaker 1: because we have this thing we call experience, the experience

604
00:31:50,400 --> 00:31:54,520
Speaker 1: of experience, and you have the sensation that your experience

605
00:31:54,600 --> 00:31:56,720
Speaker 1: is continuous, or at least I have that sensation. I

606
00:31:56,800 --> 00:31:59,400
Speaker 1: assume everybody else does. Everybody else acts like they do,

607
00:31:59,800 --> 00:32:03,959
Speaker 1: and like they want their experience to be a unified

608
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:08,960
Speaker 1: part of this continuous, ongoing thing that is identifiable as itself.

609
00:32:09,000 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: You don't want to suddenly be somebody else who is

610
00:32:11,960 --> 00:32:16,200
Speaker 1: no longer you. Those certainly people do have, and this

611
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:18,960
Speaker 1: becomes a question like, to what extent do they legitimately

612
00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 1: have this moment of just profound change in their life,

613
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 1: you know, as a moment of revelation or salvation, you know,

614
00:32:26,240 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 1: a road to Damascus kind of thing. To what extent

615
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:31,600
Speaker 1: is it a true change or is it a or

616
00:32:31,640 --> 00:32:34,680
Speaker 1: are we like forcing the change upon ourselves. We're saying

617
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: that we changed, but on a on some other level,

618
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,120
Speaker 1: we're still thinking of ourselves as a continuous movement. Well,

619
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 1: even then, people tend to put the value of their

620
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 1: change in terms of themselves relative to who they used

621
00:32:48,360 --> 00:32:51,360
Speaker 1: to be. So if you have had this Road to

622
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:53,880
Speaker 1: Damascus moment where you know, I'm a different person now

623
00:32:53,920 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 1: and I'm so glad I am, you tend to think

624
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,040
Speaker 1: of that as being valuable relative to whatever kind of

625
00:32:59,040 --> 00:33:01,760
Speaker 1: creepy were before, right, I mean, any if you have

626
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 1: a good redemption story, you've got to get into what

627
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 1: what came first. Yeah. And also if every personal change

628
00:33:07,720 --> 00:33:09,680
Speaker 1: or improvement for the better was like the Star Trek

629
00:33:09,720 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: teleporter that just kills you and makes a newer, better

630
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 1: copy of you, would people really go for it? I

631
00:33:14,480 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, Occasionally

632
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: there'll be a story where somebody, generally they've written a

633
00:33:19,440 --> 00:33:21,840
Speaker 1: book or something, but they've made this phenomenal change that

634
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: used to be a terrible person and now they're a

635
00:33:24,000 --> 00:33:26,640
Speaker 1: good person, and they're out there preaching the word about

636
00:33:26,640 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 1: how everyone should be a good person too. And it

637
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:31,560
Speaker 1: makes you think at times, well, I was never a

638
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 1: terrible person. How come? How come Terry Gross isn't talking

639
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:39,840
Speaker 1: to me? You're the brother in the prodigal son story? Exactly?

640
00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:42,800
Speaker 1: I never This isn't fair. Yeah, I was good the

641
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:46,440
Speaker 1: whole time. Where's my uh, where's my celebration? Ain't that

642
00:33:46,520 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 1: life where jealous creatures aren't? But anyway, so, yeah, we

643
00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 1: we need to talk about the swampman. Yes, we We've

644
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: put the swampman off for far too long. So the

645
00:33:54,440 --> 00:33:58,400
Speaker 1: swampman is a variation on the ship of theseus idea

646
00:33:58,720 --> 00:34:03,000
Speaker 1: applied to the human mind. And this is originally a

647
00:34:03,040 --> 00:34:06,840
Speaker 1: concept that was introduced by the philosopher Donald Davidson in

648
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 1: a presentation called knowing One's Own Mind originally, I think

649
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:14,239
Speaker 1: in the Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association.

650
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:16,879
Speaker 1: The version I found was reprinted in the American Philosophical

651
00:34:16,880 --> 00:34:21,359
Speaker 1: Association Centennial series from but the original one was back

652
00:34:21,400 --> 00:34:25,760
Speaker 1: in the eighties seven, and so Donald Davidson was raising

653
00:34:25,800 --> 00:34:29,560
Speaker 1: this question, what is the relationship between the identity of

654
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:33,279
Speaker 1: a thing in the history of that thing? Are you

655
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:36,480
Speaker 1: ready to go to the swamp? Robert Okay Davidson says,

656
00:34:37,000 --> 00:34:40,279
Speaker 1: Suppose lightning strikes a dead tree in a swamp. I

657
00:34:40,320 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 1: am standing nearby. My body is reduced to its elements,

658
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:48,759
Speaker 1: while entirely by coincidence and out of different molecules, the

659
00:34:48,880 --> 00:34:53,799
Speaker 1: tree is turned into my physical replica. My replica, the

660
00:34:53,920 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 1: swamp man, moves exactly as I did, according to its nature.

661
00:34:58,080 --> 00:35:01,640
Speaker 1: It departs the swamp in honors and seems to recognize

662
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:04,880
Speaker 1: my friends and appears to return their greetings in English.

663
00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:08,000
Speaker 1: It moves into my house and seems to write articles

664
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:11,840
Speaker 1: on radical interpretation. No one can tell the difference, but

665
00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: there is a difference. My replica can't recognize my friends.

666
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:21,239
Speaker 1: It can't recognize anything, since it never cognized anything in

667
00:35:21,280 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: the first place. It can't know my friends names, though

668
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:28,560
Speaker 1: of course it seems to. It can't remember my house.

669
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 1: It can't mean what I do by the word house,

670
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:36,080
Speaker 1: for example, since the sound house it makes, was not

671
00:35:36,280 --> 00:35:38,880
Speaker 1: learned in the context that would give it the right meaning,

672
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:42,480
Speaker 1: or any meaning at all. Indeed, I don't see how

673
00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 1: my replica can be said to mean anything by the

674
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: sounds it makes, nor to have any thoughts. It's a

675
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,400
Speaker 1: nice creepy little tale. Uh that's summoning. Uh, you know

676
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:56,640
Speaker 1: memories of the philosophical zombies that we've discussed the zombies. Well, yeah,

677
00:35:56,680 --> 00:35:59,839
Speaker 1: so it's the question with the P zombies is it's

678
00:35:59,840 --> 00:36:03,439
Speaker 1: a assumed in the P zombie thought experiment that that

679
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,279
Speaker 1: they behave exactly like humans, except they're not conscious. I

680
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:10,560
Speaker 1: guess Davidson's asking the question of can a thing that

681
00:36:10,760 --> 00:36:15,080
Speaker 1: behaves exactly like a normal person but has no prior

682
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:21,640
Speaker 1: experiences actually be having thoughts, actually be uh speaking, meaningful

683
00:36:21,680 --> 00:36:26,239
Speaker 1: sentences if it's just randomly producing phenomena identical to what

684
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:29,160
Speaker 1: a person would produce if they arrived at those behaviors

685
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:31,480
Speaker 1: by the normal means. And so, to be clear, if

686
00:36:31,520 --> 00:36:33,200
Speaker 1: we if we follow through with this, if we really

687
00:36:33,239 --> 00:36:36,120
Speaker 1: imagine what he's saying, a perfect Adam for Adam copy

688
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 1: of you would be externally indistinguishable from you, and would

689
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:44,520
Speaker 1: presumably behave exactly like the original you. There's nothing we

690
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:47,279
Speaker 1: know of that would make it behave differently, but it

691
00:36:47,280 --> 00:36:50,680
Speaker 1: would not exist in a context in which its behavior

692
00:36:51,000 --> 00:36:54,319
Speaker 1: would have any meaning. It might have a long heartfelt

693
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:56,959
Speaker 1: conversation with a close friend of yours, and it would

694
00:36:56,960 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: behave exactly like you would and say the exact same

695
00:36:59,680 --> 00:37:02,480
Speaker 1: things the original you would have said in that conversation,

696
00:37:03,120 --> 00:37:06,560
Speaker 1: but and in fact would never have met this friend before.

697
00:37:07,280 --> 00:37:11,120
Speaker 1: So does the swamp creature have a relationship with your friend?

698
00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:14,520
Speaker 1: Does the swamp creature know the friend? And for the

699
00:37:14,560 --> 00:37:18,200
Speaker 1: same reason, does the swamp creature know anything? Now. I

700
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 1: know we have some comic book fans out there who

701
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 1: might think, hey, this sounds a little bit familiar, because

702
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 1: this is exactly the way that Alec Holland become swamp

703
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:31,920
Speaker 1: Thing in Alan Moore's amazing run with the swamp Thing comic.

704
00:37:32,200 --> 00:37:35,479
Speaker 1: Huh um. I actually went back and read this again.

705
00:37:35,680 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: The very first issue I guess you'd say this is

706
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 1: is titled The Anatomy Lesson. It's from February. Yeah, I

707
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: haven't read it. Actually, I feel bad because Christian once

708
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:50,960
Speaker 1: gave me a huge stack of comics to read that

709
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 1: did include a run of swamp Thing. I'm sure it

710
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: was Moore's, but I never made it to that one though.

711
00:37:55,960 --> 00:37:58,120
Speaker 1: I did read All Star Superman, which was great and

712
00:37:58,120 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 1: I think sort of lightly brushed against some of the

713
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: same philosophical questions about the identity of a person through

714
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:06,680
Speaker 1: time travel and all that. But I gotta read swamp

715
00:38:06,719 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: Thing now. Oh yeah, well it's it's It's definitely worth

716
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:12,439
Speaker 1: checking out. It's probably been a decade since I read

717
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:14,520
Speaker 1: all of it, but I did pick up the anatomy

718
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:17,360
Speaker 1: lesson and gave it another read, and it is indeed wonderful.

719
00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:19,799
Speaker 1: This is the one that originally hooked me when I

720
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: when I read it for the first time, and I

721
00:38:21,200 --> 00:38:24,480
Speaker 1: wound up spending way too much money at the time

722
00:38:24,560 --> 00:38:28,000
Speaker 1: on all of the Alan Moore swamp Thing books. Uh,

723
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:31,840
Speaker 1: none of them disappointed. But this first story is just perfect.

724
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:34,840
Speaker 1: It's a it's an intelligent little horror story that cast

725
00:38:34,920 --> 00:38:37,360
Speaker 1: the very the very identity of swamp Thing in a

726
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:41,040
Speaker 1: new light. So he's not just alc Holland a man

727
00:38:41,200 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 1: who is mutated into a plant man following a science

728
00:38:45,160 --> 00:38:48,680
Speaker 1: lab explosion in the swamp. No is More describes it.

729
00:38:49,000 --> 00:38:52,840
Speaker 1: The wonder chemical here transforms the plants and when Holland's

730
00:38:52,880 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: burnt corpse sinks into the swamp, the plants eat it

731
00:38:56,200 --> 00:39:00,640
Speaker 1: and regrow a body that believes itself to be like Holland.

732
00:39:01,280 --> 00:39:04,560
Speaker 1: So the organs don't work, heart, lungs, brains, It's all

733
00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 1: just vegetable manner that has form but no function. But

734
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:11,640
Speaker 1: it believes it is Holland. And it is always believed

735
00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:14,319
Speaker 1: that it is Holland. And this is the only thing

736
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:18,000
Speaker 1: that has kept the swamp Things saying this whole time. Well,

737
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:23,440
Speaker 1: so this Davidson presentation, I believe is from the first

738
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:26,680
Speaker 1: time he presented. It was in which is after this,

739
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:29,880
Speaker 1: So I think it would have to be that Davidson

740
00:39:29,960 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: was inspired by swamp Thing and not the other way around. Yeah,

741
00:39:33,160 --> 00:39:34,839
Speaker 1: I think it might be the case. I did just

742
00:39:34,880 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: a little bit of research on this, and I could

743
00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:42,399
Speaker 1: not find any definitive statements on inspiration here. But but

744
00:39:42,840 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 1: it seems like that would be the case, and I

745
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:46,759
Speaker 1: think that's great. I suppose we can only wait until

746
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:50,040
Speaker 1: the leave of extraordinary Gentlemen show up in the philosophy journals. Now, well,

747
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:53,319
Speaker 1: I would actually love to see um swamp Thing and

748
00:39:53,440 --> 00:39:55,920
Speaker 1: swamp Man meet up. I think that sounds like exactly

749
00:39:55,960 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that Alan Moore could return to

750
00:39:58,200 --> 00:40:01,200
Speaker 1: rite at some point. In fact, I'm a little surprise

751
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: it didn't happen, except Swampman would be completely indistinguishable from

752
00:40:06,160 --> 00:40:09,560
Speaker 1: Donald Davidson, right, so it would basically just be Donald

753
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:14,040
Speaker 1: Davidson meets swamp thing, except it's not the original Donald Davidson.

754
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:17,040
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a weird thing to consider. I spend

755
00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:20,480
Speaker 1: a while trying to this is one of those weird

756
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:23,880
Speaker 1: kind of thought experiments that pokes you and you have

757
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:26,360
Speaker 1: to sit there for a while thinking like, wait a minute,

758
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:30,359
Speaker 1: is this Is this truly illuminating or not? I mean,

759
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:32,759
Speaker 1: I was like trying to decide, and I still don't

760
00:40:32,840 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: think I've made up my mind. But it is strange.

761
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:38,319
Speaker 1: What does it mean to have a thought? Because we

762
00:40:38,400 --> 00:40:41,839
Speaker 1: typically believe that a thought is about something. So say,

763
00:40:41,880 --> 00:40:44,239
Speaker 1: for example, you have the thought I do not like

764
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:47,879
Speaker 1: the smell of hard boiled eggs. We consider it part

765
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 1: of the definition of this thought that you're aware of

766
00:40:50,320 --> 00:40:53,359
Speaker 1: the existence of hard boiled eggs and you have smelled them,

767
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 1: or at least you think you have, and you do

768
00:40:55,760 --> 00:40:58,200
Speaker 1: not like the smell. But if a being with an

769
00:40:58,239 --> 00:41:00,960
Speaker 1: atom for Adam Replica of your brain has that thought,

770
00:41:01,040 --> 00:41:04,160
Speaker 1: and yet it has never smelled the smell. Is it

771
00:41:04,280 --> 00:41:07,680
Speaker 1: really having that thought? What is it doing with its brain?

772
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:10,960
Speaker 1: You know it could not be forming that thought from

773
00:41:11,000 --> 00:41:14,799
Speaker 1: information derived from sense experience. That thought when coming from

774
00:41:14,840 --> 00:41:17,440
Speaker 1: a being that's never seen any evidence of the existence

775
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:20,399
Speaker 1: of hard boiled eggs, has never smelled them, hasn't ever

776
00:41:20,480 --> 00:41:23,240
Speaker 1: learned the words hard boiled eggs or the words smell.

777
00:41:23,719 --> 00:41:27,680
Speaker 1: The thought is just random behavior, no more significant than

778
00:41:27,760 --> 00:41:30,359
Speaker 1: you know, a million pages of random numbers printed out

779
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: on paper. Now at the same time that I can't

780
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:34,680
Speaker 1: help but think that, hey, I could develop a false

781
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:37,879
Speaker 1: memory of, say, eating a hard boiled ostrich egg, which

782
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:40,360
Speaker 1: I don't believe I have ever eaten. But if I but,

783
00:41:40,520 --> 00:41:43,920
Speaker 1: I can easily imagine where I might tweak my memory

784
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:47,239
Speaker 1: into into thinking that I have. Likewise, what have I

785
00:41:47,280 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: read a very convincing passage in a novel in which

786
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 1: a character eats a hard boiled dragon egg. I have

787
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:56,719
Speaker 1: no actual sense experience of that happening, But if it

788
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,360
Speaker 1: was well written and had lots of detail and atmosphere,

789
00:41:59,360 --> 00:42:01,720
Speaker 1: then I could i it very well in a sense

790
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 1: experience it in my mind. I think it's fairly obvious

791
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:07,879
Speaker 1: that that we humans spend a great deal of time

792
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:11,239
Speaker 1: obsessing over memories that are at least flawed, even if

793
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:13,520
Speaker 1: we're lucky enough to be free of memories that are

794
00:42:13,560 --> 00:42:15,880
Speaker 1: false entirely. And you're exactly right, I mean we have,

795
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:18,280
Speaker 1: we have false memories all the time. But they arise

796
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:21,920
Speaker 1: within a context of semantics, right, I mean they arise

797
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:25,400
Speaker 1: in a world where you know that you exist, and

798
00:42:25,400 --> 00:42:28,080
Speaker 1: where words have meanings, and you've learned the meanings of

799
00:42:28,120 --> 00:42:30,719
Speaker 1: words like egg and like smell, and you know that

800
00:42:30,760 --> 00:42:33,120
Speaker 1: there is such a thing as smells, And I mean

801
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:37,719
Speaker 1: there's an entire structure that makes that false memory possible

802
00:42:37,760 --> 00:42:40,200
Speaker 1: and makes it feel meaningful. So, for instance, I I

803
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:41,960
Speaker 1: have had a hard boiled egg, I have seen an

804
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: ostrich I've seen a picture of an OSTRICHJAG. I can

805
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:49,120
Speaker 1: therefore extrapolate what it would be to eat one and

806
00:42:49,160 --> 00:42:53,279
Speaker 1: then have the fuel to to build that false memory. Yeah.

807
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:56,120
Speaker 1: Now imagine you have a brain that generates that memory,

808
00:42:56,200 --> 00:43:00,600
Speaker 1: except it's never seen anything, and it's never learned any words,

809
00:43:00,680 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 1: and it's never had any of this experience. It just

810
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:06,440
Speaker 1: happens to have the atomic structure of a brain that

811
00:43:06,480 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 1: has had all those experiences and thus it behaves the

812
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:11,320
Speaker 1: same way. It's like if I had to form a

813
00:43:11,360 --> 00:43:15,360
Speaker 1: false memory of smoking a clues pats like what, I

814
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 1: don't I don't know where I would begin to to

815
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:20,600
Speaker 1: assemble that memory exactly. So yeah, that's what's at stake.

816
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 1: So I I've I've struggled with this thought experiment because

817
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's if it's making me feel

818
00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:30,879
Speaker 1: weird because it gets it something really fundamental, or because

819
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:33,720
Speaker 1: it's one of those confusion machines that just like takes

820
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:36,640
Speaker 1: their intuitions and churns up a bunch of confusion about

821
00:43:36,640 --> 00:43:38,759
Speaker 1: stuff that doesn't really matter. Yeah, I don't know. I

822
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:40,920
Speaker 1: keep coming back to the idea that if swamp man

823
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:45,560
Speaker 1: or even swamp thing, remember like, if he has these

824
00:43:45,600 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 1: memories of being this person, then yeah, those those those

825
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:54,920
Speaker 1: memories arise from those memories have internal context. They're kind

826
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:58,160
Speaker 1: of like a software that that that that that that

827
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:00,799
Speaker 1: he's carrying around with him. Yeah, and even if he

828
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:02,640
Speaker 1: you know, even if it's just a copy of the

829
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:04,920
Speaker 1: original software, it's still the software. Well, it's kind of

830
00:44:04,920 --> 00:44:08,239
Speaker 1: like if you imagined a software, a piece of software

831
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:13,240
Speaker 1: created by randomly generating characters to create lines of code

832
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:16,719
Speaker 1: that would execute eventually. And so at some point you

833
00:44:16,760 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: could randomly create a piece of software that does things.

834
00:44:20,320 --> 00:44:22,840
Speaker 1: Could you call that software? Could you say that it

835
00:44:22,840 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 1: has a purpose? Could you say that it has functions?

836
00:44:26,239 --> 00:44:29,319
Speaker 1: Could you say that it uh that it executes? I mean,

837
00:44:29,640 --> 00:44:32,120
Speaker 1: obviously we don't think software is conscious. I guess the

838
00:44:32,160 --> 00:44:35,320
Speaker 1: question of whether the swampman would be conscious is a

839
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:37,719
Speaker 1: different kind of thing. Well, if if Swamman goes home

840
00:44:38,080 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 1: and and then and says hi to to these friends,

841
00:44:41,640 --> 00:44:45,320
Speaker 1: I feel like he's he's as human as anybody else. Really,

842
00:44:45,600 --> 00:44:48,880
Speaker 1: I think that would be Daniel Dennett's take. So Dinnett

843
00:44:48,960 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 1: has addressed the challenges and usefulness of this thought experiment

844
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:56,080
Speaker 1: about Swampman, despite how popular it's been. Davidson first offered it,

845
00:44:56,080 --> 00:44:59,040
Speaker 1: I think in the seven and uh, though a lot

846
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:01,680
Speaker 1: of people have picked up since then. Davidson apparently told

847
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:05,000
Speaker 1: Dnnet at some point that he regretted introducing it because

848
00:45:05,000 --> 00:45:07,319
Speaker 1: he believed it caused a lot of unenlightening back and

849
00:45:07,360 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 1: forth without proving much. So then it's got a critique

850
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:13,520
Speaker 1: of this thought experiment. He says, you know a lot

851
00:45:13,520 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 1: of thought experiments basically try to function like science experiments,

852
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:20,719
Speaker 1: so you can coct a bizarre, implausible scenario with the

853
00:45:20,719 --> 00:45:24,200
Speaker 1: purpose of isolating a variable. You want to put something

854
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:27,839
Speaker 1: some particular variable. You want to be able to turn

855
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:30,960
Speaker 1: one knob up to eleven and control everything else, and

856
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:33,680
Speaker 1: you know, run everything else down to zero, so that

857
00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: you can test your intuitions about what happens and with

858
00:45:37,560 --> 00:45:41,960
Speaker 1: changes in that variable alone. And so the variable isolated

859
00:45:41,960 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: in this thought experiment is the history of an object

860
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:47,799
Speaker 1: such as a person. Right, you say, materially identical. Only

861
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:50,400
Speaker 1: thing that's different is how the atoms got that way,

862
00:45:50,600 --> 00:45:52,120
Speaker 1: and then it you know. He admits that a lot

863
00:45:52,160 --> 00:45:54,880
Speaker 1: of times thought experiments like this are really useful, like

864
00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:57,880
Speaker 1: think about how physicists like Einstein and Galileo and Newton

865
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:02,600
Speaker 1: abuse thought experiments that us intuitions and math to determine

866
00:46:02,600 --> 00:46:05,600
Speaker 1: fundamental facts about the laws of nature before anybody had

867
00:46:05,640 --> 00:46:09,719
Speaker 1: actually confirmed them with physical experiments. So thought experiments based

868
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:13,279
Speaker 1: on bizarre scenarios and intuitions can be very powerful. But

869
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: other times thought experiments testing bizarre scenarios are are just

870
00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:22,359
Speaker 1: creating unnecessary confusion. And in his discussion of Swampman, then

871
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:25,360
Speaker 1: it asks us to consider the cow shark, Robert, have

872
00:46:25,360 --> 00:46:27,919
Speaker 1: you ever seen a cow shark? I have not. Well, here,

873
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 1: here's how you'd know if you have. The cow shark

874
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:33,480
Speaker 1: is created when a normal cow gives birth to an

875
00:46:33,560 --> 00:46:36,720
Speaker 1: animal that is Adam for Adam, exactly like a shark

876
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:39,840
Speaker 1: that you would find swimming in the ocean. Now, is

877
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:44,120
Speaker 1: this newborn animal a cow or a shark? I'm gonna

878
00:46:44,160 --> 00:46:46,960
Speaker 1: say it's a shark. It looks like a shark, it

879
00:46:47,040 --> 00:46:48,920
Speaker 1: swims like a shark. It's a shark, even if it

880
00:46:48,960 --> 00:46:51,080
Speaker 1: came out of a cow. Oh, well, so you got

881
00:46:51,120 --> 00:46:54,359
Speaker 1: you're challenging some definitions, right, because some people would say, well,

882
00:46:54,360 --> 00:46:57,160
Speaker 1: white sharks are born to shark parents. Even if a

883
00:46:57,239 --> 00:46:59,719
Speaker 1: shark looks kind of weird, it's still a shark, right

884
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:01,919
Speaker 1: if it parents were sharks. Well, that kind of logic

885
00:47:01,920 --> 00:47:05,360
Speaker 1: will get you eaten by a shark, I'm thinking. But

886
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: then dnn, it adds another wrinkle. He says. Okay, Well,

887
00:47:07,560 --> 00:47:10,280
Speaker 1: let's say this shark is Adam for Adam, a shark,

888
00:47:10,440 --> 00:47:13,319
Speaker 1: but with the exception that it has cow DNA and

889
00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:16,000
Speaker 1: all of its cells. Now, is it a cow or

890
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:19,719
Speaker 1: a shark? It's a very peculiar shark. I would say, now, DNN.

891
00:47:19,719 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 1: It asks this question with with the idea that if

892
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:24,399
Speaker 1: you ask this to a biologist, they would probably not

893
00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:27,960
Speaker 1: think this was a very meaningful question, right, because in reality,

894
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:30,680
Speaker 1: a cow will never give birth to an animal in

895
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:33,400
Speaker 1: the perfect form of a shark that has cow DNA

896
00:47:33,480 --> 00:47:37,400
Speaker 1: and all of its cells. It's not logically impossible, meaning

897
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:40,840
Speaker 1: it doesn't involve an inherent contradiction, but it's just never

898
00:47:40,880 --> 00:47:43,759
Speaker 1: ever going to happen in nature. And thus we don't

899
00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:46,759
Speaker 1: learn a lot about biology by testing our intuitions about

900
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,520
Speaker 1: cows and sharks this way, because our intuitions about biology

901
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:53,160
Speaker 1: have evolved to function in the world where this never

902
00:47:53,280 --> 00:47:56,520
Speaker 1: happens and never will happen. In other words, the very

903
00:47:56,560 --> 00:47:59,319
Speaker 1: tools we're using to solve this puzzle of is it

904
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:02,080
Speaker 1: a cow is to shark are shaped by a world

905
00:48:02,080 --> 00:48:06,359
Speaker 1: where this question will never arise because it is physically impossible. Now,

906
00:48:06,400 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: you could come back and you could say, wait a minute,

907
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:11,800
Speaker 1: haven't we solved real world physics problems by creating physically

908
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:15,320
Speaker 1: impossible thought experiments things like a like a sleigh traveling

909
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,040
Speaker 1: at the speed of light for relativity, or objects that

910
00:48:18,080 --> 00:48:20,960
Speaker 1: fly through the air with zero friction and the answer

911
00:48:21,040 --> 00:48:23,680
Speaker 1: is yes. But dinn It says, you know, those experiments

912
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:27,920
Speaker 1: involved much less of an uncontrolled departure from reality than

913
00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:31,680
Speaker 1: the cow shark or the swampman. The physics experiments carefully

914
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 1: name and limit their violations of reality so that you

915
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:38,320
Speaker 1: can take that violation and calibrated as part of the experiment,

916
00:48:38,520 --> 00:48:41,240
Speaker 1: and then real world experiments can be devised to test

917
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: the conclusions of the thought experiments after you're done. Not

918
00:48:45,200 --> 00:48:47,799
Speaker 1: so for cow shark and swampman. Really, you know, dinn

919
00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:51,800
Speaker 1: It says, Uh, there's sort of a general rule of thumb,

920
00:48:51,800 --> 00:48:54,920
Speaker 1: and It's quote the utility of a thought experiment is

921
00:48:55,080 --> 00:48:59,200
Speaker 1: inversely proportional to the size of its departures from reality.

922
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:03,440
Speaker 1: So he does not really seem concerned with Davidson's worries

923
00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:06,319
Speaker 1: about whether swampman can actually have thoughts or known the

924
00:49:06,320 --> 00:49:09,320
Speaker 1: meanings of words, or even be a person, because swampman

925
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 1: is physically impossible in the context that we've developed words

926
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:16,600
Speaker 1: and concepts like thought and meaning. In person, a person

927
00:49:16,719 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: has thoughts which are derived from evolution, development, and experience,

928
00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:24,239
Speaker 1: and a swampman does not exist within that context. So

929
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:26,279
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think about Dennett's critique here. I

930
00:49:26,520 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 1: think he makes a good point, but I'm gonna have

931
00:49:30,280 --> 00:49:33,520
Speaker 1: to come back on it. Well, I do feel like

932
00:49:33,560 --> 00:49:37,040
Speaker 1: there is this sense that some some thought experiments are

933
00:49:37,040 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 1: of course very useful, and then the further you you get,

934
00:49:40,480 --> 00:49:42,399
Speaker 1: you kind of get into that territory of their fun.

935
00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:44,839
Speaker 1: They're great to think about it. You know, it's like saying, oh,

936
00:49:44,920 --> 00:49:47,440
Speaker 1: my hands can touch everything but themselves. Man, you know,

937
00:49:47,480 --> 00:49:50,239
Speaker 1: they're it's it's it's great, but I don't. But my

938
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:52,719
Speaker 1: hand can touch itself. I'm poking my palm right now.

939
00:49:52,840 --> 00:49:56,040
Speaker 1: Well maybe, but this is why this is That was

940
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,680
Speaker 1: for Futurama. I think with the h one of the

941
00:50:00,080 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 1: ends eats a hippie and becomes high, and it's like,

942
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:08,560
Speaker 1: my hands contect everything but themselves. Um so it's yeah,

943
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:11,640
Speaker 1: kind of a false paradox. But but you know, there's

944
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 1: so many of these things that they I do. I

945
00:50:15,600 --> 00:50:17,440
Speaker 1: do kind of side within it here. It does feel

946
00:50:17,440 --> 00:50:20,080
Speaker 1: like some of the more extravagant thought experiments do get

947
00:50:20,120 --> 00:50:22,799
Speaker 1: into that area where it's not particularly useful, but it's fun.

948
00:50:22,880 --> 00:50:26,520
Speaker 1: It's more recreational. Right, Yeah, I think that's right. I

949
00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:28,359
Speaker 1: mean I get what he's saying, and I think He's

950
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:30,439
Speaker 1: exactly right that we should be careful not to draw

951
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: conclusions by testing our intuitions on conditions that those intuitions

952
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:38,759
Speaker 1: are totally unsuited to evaluate. Here's a great example. I

953
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:42,600
Speaker 1: bet you've heard people make arguments about the origin of

954
00:50:42,640 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 1: the universe based on an intuitive understanding of things like

955
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:49,640
Speaker 1: space and time. Right. You know, people argue about like

956
00:50:49,719 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: what it means for the universe to begin or to

957
00:50:52,200 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: come into existence or something like that, based on what

958
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:56,960
Speaker 1: they think it means for like a meeting at the

959
00:50:57,000 --> 00:51:00,960
Speaker 1: office to begin. It's just like our concepts are day

960
00:51:01,000 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: to day concepts are not only unhelpful but directly confusing

961
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:07,640
Speaker 1: in that context. But I might take issue with Dennett's

962
00:51:07,680 --> 00:51:10,680
Speaker 1: response because I would say, we live in a world

963
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,080
Speaker 1: where science and technology might be making versions of the

964
00:51:14,120 --> 00:51:18,560
Speaker 1: Swampman experiment sort of replicable in reality. Maybe not making

965
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:21,799
Speaker 1: an atom for adom recreation of your entire body that

966
00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 1: does seem fairly impossible, but by making something like a

967
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:29,520
Speaker 1: perfect copy of the processing functions of your individual brain,

968
00:51:30,239 --> 00:51:33,400
Speaker 1: or say, gradually replacing parts of your brain ship of

969
00:51:33,440 --> 00:51:36,879
Speaker 1: theseus style with a biotic computer hardware. And I want

970
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:39,160
Speaker 1: to be clear that I don't know this is possible.

971
00:51:39,719 --> 00:51:42,680
Speaker 1: I'm pretty skeptical. I think Robert, you're also somewhat skeptical

972
00:51:42,719 --> 00:51:45,520
Speaker 1: of the curse Wiley and hype about digital immortality and

973
00:51:45,560 --> 00:51:46,960
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff that I think there's a

974
00:51:46,960 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: lot of unanswered questions about that. That's some techno utopians

975
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:53,799
Speaker 1: take for granted. But I also can't rule it out.

976
00:51:54,239 --> 00:51:56,520
Speaker 1: So it may not be a sure thing that you

977
00:51:56,560 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 1: can replace your brain with a digital copy, or that

978
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:02,759
Speaker 1: you can replace parts of your brain one at a

979
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:06,160
Speaker 1: time with hardware. But it's not a swamp man, and

980
00:52:06,200 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 1: it's not a cow shark. It's a thing that I

981
00:52:08,239 --> 00:52:10,279
Speaker 1: can't be sure we should rule out. So this is

982
00:52:10,280 --> 00:52:13,560
Speaker 1: a question that it's entirely possible we could face in

983
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:16,879
Speaker 1: reality in the near technological future. All right, so let's

984
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:19,360
Speaker 1: take another break and when we come back we will

985
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:24,319
Speaker 1: discuss this a bit more than Alright, we're back, So

986
00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 1: before we keep going, though, Joe, I do want to

987
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:29,080
Speaker 1: point out, um your so what you do when I

988
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:31,759
Speaker 1: said that when I quoted the Alien and Future rum

989
00:52:31,840 --> 00:52:34,280
Speaker 1: and said that the hand can touch everything but itself,

990
00:52:35,320 --> 00:52:39,200
Speaker 1: you demonstrated your hand touching itself, but actually your fingers

991
00:52:39,200 --> 00:52:42,919
Speaker 1: were touching your palm? Was your hand actually touching your hand?

992
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,799
Speaker 1: Maybe there's more weight to this, uh, this paradox than

993
00:52:45,840 --> 00:52:48,640
Speaker 1: I thought. Well, maybe there are no such things as hands.

994
00:52:50,200 --> 00:52:51,880
Speaker 1: Is there a hand or is it just like a

995
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:56,040
Speaker 1: team upon which you have fingers and palm playing? You know,

996
00:52:56,080 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 1: that's another example that sometimes comes up for the ship

997
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:02,520
Speaker 1: of THESEUS A sports team, them individual members change over time,

998
00:53:03,040 --> 00:53:05,799
Speaker 1: but we have this idea that the team itself is

999
00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:09,920
Speaker 1: a thing that is consistent, even though sporting teams are

1000
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:12,880
Speaker 1: are are generally anything. But you know, they'll they'll be

1001
00:53:13,000 --> 00:53:15,319
Speaker 1: ups and downs. Uh uh. You know, they may have

1002
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:17,719
Speaker 1: a great year this year, but then who knows what

1003
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:19,839
Speaker 1: next season will be? Like, Yes, definitely, this happens all

1004
00:53:19,840 --> 00:53:22,680
Speaker 1: the time. Let's say you you like a company. You

1005
00:53:22,680 --> 00:53:25,520
Speaker 1: want to invest in a company, but that company has

1006
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,880
Speaker 1: multiple rounds of like layoffs and new hires and all that,

1007
00:53:28,960 --> 00:53:31,839
Speaker 1: so that none of the original people remain. And then

1008
00:53:31,920 --> 00:53:34,400
Speaker 1: say they change their branding and they get a new

1009
00:53:34,520 --> 00:53:36,840
Speaker 1: name for the company and all that, and they also

1010
00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:39,600
Speaker 1: end up changing their core business model so that they're

1011
00:53:39,640 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 1: doing something different than what they originally did. But you're

1012
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:45,400
Speaker 1: still investing in the company. I don't know why I

1013
00:53:45,440 --> 00:53:47,399
Speaker 1: went to that. I'm not usually a big stocks guy.

1014
00:53:49,719 --> 00:53:52,000
Speaker 1: So this ship of theseus, as we've discussed it, it it

1015
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:54,520
Speaker 1: reveals a lot about the nature of change and this

1016
00:53:54,640 --> 00:53:58,960
Speaker 1: elusive quality of self. Any given mind state we express

1017
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:01,840
Speaker 1: is ultimately just just a phase and a continual path.

1018
00:54:02,239 --> 00:54:05,480
Speaker 1: We tend to falsely identify both past selves and future

1019
00:54:05,480 --> 00:54:07,640
Speaker 1: selves as being the same as who we are now.

1020
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:10,319
Speaker 1: But the reality, of course is it is it is

1021
00:54:10,400 --> 00:54:14,440
Speaker 1: rather akin to these uh, disassembled and reconstructed ships that

1022
00:54:14,480 --> 00:54:17,600
Speaker 1: we're talking about. I'm a vessel composed of certain parts

1023
00:54:17,640 --> 00:54:20,440
Speaker 1: of my past, and many of these parts will constitute

1024
00:54:20,480 --> 00:54:24,320
Speaker 1: the ship of my future. And so when we ponder

1025
00:54:24,360 --> 00:54:28,880
Speaker 1: such possibilities as digital immortality or some form of digitalized consciousness,

1026
00:54:29,120 --> 00:54:31,920
Speaker 1: we can't help it summon the ship of theseus, which

1027
00:54:32,160 --> 00:54:35,399
Speaker 1: me am I attempting to safeguard. Though will and will

1028
00:54:35,440 --> 00:54:38,799
Speaker 1: it remain me? Will it change? Doesn't matter? And then

1029
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:41,759
Speaker 1: there's the whole coin flip to consider. Oh yeah, yeah,

1030
00:54:41,800 --> 00:54:44,160
Speaker 1: what's the deal with the coin flip? Proper um? Well,

1031
00:54:44,160 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: this is the idea, like, if I am digitizing myself

1032
00:54:46,680 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: for teleporting, is there any uh, well, am I actually

1033
00:54:49,960 --> 00:54:53,200
Speaker 1: going to continue experiencing as this new thing or is

1034
00:54:53,200 --> 00:54:56,040
Speaker 1: it in there? Well, that's a great question. I mean,

1035
00:54:56,440 --> 00:54:58,480
Speaker 1: we don't really know the answer to that, and I

1036
00:54:58,719 --> 00:55:04,080
Speaker 1: I feel like it's almost hilarious sometimes. How easily many

1037
00:55:04,200 --> 00:55:08,759
Speaker 1: techno utopians and digital immortality enthusiasts just seemed to assume

1038
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:12,799
Speaker 1: that your consciousness can be transported onto some kind of

1039
00:55:12,840 --> 00:55:15,719
Speaker 1: hardware or machine. I think that's far from a given.

1040
00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:18,319
Speaker 1: We don't even know if it's possible for machines to

1041
00:55:18,360 --> 00:55:20,920
Speaker 1: be conscious. Maybe, I mean, it might be possible. But

1042
00:55:21,000 --> 00:55:23,520
Speaker 1: even if so, would that be you in there? Would

1043
00:55:23,560 --> 00:55:25,799
Speaker 1: it be like the teleporter and Okay, now you die

1044
00:55:25,920 --> 00:55:28,080
Speaker 1: and here's a digital copy of you that you don't

1045
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:30,040
Speaker 1: get to share in the experience of I mean it

1046
00:55:30,160 --> 00:55:32,800
Speaker 1: ultimately is would it be the same as that stone

1047
00:55:32,960 --> 00:55:35,920
Speaker 1: statue of a long dead individual? Like it's just the

1048
00:55:36,520 --> 00:55:40,440
Speaker 1: technological evolution of that same idea, Like that that statue

1049
00:55:40,560 --> 00:55:45,040
Speaker 1: is not long dead Napoleon. Uh, neither is this digitized

1050
00:55:45,120 --> 00:55:48,320
Speaker 1: Napoleon that we're going to send alpha centauri. Now. I

1051
00:55:48,320 --> 00:55:51,440
Speaker 1: attended the World Science Festival earlier this year, and one

1052
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:56,560
Speaker 1: of the salons that I attended as a smaller panel

1053
00:55:56,600 --> 00:55:59,640
Speaker 1: discussion was a titled to be or not to be bionic.

1054
00:56:00,320 --> 00:56:03,840
Speaker 1: And one of the participants on this panel was a

1055
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,040
Speaker 1: man by the name of S. Matthew Law, director of

1056
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:10,520
Speaker 1: the Center for Bioethics and affiliated professor in the Department

1057
00:56:10,520 --> 00:56:13,759
Speaker 1: of Philosophy at New York University, and he brought up

1058
00:56:13,800 --> 00:56:16,359
Speaker 1: the whole if you can upload it is it you

1059
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:20,719
Speaker 1: question and pointed to the gradual replacement of neurons one

1060
00:56:20,760 --> 00:56:24,719
Speaker 1: by one is a potential approach. Uh, And it makes sense, right,

1061
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:27,960
Speaker 1: don't just make an immortal robot version of me, No,

1062
00:56:28,160 --> 00:56:32,440
Speaker 1: gradually change me piece by piece into an immortal robot

1063
00:56:33,239 --> 00:56:36,360
Speaker 1: almost like almost like tricked me into being an immortal robot.

1064
00:56:36,600 --> 00:56:40,000
Speaker 1: You know. Don't just don't just hoodwink me all at once,

1065
00:56:40,080 --> 00:56:43,600
Speaker 1: like like you know, slip in there. That's an interesting question.

1066
00:56:43,640 --> 00:56:46,120
Speaker 1: So yeah, I imagine if somebody just made a robot

1067
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:48,799
Speaker 1: copy of you and then said, well, now this is

1068
00:56:48,880 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 1: you, you you would say no way that that's don't turn

1069
00:56:51,080 --> 00:56:53,640
Speaker 1: me off because that's not me. But if they replaced

1070
00:56:53,680 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 1: you one part at a time, it's possible that might

1071
00:56:56,000 --> 00:56:59,360
Speaker 1: give you a feeling of continuous experience that the rest

1072
00:56:59,640 --> 00:57:02,240
Speaker 1: that the the process wouldn't. But I mean that depends

1073
00:57:02,280 --> 00:57:05,000
Speaker 1: on you know, they're all these different models of what's

1074
00:57:05,040 --> 00:57:10,200
Speaker 1: the physical substrate of consciousness? Right? Is consciousness? Uh? Is

1075
00:57:10,239 --> 00:57:12,799
Speaker 1: there some part of the brain that it's based in.

1076
00:57:13,000 --> 00:57:14,560
Speaker 1: If you go back to Daniel Dennet, who we were

1077
00:57:14,560 --> 00:57:16,600
Speaker 1: talking about a minute ago, he might say, well, actually,

1078
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:19,920
Speaker 1: the idea that consciousness is a single thing is an illusion.

1079
00:57:20,080 --> 00:57:23,760
Speaker 1: You know, consciousness is a range of phenomena. Now this, uh,

1080
00:57:23,840 --> 00:57:27,200
Speaker 1: this gradual replacement of neurons to upload consciousness, this of course,

1081
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:30,600
Speaker 1: is just another thought experiment in and of itself. For instance,

1082
00:57:30,640 --> 00:57:34,000
Speaker 1: cognitive scientists and philosopher David J. Chalmers wrote about it

1083
00:57:34,000 --> 00:57:37,160
Speaker 1: back in the nineties. Though I'm I'm unsure who first

1084
00:57:37,200 --> 00:57:39,880
Speaker 1: actually proposed the idea and if it occurred within the

1085
00:57:39,880 --> 00:57:43,120
Speaker 1: realm of philosophy, cognitive science, or science fiction. So many

1086
00:57:43,160 --> 00:57:48,280
Speaker 1: of these wonderful ideas actually emerged within the sci fi

1087
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:53,160
Speaker 1: realm before uh they become you know, cognitive science, thought experience, etcetera.

1088
00:57:53,280 --> 00:57:56,880
Speaker 1: Swamp thing and swamp Man potentially being an example of this.

1089
00:57:57,080 --> 00:57:58,520
Speaker 1: I mean, this is one of the great things about

1090
00:57:58,520 --> 00:58:00,720
Speaker 1: science fiction is it gives us space used to explore

1091
00:58:00,760 --> 00:58:05,600
Speaker 1: these concepts before they're actually technologically feasible. Uh. And you

1092
00:58:05,600 --> 00:58:07,640
Speaker 1: know it is. It kind of gets into that whole

1093
00:58:07,800 --> 00:58:11,240
Speaker 1: Daniel Dennett situation too, Like sometimes it's it's just there

1094
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:14,040
Speaker 1: to amuse you and like, you know, twist your mind around.

1095
00:58:14,120 --> 00:58:16,680
Speaker 1: But if it twist your mind enough, you know, sometimes

1096
00:58:16,680 --> 00:58:21,360
Speaker 1: you end up it becomes this, uh, this pure thought experiment. Um.

1097
00:58:21,400 --> 00:58:23,880
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and along the same lines, I think maybe

1098
00:58:23,960 --> 00:58:27,560
Speaker 1: what you're getting at is that sometimes science fictional explorations

1099
00:58:27,560 --> 00:58:30,480
Speaker 1: of concepts can become the opposite of enlightening. They just

1100
00:58:30,520 --> 00:58:34,880
Speaker 1: become confusing, they become a bad road to take, or

1101
00:58:34,960 --> 00:58:37,120
Speaker 1: they just become art you know. I think of like

1102
00:58:37,160 --> 00:58:40,360
Speaker 1: some of the Borhees stories where you have somebody that's

1103
00:58:40,440 --> 00:58:44,040
Speaker 1: dreaming within a dream, the circular ruins and all these

1104
00:58:45,160 --> 00:58:48,360
Speaker 1: there are elements to them that are similar to thought experiments.

1105
00:58:48,560 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 1: But I would never say that a Borhe's story is

1106
00:58:51,160 --> 00:58:53,480
Speaker 1: a thought experiment. I guess you could. I mean, I

1107
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:55,680
Speaker 1: guess an interesting questions in the story. I'd have to

1108
00:58:55,720 --> 00:58:58,120
Speaker 1: like go back and think story by story. But Library

1109
00:58:58,480 --> 00:59:01,440
Speaker 1: Library of Babbel's kind of a thoughtics it is, Yeah, yeah,

1110
00:59:01,600 --> 00:59:03,800
Speaker 1: I mean you could almost say it's a philosophy paper,

1111
00:59:04,000 --> 00:59:06,800
Speaker 1: you could. Yeah, all right, maybe I take all that

1112
00:59:06,840 --> 00:59:09,240
Speaker 1: back let's see I need to reread to some bore

1113
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:11,760
Speaker 1: high scraps. But but but you know what I'm saying,

1114
00:59:11,760 --> 00:59:14,720
Speaker 1: like it can become I feel like some of these ideas,

1115
00:59:15,240 --> 00:59:17,480
Speaker 1: it's almost like there's a crossroads, like, right, where are

1116
00:59:17,480 --> 00:59:18,880
Speaker 1: you gonna push it? Are you gonna push it into

1117
00:59:18,880 --> 00:59:22,320
Speaker 1: this realm of of of sort of you know, boiled

1118
00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:26,480
Speaker 1: down thought experimentation or is it art? Is it meant

1119
00:59:26,680 --> 00:59:30,200
Speaker 1: too to make you think and explore new ideas, but

1120
00:59:30,240 --> 00:59:32,720
Speaker 1: not in like necessarily a you know, a regimented fashion

1121
00:59:33,120 --> 00:59:36,840
Speaker 1: is most sci fi, just like speculative meta ethics papers

1122
00:59:36,880 --> 00:59:39,000
Speaker 1: that are it's formulated in a way that people want

1123
00:59:39,000 --> 00:59:42,439
Speaker 1: to read. Well, it comes back to time Cop. Time

1124
00:59:42,440 --> 00:59:45,280
Speaker 1: Cop is not a thought experient. And yet at the

1125
00:59:45,320 --> 00:59:48,320
Speaker 1: same time, when I first saw it as a kid,

1126
00:59:48,480 --> 00:59:50,479
Speaker 1: and in time and time over the years, I'll stop

1127
00:59:50,480 --> 00:59:52,400
Speaker 1: and I'll think, well that part when when the two

1128
00:59:52,760 --> 00:59:55,960
Speaker 1: villains melt together, is that right? How would that work?

1129
00:59:56,040 --> 00:59:59,360
Speaker 1: Like I'm it's you know, it's poorly constructed ultimately, but

1130
00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:02,320
Speaker 1: it does make me think, like a lot of bad

1131
01:00:02,360 --> 01:00:05,880
Speaker 1: movies do, I guess. But but back to the gradual

1132
01:00:06,520 --> 01:00:10,400
Speaker 1: replacement of neurons and uploading them at all um, Yeah,

1133
01:00:10,440 --> 01:00:13,120
Speaker 1: it comes back to the ship of theseus idea during

1134
01:00:13,120 --> 01:00:17,320
Speaker 1: this replacement is gradual replacement? Does it at some point

1135
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:19,760
Speaker 1: cease to be me? And and what if there is

1136
01:00:19,800 --> 01:00:23,520
Speaker 1: this dark point in the transition, the moment of unconsciousness,

1137
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: does that signal the end of your consciousness in the

1138
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:29,440
Speaker 1: beginning of the next Uh? Is that which comes after

1139
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:32,560
Speaker 1: not you? And if it's not, then again, coming back

1140
01:00:32,600 --> 01:00:34,960
Speaker 1: to what you said earlier about anesthesia, how are we

1141
01:00:34,960 --> 01:00:38,520
Speaker 1: supposed to interpret that? Is the the individual before and

1142
01:00:38,600 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 1: after anesthesia? Are those ultimately separate uh entities? I mean,

1143
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:47,160
Speaker 1: ultimately there's this slippery kind of concept in here that

1144
01:00:47,200 --> 01:00:50,560
Speaker 1: I feel like is key that that is causing a

1145
01:00:50,600 --> 01:00:53,680
Speaker 1: lot of the trouble. And it's the idea of I

1146
01:00:53,680 --> 01:00:55,240
Speaker 1: don't know if there's already a name for it, but

1147
01:00:55,280 --> 01:01:00,160
Speaker 1: I'd call it something like anticipatory continuity. So it's like,

1148
01:01:00,280 --> 01:01:02,600
Speaker 1: you think, if you can create a conscious robot and

1149
01:01:02,640 --> 01:01:04,760
Speaker 1: you could put your brain in there, you know, at

1150
01:01:04,800 --> 01:01:08,080
Speaker 1: least the conscious robot could have the experience of being

1151
01:01:08,120 --> 01:01:12,440
Speaker 1: continuously you. But what you don't want is the you

1152
01:01:12,920 --> 01:01:17,919
Speaker 1: that's about to transition thinking I'm going to disappear and die.

1153
01:01:18,120 --> 01:01:20,720
Speaker 1: Though of course, you know, the you of every moment

1154
01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:23,560
Speaker 1: changes into the you of the future, and that you

1155
01:01:23,680 --> 01:01:27,960
Speaker 1: of the future remembers being past you and the future.

1156
01:01:28,200 --> 01:01:30,480
Speaker 1: You know, the current you doesn't really worry about the

1157
01:01:30,520 --> 01:01:33,920
Speaker 1: fact that present you won't exist a few seconds in

1158
01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:37,400
Speaker 1: the future. But there's there's some kind of distinction people

1159
01:01:37,400 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: are making mentally. They're right, they're saying like, if wait,

1160
01:01:40,720 --> 01:01:43,360
Speaker 1: there's a way that I could die and some other

1161
01:01:43,480 --> 01:01:46,360
Speaker 1: thing could go on being me, which would be different

1162
01:01:46,400 --> 01:01:50,080
Speaker 1: than just me being me a few seconds from now, Well,

1163
01:01:50,120 --> 01:01:53,080
Speaker 1: I just need a teleporter to edit that out before

1164
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:55,840
Speaker 1: it recreates the enemy, edit out the the fear of

1165
01:01:55,840 --> 01:01:58,400
Speaker 1: death in the teleporter, and then I guess we'll be okay.

1166
01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:00,439
Speaker 1: But I mean, is it death? I mean, I guess

1167
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:02,880
Speaker 1: that's actually a question to ask, like, if there's a

1168
01:02:02,960 --> 01:02:05,720
Speaker 1: version of you continuing, is there a way of saying

1169
01:02:05,760 --> 01:02:09,320
Speaker 1: that it's actually that it's not any different from the

1170
01:02:09,400 --> 01:02:12,720
Speaker 1: you of three seconds from now continuing the existence of

1171
01:02:12,760 --> 01:02:15,320
Speaker 1: you right now? Well, I mean, because if we're talking

1172
01:02:15,320 --> 01:02:17,400
Speaker 1: about just the physical body, we also have to remember

1173
01:02:17,440 --> 01:02:21,000
Speaker 1: that the body does replace itself largely with a new

1174
01:02:21,040 --> 01:02:24,360
Speaker 1: set of cells every seven seven years to ten years,

1175
01:02:24,840 --> 01:02:27,760
Speaker 1: and some of the most important parts are revamped even

1176
01:02:27,760 --> 01:02:30,880
Speaker 1: more rapidly. But that's that's the more original ship of

1177
01:02:30,920 --> 01:02:35,120
Speaker 1: theseus idea. That's gradual replacement, and so we tend to

1178
01:02:35,160 --> 01:02:36,520
Speaker 1: be on board with that, right you know, I mean

1179
01:02:37,720 --> 01:02:40,440
Speaker 1: I refuse, you refuse, I won't do it. There's some

1180
01:02:40,520 --> 01:02:43,000
Speaker 1: people who who who believe the other the body is

1181
01:02:43,040 --> 01:02:45,000
Speaker 1: just well, it makes me think of our old friend

1182
01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:48,520
Speaker 1: Connor McLeod, the Highlander. So in order to live like

1183
01:02:48,640 --> 01:02:52,240
Speaker 1: five centuries, is it just more or less like our body,

1184
01:02:52,280 --> 01:02:54,840
Speaker 1: Like everything is just you know, cells are dying and

1185
01:02:54,880 --> 01:02:58,960
Speaker 1: being replaced or are his cells just super strong? Are

1186
01:02:58,960 --> 01:03:02,560
Speaker 1: they the same cells? Is he like also largely identical

1187
01:03:02,600 --> 01:03:04,680
Speaker 1: to the original Highlander except he had a haircut? Well,

1188
01:03:04,680 --> 01:03:07,680
Speaker 1: I mean, this makes me think about our episode about neuroplasticity,

1189
01:03:08,160 --> 01:03:12,440
Speaker 1: about how neuroplasticity is a balancing act, right, Like, you

1190
01:03:12,560 --> 01:03:15,120
Speaker 1: want the brain to be able to change and adapt

1191
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:17,800
Speaker 1: to a certain extent so it can adapt to new

1192
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:21,080
Speaker 1: scenarios and learn and all that. But you also don't

1193
01:03:21,160 --> 01:03:24,520
Speaker 1: want the brain to be so radically open to change

1194
01:03:24,600 --> 01:03:27,840
Speaker 1: that it is. You know, it can just be ravaged

1195
01:03:27,840 --> 01:03:29,960
Speaker 1: by trauma and things like that. You know, you know,

1196
01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:34,080
Speaker 1: what I mean. So there's weakness in being elastic, but

1197
01:03:34,120 --> 01:03:37,280
Speaker 1: there's also strength in being elastic, And I guess evolution

1198
01:03:37,320 --> 01:03:40,240
Speaker 1: tried to shape our our nervous systems to find that

1199
01:03:40,360 --> 01:03:43,200
Speaker 1: correct balance. But inherent in that tension is the idea

1200
01:03:43,280 --> 01:03:46,840
Speaker 1: that some amount of stability over time is preferable. That's

1201
01:03:46,880 --> 01:03:49,120
Speaker 1: like better for us as an organism. You don't want

1202
01:03:49,120 --> 01:03:53,160
Speaker 1: to be radically open to change all the time. Then again,

1203
01:03:53,200 --> 01:03:56,760
Speaker 1: maybe that that only matters over long time scales. And

1204
01:03:56,760 --> 01:03:58,240
Speaker 1: then is that I guess you could also want to

1205
01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:00,960
Speaker 1: it's the average person just going to be open to

1206
01:04:01,160 --> 01:04:05,520
Speaker 1: the appropriate amount of change. Like I think back to uh,

1207
01:04:05,560 --> 01:04:08,840
Speaker 1: this is a line from Terence McKenna, but he said, um,

1208
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:10,640
Speaker 1: if there's something that needs to be done, you will

1209
01:04:10,680 --> 01:04:13,480
Speaker 1: find yourself doing it, um, which is is one of

1210
01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:16,240
Speaker 1: those statements that seems kind of kind of obvious, but

1211
01:04:16,320 --> 01:04:18,880
Speaker 1: at the same time it's I keep coming back to

1212
01:04:18,960 --> 01:04:21,920
Speaker 1: and thinking, well, yeah, I guess I would like And

1213
01:04:21,960 --> 01:04:23,920
Speaker 1: if you say, well, there's this thing I should have

1214
01:04:23,960 --> 01:04:25,439
Speaker 1: done and I didn't do it, well maybe you didn't

1215
01:04:25,480 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 1: need to do that thing, and that's why you have

1216
01:04:27,720 --> 01:04:30,440
Speaker 1: reached this point where you're looking back on it like

1217
01:04:30,480 --> 01:04:34,880
Speaker 1: that what does it mean to need to do something? Yeah, Wow,

1218
01:04:34,920 --> 01:04:37,560
Speaker 1: we've really gone all the way into the navel on

1219
01:04:37,640 --> 01:04:41,880
Speaker 1: this this episode. Um, lots of hands not touching themselves.

1220
01:04:42,120 --> 01:04:44,240
Speaker 1: All right, Well, on that note, I think we're gonna

1221
01:04:44,920 --> 01:04:47,800
Speaker 1: exit here. But before we do, well, we're not gonna

1222
01:04:47,840 --> 01:04:51,760
Speaker 1: have time to touch base. Uh, you know on every

1223
01:04:51,800 --> 01:04:55,360
Speaker 1: example of the Ship of Theseus as it's been expressed

1224
01:04:55,400 --> 01:04:58,800
Speaker 1: in various works of art or fiction. But but I

1225
01:04:58,840 --> 01:05:00,720
Speaker 1: do want to pinpoint a couple of them here real

1226
01:05:00,800 --> 01:05:03,680
Speaker 1: quick for starters. Uh, the book blind Side by Peter

1227
01:05:03,720 --> 01:05:06,840
Speaker 1: Watts that we both read. I didn't realize until I

1228
01:05:06,840 --> 01:05:08,800
Speaker 1: started looking into this, or I didn't remember that the

1229
01:05:08,840 --> 01:05:14,440
Speaker 1: spaceship that they're on is the Theseus and yeah, and

1230
01:05:14,480 --> 01:05:17,160
Speaker 1: it is capable of rebuilding itself. And then you also

1231
01:05:17,240 --> 01:05:19,919
Speaker 1: have a member of the crew who has had half

1232
01:05:19,960 --> 01:05:23,560
Speaker 1: his brain rebuilt. So there are a number of of

1233
01:05:23,640 --> 01:05:26,880
Speaker 1: elements there. Well. Also, just generally in the works of

1234
01:05:26,880 --> 01:05:31,320
Speaker 1: Peter Watts, characters are very much Ship of Theseus style brains.

1235
01:05:31,400 --> 01:05:34,280
Speaker 1: Maybe we've had lots of neural augmentation and all that. Now,

1236
01:05:34,320 --> 01:05:38,080
Speaker 1: the teleporter problem variant that we talked about that's been

1237
01:05:38,120 --> 01:05:41,560
Speaker 1: explored on the Outer limits, and to a large extent,

1238
01:05:41,760 --> 01:05:45,160
Speaker 1: the Christopher Nolan film The Prestige. There was a character

1239
01:05:45,240 --> 01:05:48,960
Speaker 1: on Star Trek Deep Space nine named Antos who was

1240
01:05:49,000 --> 01:05:51,600
Speaker 1: a Bajore and spiritual leader who had to have his

1241
01:05:51,680 --> 01:05:55,480
Speaker 1: brain gradually replaced with cybernetics, and this eroded his previous

1242
01:05:55,520 --> 01:05:57,560
Speaker 1: sense of self and this had a negative impact on

1243
01:05:57,640 --> 01:06:01,240
Speaker 1: his relationship with Kira, the Joran character on that show.

1244
01:06:01,520 --> 01:06:04,280
Speaker 1: Must I've never watched Deep Space, but it's pretty great.

1245
01:06:04,320 --> 01:06:06,480
Speaker 1: I didn't. I have to say, I do not specifically

1246
01:06:06,480 --> 01:06:08,800
Speaker 1: remember this episode, but I used to watch it all

1247
01:06:08,800 --> 01:06:11,240
Speaker 1: the time. It was like every evening at like nine

1248
01:06:11,240 --> 01:06:14,520
Speaker 1: pm or something in syndication. Our producer Alex has often

1249
01:06:14,600 --> 01:06:17,160
Speaker 1: schooled me on Space nine. Not we're gonna get an

1250
01:06:17,160 --> 01:06:19,960
Speaker 1: email on this one for sure. Uh. There's an episode

1251
01:06:19,960 --> 01:06:24,640
Speaker 1: of Futurama titled The six Million Dollar Man in which Hermes,

1252
01:06:24,960 --> 01:06:27,400
Speaker 1: one of the characters, gradually replaces his entire body with

1253
01:06:27,560 --> 01:06:32,440
Speaker 1: robotic parts, while Zoidberg, the you know, crustacean alien doctor.

1254
01:06:32,800 --> 01:06:36,880
Speaker 1: He's been stitching the discarded parts together into little Hermes

1255
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 1: of introl Coast dummy. And so there, you know, you're

1256
01:06:40,920 --> 01:06:43,480
Speaker 1: left to wonder which one is the original, which one

1257
01:06:43,520 --> 01:06:47,400
Speaker 1: is Hermes, is it the robot or this grotesque meat puppet?

1258
01:06:49,200 --> 01:06:51,400
Speaker 1: And then one of the examples that I was most

1259
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:53,560
Speaker 1: impressed we have mainly because I just had no idea

1260
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:56,000
Speaker 1: about the depth here on this, but the tin Woodman

1261
01:06:56,080 --> 01:06:58,800
Speaker 1: from the Wizard of Oz books, the books by L.

1262
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:01,840
Speaker 1: Frank Baum. Oh i've ever read the books? I have

1263
01:07:01,920 --> 01:07:04,040
Speaker 1: not either, but when I started looking into this, Yeah,

1264
01:07:04,040 --> 01:07:07,200
Speaker 1: there's this whole narrative about the tin Man. How the

1265
01:07:07,200 --> 01:07:11,480
Speaker 1: tin Man has a like his ax was was cursed

1266
01:07:11,560 --> 01:07:14,840
Speaker 1: by the wicked witch. And then he like accidentally like

1267
01:07:14,960 --> 01:07:18,240
Speaker 1: chopped away, you know, part of his body and then uh,

1268
01:07:18,320 --> 01:07:21,320
Speaker 1: then it was replaced with tin. And then he ends

1269
01:07:21,400 --> 01:07:23,200
Speaker 1: up chopping away another part of his body and it's

1270
01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:26,240
Speaker 1: replaced with tin. And he just keeps losing pieces upon

1271
01:07:26,320 --> 01:07:29,400
Speaker 1: pieces of his body until he's all ten except for

1272
01:07:29,440 --> 01:07:31,439
Speaker 1: his heart. And then one day he cuts himself in half,

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01:07:31,480 --> 01:07:35,120
Speaker 1: I believe. And so now now his heart has been bisected,

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01:07:35,320 --> 01:07:37,160
Speaker 1: and that's why he needs the the heart he has

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01:07:37,200 --> 01:07:41,360
Speaker 1: to reclaim like this, this this portion of his humanity

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01:07:41,440 --> 01:07:44,920
Speaker 1: that has been lost in this gradual replacement, essentially a

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01:07:44,960 --> 01:07:48,080
Speaker 1: cybernetic replacement of himself. Oh wow, I never thought of

1278
01:07:48,080 --> 01:07:52,120
Speaker 1: Frank Baum getting into cybernetics. Yeah, he's essentially transhumanist. Right.

1279
01:07:52,200 --> 01:07:53,760
Speaker 1: Are you one of the people who's a big fan

1280
01:07:53,800 --> 01:07:56,040
Speaker 1: of Return to Oz. I know people who are into that.

1281
01:07:56,720 --> 01:07:58,920
Speaker 1: I've never seen it, but I remember seeing the trailer

1282
01:07:59,000 --> 01:08:01,840
Speaker 1: as a kid, being like a little freaked out by

1283
01:08:01,840 --> 01:08:06,040
Speaker 1: those people with wheels for hands. So I should see it.

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01:08:06,040 --> 01:08:08,560
Speaker 1: It sounds exactly like the thing I'd be into. We

1285
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:12,800
Speaker 1: should do a science of Return to Oz episode. Well,

1286
01:08:13,080 --> 01:08:16,439
Speaker 1: let's not commit until we know we're getting into Okay, Now,

1287
01:08:16,439 --> 01:08:18,639
Speaker 1: those are just a few fictional examples of the ship

1288
01:08:18,680 --> 01:08:21,679
Speaker 1: of theseus. I'm sure all of you listening out there

1289
01:08:21,920 --> 01:08:25,080
Speaker 1: you have examples you'd like to bring up as well. Um,

1290
01:08:25,160 --> 01:08:27,879
Speaker 1: so we would love to hear from you. In the meantime,

1291
01:08:28,120 --> 01:08:29,760
Speaker 1: be sure to check out Stuff to blow your mind.

1292
01:08:29,800 --> 01:08:32,160
Speaker 1: That is where you will find all the episodes of

1293
01:08:32,200 --> 01:08:35,400
Speaker 1: the podcast. You'll find links out to very social media accounts.

1294
01:08:35,400 --> 01:08:37,200
Speaker 1: You'll find a link there at the top for our

1295
01:08:37,240 --> 01:08:40,400
Speaker 1: store where you'll get to check out some some shirts,

1296
01:08:40,400 --> 01:08:43,360
Speaker 1: some merch. Another wonderful way to support the show. And uh,

1297
01:08:43,400 --> 01:08:45,800
Speaker 1: of course, if you want to support the show, an

1298
01:08:45,800 --> 01:08:48,720
Speaker 1: easy freeway to do it is to just simply rate

1299
01:08:48,760 --> 01:08:51,200
Speaker 1: and review us wherever you have the power to do that.

1300
01:08:51,360 --> 01:08:53,960
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, as always to our wonderful audio

1301
01:08:54,000 --> 01:08:57,240
Speaker 1: producers Alex Williams and Tarry Harrison. If you would like

1302
01:08:57,280 --> 01:08:59,120
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us directly to let us

1303
01:08:59,120 --> 01:09:01,360
Speaker 1: know feedback on this episode or any other, to share

1304
01:09:01,400 --> 01:09:03,479
Speaker 1: your own thoughts about the ship of theseus and how

1305
01:09:03,479 --> 01:09:06,280
Speaker 1: that applies to the human mind, the human brain and consciousness,

1306
01:09:06,600 --> 01:09:09,280
Speaker 1: to suggest a topic for a future episode, or just

1307
01:09:09,360 --> 01:09:11,559
Speaker 1: to say hi, you can email us at blow the

1308
01:09:11,680 --> 01:09:23,400
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on

1309
01:09:23,520 --> 01:09:25,960
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff

1310
01:09:26,000 --> 01:09:34,720
Speaker 1: works dot com. M