Conceptualizing of personhood

I've written that people are patterns, but that kind of thinking is not too useful. The most useful way I have found to conceptualize of people is to think of a person as being defined by a certain set of traits, say intelligence, knowledge, morality or anything else you can think of. Think of each trait as existing on a scale going from - X to +X. These traits together create a set of Axis. 2 traits = a 2 dimensional space. 95 traits = 95 dimensions. A person is a cloud in this space. Why a cloud? Because a point would mean that any change in temperament or character would make them a different person. We see people as being the same as long as their personalities (collection of traits) stays roughly constant. Hence why a cloud is more appropriate than a line.

Eliezer Yudkowsky coined a term for this: "Empirical cluster is personspace", which is a very good concept handle.

What is a person?

A Person is not matter. We are not hardware, even though existence without our hardware may be impossible.

• If I were to create and run an atom for atom accurate model of my brain on a computer, that would still be me despite the hardware/matter being entirely different from my original brain.
• As the individual atoms which make up me are exchanged for other atoms from my surroundings, I do not become less me.

A Person is software. A Person is a pattern. A person is not an empirical cluster in personspace. A person is the system which produces those characteristics. A system which reacts and changes to the environment in certain ways. A system whose internal patterns follow a certain rhythm over time or space. 

If a person is a pattern, what is he different between a person and any other kind of pattern? From stars to stones, all things follow a pattern. What makes something alive? What makes something a person? [Questions are entangled. People must be alive.[Maybe not? Emulated brain which is not running is still a person despite not being alive? No, it is a potential person. More rights than no person, less than an actual person.]]

I don't know what makes the patterns we call people different from other patterns. I'm not sure there is a meaningful difference. This seems to be one of the cases where reason doesn't work. Where a certain belief is hard-coded into our way of thinking and where thinking without it seems impossible. Maybe one day we can find a way to remove these beliefs from ourselves. I'd like to see what the world is like without this neural block clouding my thinking. Then again, that seems impossible given that without such a belief I would no longer be myself.

Consensus is not Truth: How philosophers deal with moral relativism

If we all agree that earth if flat, that does not mean that it is.

The greatest problem in ethics is that moral beliefs cannot be grounded in objective reality. It is not possible to find evidence in the physical world which proves that one set of ethical beliefs is better than another. You can't get an ought from an is.

Most people who realize this, myself included, simply ignore the fact that their beliefs cannot be justified and go on holding the same morals they always did. For a subset of these moral beliefs, we remain willing to use violence to impose them on others. We hate the baby-eaters, even though we know that we have no reason to assume we are more right than they are.

Most competent philosophers, realizing they cannot show that moral beliefs are objectively true, attempt to show that they are true intersubjectivly, meaning that they are true given the axiomatic moral beliefs a person holds. If you hold the set of beliefs X, then you should believe Y.

Against (An Idiots Interpretation of) Rawls

• Self-Interest is not a legitimate basis for moral rules
• principle: Moral rules should apply to everyone equally
• The mechanism of the "veil of ignorance" reveals peoples moral preferences untainted by self- interest
• People behind the veil of ignorance would choose a society organized on the difference principle: " Social and economic inequalities are to .. be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. "

Why it's stupid (assuming I'm not straw-manning):

• Self interest is a legitimate basis for moral rules
• The mechanism of the "veil of ignorance" does not reveal peoples moral preferences untainted by self- interest
• People behind the VoI would not choose the difference principle:
• Not everyone deserves the same amount of goods. Some people, i,e: criminals, may deserve to be worse off and should not be made better off.
• Rawls Counter: Birth lottery (only do bad things to to web of causation) --> no individual moral accountability for good/evil actions = everyone should be treated equally
• Response 1: Horrific consequences (can't punish murderers) = unacceptable to the average person, even behind the veil of ignorance
• Response 2: Belief in free will/moral responsibility is an axiomatic belief. Not willing to trade it away despite lack of ability to justify it.
• Response 3: No free will --> no personhood --> everything breaks
• Greatest good of the greatest number > care only for worst of. i,e: Would rather leave one person to die of hunger if it meant making 10'000'000'000 poor but not starving people rich and happy
• Leveling down objection: If an inequality makes the good better off while not making the poor worse off, why is it bad?
• Counter: inequality has bad consequences/makes people unhappy
• Not in every case.
• Definition of argument = not making poor worse off in any significant way

Axiomatic Beliefs & Intractable Conflicts

There are certain beliefs we as humans hold which form the foundations of how we think. Most of the truly axiomatic beliefs, the ones so integral to the human mind that it is not possible to think without them, are, unsurprising, not thought about all too much. In many cases, these beliefs are so obvious, so intuitive that we do not even recognize them as beliefs but rather blindly accept them as rules valid thinking must follow. For example, the (axiomatic) rule "If A is true, then A is true".

In certain cases, these axiomatic beliefs come into conflict. For example, it seems extraordinarily difficult to belief in causality, that all events in the world occur due to a web of causation stretching back to the beginning of time. while simultaneously believing in free will, the ability of people to make choices*. After all, if all things are determined by previous events then the same applies to our desires and our actions.

It seems to me that far too much of philosophy is comprised of attempts to solve intractable problems such as this. This would not be a problem if those attempts were successful or at least failed. The problem is that many of these attempts inevitably degenerate into language games where the meaning of words is debated rather than the actual incompatibility between the concepts those words represent.

* It is important to note that free-will and personhood are two sides of the same coin. If you don't believe in free will, you must believe that a person is no more than a certain pattern of cause and effect which reacts to stimuli in a deterministic fashion. At this point, it becomes impossible to meaningfully distinguish between a person and any other pattern existing in the natural world.

The Problem with Map/Territory Rationalism

Statement: You should believe what is true.

Problem: Beliefs affect you on a subconscious level. Certain true beliefs can have adverse effects. Sometimes, these adverse effects outweigh the value (instrumental or intrinsic) of knowing the truth.

Example: Believing that one race is genetically inferior is likely to make you act in a more hostile way towards members of that race, regardless of moral commitments to treating people as individuals.

Solution: You should hold beliefs which help you reach your objectives, whatever those may be.

Ergo Cogito Sum is Wrong

I think therefore I am.

The argument:

• I think
• All things that think, exist
• I exist

This argument is garbage in the context Descartes uses it. If an evil daemon is manipulating your thoughts, you indeed cannot be certain of the world as you see it existing. But, you also cannot be certain of the integrity of your thought processes. Just because an argument seems valid to you, does not mean it is actually valid, It could be the case that the daemon is manipulating you to overlook the flaws in certain arguments. It is also possible that the basic logical axioms you use to evaluate arguments are themselves entirely wrong, being fabricated by the daemon and in no way reflecting actual reality.