Talk:Swampman

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This mental experiment could perhaps be best "modernized" with it being updated to be a Human Clone thought experiment. Suppose at birth, a man, Mr. SmithI, has a genetically identical clone created, which for the purposes of the argument sits in a suspension tube in a secure facility, and for 36 years develops along precisely exactly identical physical "lines" as Mr. SmithI. One day, while visiting his clone, a technician takes out a pistol and puts a bullet through Mr. Smiths head; the moment Mr. Smiths brain matter blasts through his skull, the clone is "awakened" and comes out of the tube. This clone, now called Mr. SmithII, has just been born, for the purposes of the expeiment; he has had NO senory input up to the point his eyes were opened and he was removed from the tube: so, the question, is this new Mr. Smith Mr. Smith?

has "modern" technology rendered the debate on sematic externalism redunant? can anyone argue that Mr. Smith II will "know" how to be Mr. Smith? He's physically and genetically identical, yes, but unless he's "implanted" with the formers memories, stored data, if you will, he will never be the same as Mr. Smith I...his "meaning" for anything must be learned or implanted; HIS meanings, or lack thereof, are all in his head.

(since wikipedias commenting system isn't perfect I'll have to put the comment up here, to prevent misunderstandings) Since what Smith stores in his memory obviously isn't decided by his genes, how does SmithII gets his mind updated continuously ? Because you can't seriously believe that a clone (eg. the same thing as a normal twin) has the same mind as the original. Right? Does "unless he's "implanted" with the formers memories, stored data, if you will, he will never be the same as Mr. Smith" really imply that you believe in that popular misunderstanding? The whole clone issue has _nothing at all_ to do with the swamp man. Swampman is a clone as well as SmithII, but the special thing about swampman isn't that he is a clone, but that he is a clone AND he has the exact same mind as Davidson. Cloning has nothing at all to do with the contents of the mind. Remember, the only difference between a clone and a twin is that a twin must be from the same pregnancy (unlike a clone, which I suppose can be from the same pregnancy, but it could also be created at some other point, say after birth, which I suppose is what you mean with "at birth"). Ran4 (talk) 04:42, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

The abrupt way this article begins is rude and crude. If there is some serious philosophical or other point, an introductory paragraph or at least a sentence should explain that swamp-men is the name of a thought-experiment that makes some such point. Michael Hardy 02:13 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

(Note: I didn't write the original entry) I considered for a while to just throw the original entry onto the talk page, asking the user to actually make it encyclopedic, but then just wrote a short introductory sentence myself. --snoyes 02:26 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC)

Oh. I wouldn't be such a hothead if I expected anyone to heed what I say. It's much better with the introduction. Michael Hardy 02:42 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

Not a candidate for speedy delete. Google is your friend. 106 hits for "Donald Davidson""Swamp man" - not bad for a very specific saerch. Removing speedy tag. Denni☯ 23:56, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)

Is the 'An Alternate Explanation' section appropriate? It seems to me that rather than indicating the existence and nature of objections to Davidson's argument, the entire section is a very specific attack on the argument on the part of the contributor. Is this not an NPOV problem? (these are not pointed questions, I haven't been on Wikipedia that long, and really don't know for sure, but I suspect there is something wrong here...) - Ncsaint 21:17, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Alright, I haven't heard from anyone about the section I mentioned above, but I gave it some more thought and I feel it was both POV and generally incoherent, and have therefore removed it. In its place, I rewrote and fleshed out the main body of the article, and added an 'objections' section, which I think takes a more neutral account of the opposition, although it probably needs to be expanded upon. Ncsaint 19:31, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

What the hell? This guy is an idiot if he seriously thinks the swamp-guy's "utterances don't refer to anything" or whatever. By definition his brain contains exactly the same information and processing capability as the original guy and this anything he does will be just as meaningful as anything the original guy would have done. In fact, according to him he *is* the original guy, albeit mysteriously teleported at one point. The only "issue" is that the original guy is dead. But no-one will notice. ShardPhoenix 14:13, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

OK I sound like an uneducated dumbass above I guess but this guy is definitely taking philosophical wankery much too far. If the brain is identical then it can comprehend things just a much as the original. ShardPhoenix 14:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

In another thought experiment, Davidson made an exact copy of his hard drive to another and, when the original hard drive failed immediately afterwards, was glad that he had. He quickly swapped the dead drive with the backup and rebooted his computer. However, as it was booting he realised that this was not the original disk and therefore nothing on the backup drive "could be construed as referring to anything particular".

Thinking further, he realised that in fact every time he saved a file then, given that it was to a different physical part of the disk (such is their way), every save meant that his text no longer referred to anything. He gave up using a computer and now writes everything with a pen. And he only writes it once. :o) 92.3.222.154 (talk) 10:16, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

I essentially agree with your take on this issue, and since I am responsible for a lot of the text in this article by now, I am happy to hear that this wasn't clear from the outset; a small victory for my NPOV skills. But I also think calling Davidson an 'idiot' is going too far. I think that ultimately the view that Swampman's subjective life could be any different from Davidson's is insane, but it is not only philosophical weirdos who would hold such a view. Religious considerations, for instance, would lead a lot of people to reject the strict physicalism you advocate in your comment (i.e. brain = mind). Also, it's pretty much unavoidable that Swampman creates a problem for the way we normally attribute meanings, as the examples in the article shows. This needn't cause us any lost sleep if we understand the problem correctly, but I don't think it is as black and white as you present it. You are right to say that he must understand things in the same way, but meaning is generally determined with reference to things beyond the mind of the individual (public facts about his language and the world.)

Well, enough rambling from me. I'm happy to see you react the way I would expect normal people outside philosophy to react to these claims. Thanks for weighing in.

"it is not only philosophical weirdos who would hold such a view. Religious considerations, for instance" - Uhm. What? How is religious considerations an example of "not philosophical weirdos"? Ran4 (talk) 04:26, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

- Ncsaint 21:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Well in this case I don't see how the "public facts" have changed either (since swamp man won't know that there was ever another version of him to die and neither will anyone else), but thanks for the clarification. I do think that the only way you could agree with Davidson's argument is by taking a dualist point of view. ShardPhoenix 13:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

There is another question that is raised by this thought experiment. In science fiction accounts of "beaming", such as star trek, do the people being beamed actually die, or do they continue living, just in a different place?

teleportation

I changed the part about teleporting again. Ncsaint, I recognize that perhaps my original edit might be interpreted as POV, but I only meant for it to express Davidson's intended position: I have modified to to make a weaker claim. However, I did revert the "It has been suggested" because as far as I know this hasn't been suggested anywhere in the literature (I just searched on Philosopher's Index, Poiesis, and JSTOR). Also, I removed the sentence about intentional processes: it is that the Swampman's creation is totally causally unrelated to Davidson's destruction or Davidson in general (Davidson in the story that is), not that Davidson didn't create Swampman intentionally. Theswampman 06:12, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it ultimately does matter whether or not the particles are the same or not. If not, I don't see how you can argue that the beamed being has Davidson's causal history. Of course, each particle has a causal history, as does swampman, as does anything not created ex nihil. But they have never existed together as a human, and I don't see how the beaming process would carry over the causal history of the destroyed entity.

On the other hand, the answer to our debate from a Wikipedia standpoint is much clearer: the pargraph should go altogether. If, as you say, no one has actually argued this point before, then its inclusion is original research (as is your response to it). I don't know who put it in here to begin with, but apparently, it was a mistake. I will delete it posthaste. - Ncsaint 21:01, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Since I didn't take it as a real issue, I wasn't thinking of it as orig research. I was just thinking it was a needed clarification: even if it hasn't been brought up in the literature, apparently it is unclear. Mentioning it makes clear that the case is about a creature which is just coincidentally physically just like Davidson--a something not true of beamed. (Also, I would just lump whether it is the same particles or not under whether it has the right kind of causal history.) What do you think? --Theswampman 00:50, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

well, obviously 'original research' is being used pretty loosely here, but I think (I'm no dedicated Wiki expert, so feel free to correct me) that this sort of thing is generally included under that heading. That is, the parallel isn't something which obviously follows from the thought experiment. It is something that occurred to a Wikipedian, not something which has been significantly discussed, which discussion is being reported by a wikipedian. I think that makes it - and any response to it - original research, for Wiki standards. Obviously, all those rules are a little nebulous, and I've seen peoople argue that essentially every philosophy page violates those rules in some sense, but I think you'd agree that this particular article isn't hurt by living Star Trek out of it, at least until someone publishes on the subject. - Ncsaint 21:01, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Swamp man/Swampman

I just thought I'd point out that the title is "Swamp man" (with a space) but in the article's text it refers to it has "Swampman" (without a space). It's not consistent! 203.122.200.195 08:45, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Swampman and Swamp Thing

Just out of curiosity, did Davidson ever comment on whether he had read Alan Moore's run of the Swamp Thing comic books? Moore's retcon of Swamp Thing's origin was almost exactly as Davidson described it here: Alec Holland was killed (by an explosion, not lightning) and an identical mind (although not identical body) was created in a swamp monster. See Swamp Thing#Alan Moore.

I think that some cross-reference needs to be mentioned, but first we need to be sure whether Davidson gave credit to Moore, copied Moore's story without giving credit, or came up with a similar story independently. Lawrence King 06:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Mm. The timing is right, too - Moore's "The Anatomy Lesson" was published in early 1984. But barring a third-party mention, it'd be OR. DS (talk) 16:09, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I was just thinking that... the dick ripped off Swamp Thing and blagged his way into the annals of philosophy! Alan Moore deserves credit

for that, surely. Moore himself is a great philosopher, despite working almost entirely in the realm of comics. Bloody good comics.

188.29.164.192 (talk) 21:08, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Why doesn't the article on Donald Davidson mention that he was killed by a lightning bolt in a swamp and replaced by Swampman?

Is there a reason the thought experiment, as described here, uses the person who devised it as a character contained in it? Did Davidson deliberately do so, and does this article maintain that wording, to make some additional point? I would not be surprised if this were so, but I am unable to comprehend that point without my head exploding, and would appreciate futher exposition.

However, if that's not the case, it makes everything pointlessly confusing.

Consider this paragraph from the article:

Davidson(1) holds that there would nevertheless be a difference, though no one would notice it. Swampman will appear to recognize Davidson'(2)s friends, but it is impossible for him to actually recognize them, as he has never seen them before. As Davidson(3) puts it, "it can't recognize anything, because it never cognized anything in the first place."

Here, Davidson(1) is the real philosopher who wrote the paper. Davidson(2) is the hypothetical dead guy in the swamp. (Or is it? If not, it would seem that Swampman and has escaped his thought experiment.) And Davidson(3) is identical to Davidson(1).

The statement of the experiment itself says:

This being, whom Davidson(1) terms 'Swampman', has, of course, a brain which is structurally identical to that which Davidson(2) had, and will thus, presumably, behave exactly as Davidson(3) would have.

1) = real guy writing paper, 2) = dead guy in swamp, 3) dead guy in swamp.

Could the character in the thought experiment be renamed "Smith" without affecting its meaning? -- Paul Richter 07:30, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

My view

It is not like a clone, because a clone is a fixed state of matter. It can not possibly arrange its brain matter in whatever way we store memories, for the second person/it to walk, let alone carry on with the life. Do not modernise it. 86.149.101.100 (talk) 12:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Implicitly declaring that memories cannot be transferred or copied due to "whatever way we store memories" seems to be referencing some type of original or unreferenced research. If there is any research on the matter, we would love to be able to read it, to help reinforce the ideas. Whether memories are stored based on "physical" structure (ex. Neuroscience - Long Term Potentiation) or an unknown storage mechanism that depends not only on the "present" state of the physical structure, but also on the causal impacts of the same physical structure, we can only determine what is more favorable as evidence per each becomes relevant. Kaikydelan (talk) 22:13, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Don't know how to edit pages but on the [who?] in -- Others[who?] have called into question the validity of this sort of thought experiment altogether, maintaining that when a thought experiment is too far moved from the actual state of affairs, our intuitions cease to be meaningful. -- I lifted this from the page on Twin_earth thought experiment. -- Some philosophers believe that all such science-fiction thought experiments should be viewed with suspicion. They argue that when a thought experiment describes a state of affairs that is radically different from the actual one (or what we think it to be), our intuitions become unreliable, and significant philosophical conclusions cannot be drawn from them. Daniel Dennett, for example, calls Twin Earth and other experiments like it "intuition pumps", which play on a strong but ultimately illusory intuition. Indeed, Phil Hutchinson[1] notes that a. if one looks at Putnam's own later criticisms of others (for example his criticisms of Jaegwon Kim in his book The Threefold Cord) one finds that implicitly he critiques his own earlier self; and b. that the persuasive power of the Twin Earth thought experiment/intuition pump relies on our turning a blind eye to aspects of the experiment in order that it establish that which Putnam claims it to. In short, the thought experiment is set up in such a way that one's intuitions will be pumped in the desired direction. --

Perhaps someone can make the changes. Han van der Heide 11:21 31 Oktober 2011 UTC — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.211.115.30 (talk) 11:21, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Implying a soul (or some mechanism for metaphysical storage of state)?

Is Davidson supporting the idea of a soul? It sounds like his argument is dancing around the idea of a soul; otherwise what difference does it make what physical medium the Davidson/swampman is made from? While atoms may be distinguishable, they aren't at the scale of humans. What if the second bolt of lightning, instead of hitting a different swamp, rather hits the same swamp in exactly the same spot and reforms and reanimates the exact same molecules that the original Davidson was made from? Every atom ends up back it it's original place prior to the first lightning strike. The substance of Davidson/swampman is indistinguishable at any scale. The only difference between this Davidson/swampman and the original Davidson is that for a period of time between the two lightning strikes Davidson did not exist; the original Davidson existed since birth without interruption. The new Davidson has a gap in his existence.

It's not necessarily about a soul. More about history, like the Ship of Theseus. Swamp Man will "remember" Davidson's life, though he

hasn't actually lived it. Your second lightning bolt is like the idea of gathering the old ship's timbers back up into a "new" old Ship.

188.29.164.192 (talk) 21:14, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

In the case of the body being disintegrated into atoms and those atoms then reassembling into the exact same body that existed before, the history of that body extends rights back to conception (and irrelevantly and arguably further back). In the other case, the new body, although being an exact duplicate, has no "history" preceding the lightning strike. This is the difference that apparently makes all the difference.

The informational content of the two bodies is almost exactly the same (any discrepancies being solely due to the creation event that just happened: experience of the lightning strike, if any, awakening in a different position, etc).

However, arguing that having a different creation history is sufficient to create meaningful differences in the viability of the information (the body, its memories, personality, etc) is .. well, that's what gives meaning to the lives of some philosophers. 92.3.222.154 (talk) 10:36, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

Wittgenstein

The argument seems similar to Wittgenstein's argument about things like signposts in a one-minute England (that appears out of nothing and lasts for only a minute) having no meaning despite being identical to the actual England; perhaps someone more knowledgeable could say something about this. Ben Finn (talk) 14:58, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Without knowing more about what you're referring to, there arises a need to be persuaded why one-minute England would not fully have the same meaning as the actual England, for exactly one minute. 92.3.222.154 (talk) 10:23, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

2020 Update

Hello! Not an expert in philosophy by any means so feel free to remove/edit what I did. I added content to the intro (w/ citation, although elaborated upon by me) and changed what used to be a plagiarized block quote from a book (plagiarism which continued even outside of the block quote) to just quoting Davidson's work itself. Unfortunately the paper is behind a paywall; I have access to it but it's not freely available. Carla.Abra (talk) 18:20, 29 July 2020 (UTC)