Asking Juergen if the first person should take delays of reconstitution into account when evaluating first person self-undeterminacy, he wrote:
>No, I do not. I suggest you first define a formal framework for >measuring delays etc. Then we can continue. You should have told me this at the preceeding step which was also informal (although precise). I am proposing a thought experiment which is a kind of reductio ad absurdo here (remember that time and space will disappear at the end of the reasoning). My feeling is that, for some unknow reason you have decided to elude the reasoning. That seems clear with your answer to Russell Standish: you are saying 2+2=4 and I am saying 2+2=5! You are saying that I am fully wrong, but you don't tell me where. How am I suppose to take your disagrement here. You don't really answer the question. What does your theory predict with respect to the following experience: You are scanned read and annihilate at Amsterdam. I reconstitute you in Washington tomorrow, and at Moscow in one billion years. Are your expectations different from the situation where the two reconstitutions are simultaneous. If you want to be formal, let us accept classical Newtonian mechanics for the sake of the argument. You know that with comp such experience are possible *in principle*, and that is all what we need for the reasoning. Should we or should we not take these delays into account when evaluating the first-person indeterminacy? What does your theory say? What do you say? (Remark: it is a practical question for anyone ready to say "yes" to a surgeon proposing them an artificial brain. Those who accepts the answer given by Robert Nozick (which says that after the duplication we survive in the closer continuer(*)) could as well not care if a copy of their brain exists. The others will say yes to the doctor, but will insists no copies of the brain will be available. There is nothing vague here.) Bruno (*) Rober Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, Oxford Clarendon Press 1981.
