Re: Reasons and Persons

[George Levy]

Russell Standish wrote: This would imply that there exist "islands" of indentity, and having limited awareness in time and multispace, we can only ever be aware of one instance from each island, but that might change with technology. BTW another analogy is the islands of geneflow within biological species. Within biology, we have such things as ring species, where two species at a location (eg Britain) cannot interbreed, yet can interbreed with neighbouring species to the east and west in an interrupted chain that circumnavigates the pole. (Sorry I may not be explaining the concept of ring species too well - look up Wikipedia). In such a case, perhaps "ring identities" such as Jesse Mazer <-> Bruno Marchal do exist - but I'd like to be surer of the analogy. Also ring species are the exception, not the rule, in Nature. If we can define an intermediary state common to all species then we will have bridged all the isolated island. It seems that at the embryonic stage and possibly at the fetus stage, rhe nervous circuitry is so simple that it may be common between all individual of a specie and there are no identity islands. So we could say with near certainty that Bruno Marchal and Jesse Mazer used to be one and the same. In addition we may assume that embryonic and fetal development allows for a continuous distribution of neurons in the brain rather than in discrete space positions, and an incremental connectivity of the neurons such that any particular  neuron may differ by a single connection. With these assumptions we may infer that there is a continuity in personal identity from anyone to anyone. George --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---