RE: A calculus of personal identity

[Stathis Papaioannou]

Lee Corbin writes:
 
> Well, people here are prepared to accept that at each
> moment the universe splits into innumerable copies,
> that physics is governed by equations that Feynman
> (erroneously IMO) says nobody can understand, and
> our lives are not as they appear, but are composed
> of ensembles of observer moments.

Actually, my personal view is that *none* of my copies are me, whether in the future, the past, in a parallel universe or coming out of a teleporter in this universe. I believe the first person singular pronoun can only be used consistently when referring to a single observer moment, and that it is misunderstanding this which leads to the so-called paradoxes of personal identity. Without going into arguments about the merits of this view, given that I honestly believe it, how should I behave? I can get into an aeroplane trusting that it will not plummet like a stone or fall off the edge of the world, but I can't accept at the visceral level, despite what I know intellectually, that the person waking up in my bed tomorrow won't be me. The conventional view on personal identity would seem to be wired into my brain at a much deeper level than the belief that the world is flat or that chunks of metal can't fly.
 
Stathis Papaioannou

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