On 6/20/2015 9:05 AM, John Clark wrote:
On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 Terren Suydam <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:> You find yourself in a sealed room. There is only one exit, a door. The next person to open the door will be killed, at which point the door will be disarmed. Fortunately for you, there is a duplication machine in the room that makes an exact replica of whatever is placed inside. How do you get out of the room?I just open the door of course; and your description was quite incorrect. No person will be killed when that door is opened because the person of John Clark is an adjective not a noun, John Clark is the way matter behaves when it is organized in a Johnclarkian way, and there is still a chunk of matter organized in a Johnclarkian way in that duplicate room.
But the two chunks of matter organized in a John Clarkian way were not exactly the same and depending on the duration of their existence they might be quite different. So the fact that "John Clark" is an adjective is no more to the point than saying "homo sapiens" is an adjective and therefore no one is killed because there is still a homo sapiens.
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