I confess that I had never heard of the "Closer Continuer Theory" until today, so I typed it into Google and read the first thing that came up.
http://www2.drury.edu/cpanza/continuer-theory.html And my original snap judgement was correct, it is a pretty silly theory. > To be sent to the moon is not a violation, but to be beamed to the > moon while the original stayed behind on Earth would involve a branching > continuer -- the branch on the moon would introduce a "break" with the past > causal history of the person (which the person on Earth maintains). How is that a break with past causal history? There was a cause, a reason, that the guy on the moon is the way he is, he is the way he is because of the way things happened to the guy on earth. a clear-cut case of cause and effect. And given that the atoms in your body and brain are in a constant state of flux, just what is so original about "the original" anyway? > Nozick's theory suggests that if a branching event occurs, the branch > that is the closest in terms of psychological continuity will be the branch > that maintains personal identity. What in the world does that even mean? Suppose I'm not the "closest continuer", does that mean I have no identity even though I vividly remember being John Clark as a child? Has some mysterious force emanated from that closer guy reach out and found me and destroyed my consciousness? > If a person is duplicated, at the moment of duplication -- up to the time > when the closest continuer can be established -- neither branch maintains a > personal identity with the original chain. Then, once the closest continuer > is established, the closest one takes on identity with the former chain. > This, to be frank, is quite odd. For a small amount of time a person would > not be identical with his former self, and then that person will once again > be identical with that self. So for a small time a person loses personal > identity with his former self. That sounds like a parliamentary procedure dreamed up by a committee of human politicians to determine which decedent of a recently deceased Duke should receive that royal title; it does not sound like a law of nature. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
