Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 23 June 2015 at 10:37, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 6/22/2015 2:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Tuesday, June 23, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> <mailto:[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
On 6/22/2015 3:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
I diverge from my previous self from moment to
moment in ordinary
life, but I still consider that I remain me. If I
woke up
tomorrow taller because I had a growth spurt during
the night I
would still consider that I was me; yet by the "closest
continuer" theory, I would stop being me if a copy
that hadn't
grown was made somewhere else.
I think waking up somewhere else would count strongly
against
being the closest continuation.
What if, while both are asleep, the original is moved to
another location and the copy moved to the original's bed?
That would help, but there's an implicit assumption that
asleep=mindless. Anesthetic would make a better example. But
won't both the original and the copy find himself in a disjoint
location incompatible with where he was before?
I think part of the problem here is that the first-person impression
is taken to be definitive. Since the closest continuer theory
weights bodily continuity fairly highly in the metric whereby
'closest' is to be determined, what happens to your body, whether or
not you are conscious of it, is an important consideration.
Similarly, physical causal connections weight significantly.
Consequently, moving while asleep or anaesthetized are scarcely
relevant to the personal identity issue.
If this ad hoc addition is part of the closest continuer theory (I admit
I haven't read Nozick's original paper) then it just further discredits it.
What ad hoc addition? The idea is to find an account of personal
identity that captures our standard notions of what defines a person. An
account in terms of memories works in many instances, but it fails to
account for other cases in which we would say that a person continues
even though memories fail, or become confused.
Personal duplication issues complicate the matter. That is why a clear
account is required. The best account is in Nozick's book.
Bruce
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