On 23 June 2015 at 16:52, Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> On 23 June 2015 at 14:19, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net <mailto: >> meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: >> >> On 6/22/2015 8:11 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> >>> On 23 June 2015 at 10:05, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net >>> <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote: >>> >>> On 6/22/2015 2:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> On Tuesday, June 23, 2015, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net >>>> <mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> 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? >>> >>> The copy will find himself in the bed he fell unconscious in, and >>> the original will find himself moved. Both would feel they were a >>> continuation of the original, but not knowing about the switch >>> they might guess wrong as to which was which. >>> >> >> In what sense would they be wrong. They would have different >> memories and be different persons. >> >> One would be the copy and the other would be the original, but there >> would be no way to tell which was which without referring to a record of >> the procedure. >> > > So why not tell them what was done? > It seems to me to be a great weakness of the memory-only account that you > are expecting people to make sensible decisions on the basis of partial > information. If we allow personal identity to have a bodily, third person, > element, then these problems do not arise. > > If there is a genuine lack of information about what was done, then the > decisions are arbitrary to a large extent. This is unnecessary in general > since these obscure scenarios do not happen accidentally -- they are > brought about by the deliberate actions of some external agent. So ask the > agent and get the facts. Don't try to solve the problem on the basis of > partial data. But the significant part of personal identity is subjective. If you prove to me that during the night my body was taken apart atom by atom and a very similar body assembled in its place with new atoms, that does not tell me that I am deluded about surviving, it tells me that a person can survive despite such a procedure. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
