On 23 June 2015 at 16:52, Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote:
> Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > >> On 23 June 2015 at 14:19, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto: >> [email protected]>> wrote: >> >> On 6/22/2015 8:11 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> >>> On 23 June 2015 at 10:05, meekerdb <[email protected] >>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >>> >>> On 6/22/2015 2:56 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> On Tuesday, June 23, 2015, meekerdb <[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? >>> >>> 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 [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.
