X-Message-Number: 14691
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2000 00:22:53 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Identity issues

Dave Pizer, #14673, writes

>1.	Assume an exact duplicate of you has just been created, and the
instructor tells you that you have to pass a test before you or the
duplicate can leave.  

>2.	You and the duplicate are sitting across from each other in a room.
There is a gun on the table.  The instructor tells you there is not enough
room for you and the duplicate in the universe (or some other valid reason
why only one of you can continue to exist).  One of you can have
immortality and eternal happiness and one of you has to be shot, and it has
to be done now.

>3.	The instructor says that you have to shoot either the duplicate or
yourself, or else he will have to shoot both of you.  You are not allowed
to shoot the instructor.

By this point, however, it is clear that the "exact duplicate" could not be
that at all, but will have begun to have different experiences, under normal
circumstances. (In particular, apparently you are the one with the gun, not
him.) The two of you are separate and distinct individuals and do not
qualify as "duplicates" as I would see it. Perfect duplicates would be
another matter.

More generally, I see that the discussion has swung around to identity
issues again. (I've been too busy lately to keep up with it much.) I have
devoted a fair amount of wordage to my points of view on this already. (A
lot of this can be found in my book.) But there is one point I would like to
emphasize here. There is much talk about the way things "are" as if *are*
and *is* are some kind of absolutes. One needs to be careful here. Take the
day person hypothesis, essentially, that we die each time we lose
consciousness, and a new person, similar to the original but still
different, takes our place. Of course this person has the right imprinting
to *feel* it's us, but so what? Can you disprove the day person hypothesis?
I submit that it will pass every experimental test. But I don't subscribe to
it, and neither do most other people, as far as I know. There are other
hypotheses that can also be made to fit the facts, that are more attractive
for other reasons, and one of these is the one I've adopted. But it seems
clear that certain matters of "fact" cannot be decided empirically, but must
rest on one's preferences. The reasons for this seem to be that (1) our
language has a certain amount of ambiguity, which in some cases allows for
quite different concepts to be attached to the same words, and (2) people
have very different preferences, dispositions, etc., so that there are major
disagreements over which attachments are preferred.

Mike Perry

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