X-Message-Number: 14750
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 19:05:59 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: Location and Personal Identity

Again the subject of "location" has come up in the identity discussion.

It's as if some people reason (consciously or unconsciously):  "Well, I
simply CAN'T be the same person as my duplicate sitting across the room.
That's ridiculous!  It goes against everything that I've known about myself
since I was six months old.  But those guys have a point: physically, the
differences are minimal.  But there must be a difference.  Aha!  Location!
That must be it!"

Never mind that no one before in the history of thought ever supposed that
location has anything to do with personal identity.  Never mind that a
person changes his or her location all the time.  Never mind that our best
physical theories never include location as intrinsically important.  Talk
about grasping at straws!

I can just see what people's reaction might be if some kind of space-warp
wormhole technology invited them to instantly teleport from one location to
another:  "Hey!  If there's anything that I was forced to conclude from all
those identity discussions, it's that my location is central to my
identity.  Keep that wormhole away from me!"   Of course that wouldn't
happen; those folks would end up teleporting all over the place just like
the rest of us----even if it were the conceptually previous idea of
disintegrating you here and reassembling you there (with different atoms
yet, as in Captain Kirk's teleporter).

Lee Corbin

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