X-Message-Number: 16119
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 08:31:28 -0600
From: "Raphael T. Haftka" <>
Subject: The on-off identity fallacy

Teleporter nonsense

I am quite distressed at identity debaters insistence to treat identity as 
an on-off issue. You are either the same person as your teleported self or 
your childhood self, or you are not.

Identity is a matter of degree. For example, if cryonic suspension 
destroyed all my memories, I would claim that it destroyed an important 
component of my identity. If it destroyed only 90% of my memories, so that 
I remembered who I am, and a few vague details of my life before 
suspension, I will claim that the process still would have destroyed part 
of my identity. I am not saying that I have a scale to measure what 
percentage of my identity is preserved, but I claim that I can distinguish 
between various degrees of identity preservation. For example, because my 
own memory of past events is rather poor, I have a much stronger sense of 
identity with my yesterday's self than with my five-year-old self. Whatever 
you decide about whether you would be willing to kill yourself for a 
million dollars and be replaced by a copy, there is no doubt that everybody 
on this list will be willing to be replaced by a teleported copy if the 
other option would be to be cloned. For example, you find out that Earth is 
going to be swallowed by a nova in the next hour, and your two options are 
to be teleported or to send a few cells in a rocket to another planetary 
system so that you could be cloned there.


This is an issue central to cryonics, because cryonicists seek to preserve 
their identity, rather than just their biological self (cloning may be 
enough for that). By postulating some mythical selfhood connected to some 
mysterious processes in the brain or elsewhere, we are lulling ourselves to 
a sense of security instead of taking steps to preserve more tangible 
measures of identities, such as memories.

Teleporters are for the time being the stuff of science fiction. Memory 
preservation is here today!



Raphael (Rafi) Haftka
Department of Aerospace Engineering, Mechanics and Engineering
University of Florida
  until 5/10/01 at
MS 1110
Sandia National Laboratory              Tel: 505-844-9576
PO Box 5800                             Fax: 505-845-7442
Albuquerque, NM 87185

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