X-Message-Number: 21228 Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 11:52:51 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Comment on Duplicates Dave Pizer, #21218, offers a simple argument as to why a duplicate person cannot be "the same" as the original. As far as I am concerned, he is perfectly right, based on his own concept of "sameness"--but also irrelevant. The concept of sameness that is important to me is not trivial--it depends on my being the "same" as a less-developed version of myself. But it does not require the nonexistence of anyone else who is also the "same" in this sense, but is not the same person as me. It also does not recognize distinctions of instantiation: one copy is as good as another. That is to say, I am a patternist not a tokenist. To me this is crucial because (1) I am comfortable with the idea that I "survive" through memories and other personal information, regardless of which particular material structures may encode this information, and (2) I see terrible philosophical problems if one is attached to specific material structures to comprise one's identity. I will not deny that there are some tough philosophical problems associated with the patternist position; many of them have been aired on this forum. But the problems of the tokenist position are worse, in my estimation. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21228