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

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