X-Message-Number: 21240
From: "Lee Corbin" <>
Subject: RE: CryoNet #21222 - #21234
Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 15:01:14 -0800

While I agree with his conclusions, Thomas Donaldson does 
insert the passage

> Clearly if we duplicate someone (forgetting all the problems of
> doing so, even with Nanotechnology) then the two duplicates cannot
> be the same person. If nothing else, they have different locations
> in space,

and why should that prevent anything?  What if they have
different locations in time?  Are we then to conclude
that they can't be the same person? (I know that you
agree with me here!).  So what is so different about
time and space as regards identity?

> and soon will fall to arguing over just what possessions
> and attachments (wife, children, dog, cat) are to go to which 
> one of them --- thus becoming increasingly different, and perhaps
> even hating one another. 

Only if they're idiots.  Each---if he is so happy as to
have a triple digit IQ---will understand all the facts of
the situation, and make the best of it.

Michael Price notes

> The notion that an individual has "died", even though a copy persists is a
> non-operational statement.  In Ayer's terminology it is a meaningless
> or metaphysical statement, as distinct from empirical statements or
> tautologies (such as 1+1=2) which are both in principle verifiable.
> 
> Ask yourself this, how could you ever, even in principle, test the notion
> of individual survival being dependent on physical continuity?  It can't be 
> done and is therefore a meaningless concept.

Quite right.  I even go so far as to claim that one's duplicate
is one's self, at least in all the ways most important to survival.

Lee Corbin

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