X-Message-Number: 21242 From: Date: Sun, 23 Feb 2003 22:11:47 EST Subject: Not so sure - To Thomas --part1_49.2b5a1eb0.2b8ae773_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Thomas Donaldson said: "You now are distinct from the Dave Pizer who existed yesterday. The Dave Pizer of tomorrow will be distinct from the Dave Pizer of today. Do we then consider you to be totally different people for each day/hour/minute/second of your life? In what way does your brain continue the same?" Let me repeat my argument. X is really distinct from Y if and only if X can exist without Y and Y can exist without X. If you are a continuation and lets call that X, and Y of yesterday WAS you then, but it was not distinct then. So it was not distinct then. It was not a duplicate then. And Y does not exist now, so there never is/was a time in your example, that I can see, where a self and a duplicate exist at the same time. So it is not a counter-example to my principle, at least not that I can see. This may have implications to show that either what some people call a duplicate is not really a duplicate - its the same thing at the same time and at a different time one of the entities cannot exist so the type of thing that you are describing does not meet the definition of being distinct and so that is not an example of a duplicate. We need to look for a duplicate that is the same thing at the same time. What you were yesterday was what you were yesterday, it IS different from you of today, or tomorrow, but at that time one of the entities does not exist so there never is a time when a duplicate of you existed under this thought.??? Huh? David --part1_49.2b5a1eb0.2b8ae773_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21242