X-Message-Number: 21279
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 17:40:33 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Reply to Dave Pizer on Duplicates

I said (#21228):

>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 ........................."

Dave Pizer, #21244, replied:

>Mike, thanks for the try, but I can't understand what your discussion here
>does to refute the rock-solid premises and logic in my argument.  It seems
>like all you are saying is that you don't like my conclusion.  I already knew
>that.   If you want to convince me, or others, lay out my position, show that
>a premise is false, or that the logic doesn't follow some where, not that you
>are uncomfortable with the conclusion.

So now I'll try again, hoping this time my position will be clearer. First, 
following Dave's suggestion, I'll lay out his position as stated in #21218 
(with one very minor correction).

>Why a duplicate cannot be the original - the final proof!
>By: David Pizer
>
>1. X is really distinct from Y if and only if X can exist without Y, and Y
>can exist without X.
>
>2. By definition, a duplicate would have to be separate from the original
>to qualify in the discussions/debates we have been having on this subject as
>being a duplicate.
>
>3. SO, if there was a real duplicate, it could exist apart from, and
>without, the original and by premise one it would be distinct. In other
>words, a duplicate is distinct from the original.
>
>4. THEREFORE, a duplicate is not the original.
>
>THEREFORE, destroying/killing the original and letting the duplicate survive
>results in the death (non-survival) of the original and therefore duplication
>is not a viable form of survival for any original.


Going from here, and expanding on my previous comment, I see a major 
difficulty in that something important is not stated. What is it? Not 
enough is said about just what it is that is "original" and is then 
duplicated. Presumably, the "original" we are talking about is a human 
body, this much is clear (right?). But now I ask, *what is the significance 
of a body?* Is the body the person? For me the short answer is *no*, the 
body is not purely and simply the person, but is better thought of as an 
*instantiation* of the person.

By way of a rough analogy, a "book you write" is not purely and simply the 
copy of the book you put on your shelf, after it finally comes back from 
the publisher. True, the book can be said to survive in its copies 
(instantiations)--yet the book is not any one of these but something apart 
from them. In a roughly similar way, though there are some important 
complications that I'll gloss over in the interest of brevity, the person 
too can be said to survive in his/her instantiations.

In the case of the book, we see how instantiations can be separate and 
distinct without thereby creating different books. Thus, to dupicate an 
instantiation is not to create a different book. In a similar way, a person 
could survive, I feel, through more than one instantiation, though again 
the situation is more complicated than in the case of the book. But again, 
to duplicate an instantiation (human body in this case) does not, in and of 
itself, mean we have created another person who is different from the 
original. If two initially identical instantiations start to live separate 
lives and have different experiences, as we would expect if duplication 
actually happened, *then* they become different individuals. But even then, 
in my view, the original person can be said to survive in both, in the same 
way as an earlier version of a person survives in a (single) later version. 
Thus one person could fission into two or more, equally authentic 
continuers which would be different people--I see no fundamental problem 
with that, at the philosophical level.

Mike Perry

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