X-Message-Number: 21302
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 17:09:45 -0500
From: Francois <>
Subject: For David, about message 21294

>Just because an observer, or the one (or two in your example) frozen new
>entities, does not know if he/she is the original does not give any
evidence
>that the original survived.  I would not doubt that, in your example, both
>people thought they were the original, but I would doubt that the original
>did survive, since neither of them meets the perfect definition of what it
is
>that makes a person a person, and makes this person this person.

>David

>PS: Don't ask me what that perfect definition is

I won't ask you what the perfect definition is. An identity and a
personality are completely subjective things. I am me because of what I
perceive when I look within myself, at my memories, my opinions, my
reactions, my emotions, my dreams, my likes and dislikes. All of those are
encoded in my brain's structure, which cahnges with time. But I don't ask
myself if I'm still me when I wake up in the morning after a night's sleep,
nor do I ask if I am still me after a year has elapsed. Yet, my current
brain structure is probably quite different from the structure it had a year
ago. For instance, a lot of its constituent atoms have been changed. But the
identity that brain perceived and the one it perceives today are, as far as
I can tell, the same. I did not turn into someone else during that time.

It is, of course, trivially obvious that a copy is not the original. I mean,
duh! You have two separate objects and anyone can tell you that. But what
interests us here is not the objects themselves, but what they do. And what
a copy of me would do is perceive itself as me. It would be me. If I were to
die now, be preserved and revived in a century, there would be far less
differences between the me who died and the me who woke up in a century than
between me today and me a year ago.

Let me put it this way. I could put you under anasthesia for an hour and
then wake you up. The person waking up would be the one who was put to
sleep. In fact, you may already have been put under general anasthesia and
you didn't put your identity in question when you woke up. It happened to me
and I know I didn't. Now, if you were to die during that experiment, be
cryonically preserved and reanimated a century later, would you be any less
certain of your identity upon waking up? I don't think so. I certainly
wouldn't.

Francois
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No lifespan shorter than eternity is acceptable
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