X-Message-Number: 25190
Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 07:53:14 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25181 - #25189

For RBR entirely, this time:

When I repeated my question with changes, I was asking you to DEFINE
what you meant by continuity. You base your ideas about survival of
your QE on its continuity; yet nowhere do you discuss explicitly
just what you mean by "continuity". 

Take the first example I made, of someone who is destroyed and then
recreated EXACTLY. Why is it that I cannot claim continuity between
this person and his/her recreation? On all physical and measurable
factors, they are the same down to the molecules which make them
up. Again, I raised the possibility that we might have our QE
disappear every time we slept, and awaken with a new QE (but of
course all the memories etc which our brain contained when we
went to sleep). For this one, you propose various tests to show
that we've existed physically though this whole process. First,
when we sleep ordinarily no such tests are applied, so that the
question still remains. Second, if (as in the first example)
we can be physically and indistinguishably the same person and
still have different QEs, then just what measurements do you 
propose to apply which will tell you that our Q E has or has not
changed? The simple fact that we haven't been destroyed and
replaced while we slept fails to prove that we've kept the same
QE. For that matter, perhaps even sleep isn't necessary, and
our QE changes hourly. Just HOW DO WE TELL THE DIFFERENCE? 
Remember that our brain remains the same (modulo whatever
we've experienced in that hour), so that each of our Q Es will
remember its experiences through our whole life.

To repeat for clarity: your arguments depend on continuity of
our physical selves, so far as I understand it. Yet continuity
is far from an obvious or simple concept. I am asking you to
define what you mean by continuity. And if you answer only that
it should be obvious and simple, I will discuss all the variations
of that notion which have been made through history. 

            Best wishes and long long life to all,

               Thomas Donaldson (NOT Donald, but Thomas)

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