X-Message-Number: 26642
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 18:48:07 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Bifurcation
References: <>

Kennita Watson wrote:

>What if you are duplicated not by having one static
>'you' and one 'copy', but by bifurcation, like an
>amoeba?  In this case, both 'child yous' would be
>descended from the 'parent you' in the same way,
>and either both of you committed the murder or
>neither did.

In principle this should be possible. (Remember the discussion some months 
ago of "Paul" the split brain patient who ended up as two separate 
personalities, each with the power of speech?). If nothing else you could 
imagine in the future a brain enhancement--redundant tissue say--added to 
make it possible. Although Richard B. R. can best speak for himself, I 
think he would say in this case that the original person is dead because 
you did not have one and only one qualia experiencer present at all times. 
As soon as the QE became divided into two, the original died. The two 
resulting persons must then be counted innocent. This would result from, 
basically, splitting the brain so as to have two halves (left, right) that 
were both functional, call them L and R. But if I varied the operation a 
bit, and simply picked away at the original brain until only R was left, 
and at no time was there ever an L or another QE, then the original person 
would still live on in R. (A single QE was present at all times.) So the R 
in the second scenario is numerically identical to the R in the first, yet 
he is "guilty" but the other is not. Curious.

Another case of a bifurcation oddity concerns partial dormancy. Complete 
dormancy--dreamless sleep (for instance)--does not destroy the QE according 
to Richard. But I wonder about partial dormancy. If the right connections 
between the parts of the brain were dormant ("asleep") then the remaining 
parts could function as independent QEs. Though I am not an expert on the 
matter, it seems in theory this could happen sometimes even in normal 
sleep. I had a dream recently, for example, where I was in a car starting 
to go somewhere, but the car itself was inside a house. Did two parts of my 
brain, acting independently, dream two different things (being in a car, 
being in the larger enclosed space of a house), then on awakening the two 
different memories were harmonized by conflating them? So in effect there 
were two QEs going at once, at least for a short time, enough to "kill" the 
person I was before this dream episode? Seems a possibility. Of course I've 
also heard of "multiple personality disorder" suggesting that sometimes 
more than one "person" can be resident in one brain, that is to say, one 
QE--or maybe you would say there was more than one QE but physically 
connected. However, I don't think that would deal with every case since the 
same parts of the brain could be used, alternately, by the different 
personalities.

Mike Perry

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