X-Message-Number: 26667 Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 22:15:04 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Survival of "Identity" References: <> Richard B. R. writes >This is something that puzzles me about you: you can plainly see >your view is incompatible with survival of identity, but you speak >as if it isn't (by redefinition and equivocation, depending on the >circumstance). Moreover, you *live* as if you do believe in >survival of identity. I should be clearer about my notion of "identity" which is different from yours. And I will try harder in the future. Sorry for any problems that may have been caused by my choice of terminology and/or lack of explication. I believe (not dogmatically, but have strong hopes and confidence) in "survival"--in the sense of afterlife--of what I consider "identity"--this of course is from a patternist view, in contrast to your view, which is what I would call a tokenist view. Now, it might be objected that I shouldn't be using the term "identity" at all. In mathematics and some other settings, "identity" holds between two objects if and only if they are the same in all respects. In the world of personal affairs, though, we speak of "identity" more loosely. You are not the same in all respects as a past version of yourself, yet you say you share "identity" with this past version. This is true both from a tokenist and a patternist view. "Identity" indicates a kind of link between one version of a self-at-a-partcular-time or "person-stage" and another, but not sameness in all respects. (The absence of sameness in all respects occurs in other settings too where we speak of "identity"--an object can undergo physical changes and still be considered the "same" object.) If the term can be used acceptably by tokenists, it seems to me it should be acceptable for patternists also to use it, granted it must be understood in a different sense, which should be made clear. There is one property I should mention: a patternist view of identity forgoes transitivity. B and C could both be continuers (normally, later versions) of A thus share "identity" with A, but neither is a continuer of the other and do not share "identity" with each other. Thus B and C could exist side-by-side, something forbidden in a tokenist view. But intuitively, it seems reasonable for me to say I share identity with myself of yesterday, even though there may be other, coexistent beings who also share this identity, from which I today feel separate and distinct. This would follow from many-worlds splitting, for instance. Once again I'll express the view I hold that proper notions of "identity" and "survival" should be robust enough that a person would survive many-worlds splitting, should that happen to be true. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26667