X-Message-Number: 14662
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 19:19:07 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: Identity

Dave Pizer wrote #14647,

>If [replacing an entity with a copy recreates the same person]
>were true (and I grant that it may be ...but..) then if this
>replacement process was done somehow without destroying the
>original, and the original was sitting there looking at, and
>talking with, the duplicate, I think the original, at least,
>would not agree that he/she was the other person (the duplicate).

I was disappointed that no one in the recent flurry of
identity posts defended this very point of view!  I for one
certainly argue that my duplicate and I are indeed the same
person, even if we are sitting across from one another
having a chat!  Here's why:

If you saw yourself on TV when the timestamp said that you
were looking into the past, you'd say "that's me!".  Suppose
that we allow some alien technology not available now.  (Our
beliefs should adapt to any mere technological improvements
no matter how outlandish.) If you saw yourself bound, gagged,
unable to move, and the timestamp said you were looking into
the future, you'd say "that's me!".   So why do we have the
prejudice that if you are seeing a duplicate of yourself on
closed-circuit TV, and the timestamp says that it's the 
present, you say "that's not me!"?

It's really because of a belief we have about time, and a
prejudice that we cannot be in two places at the same time. 
Now, of course, some will want to retort that the experiences
at this moment of you and your duplicate are not identical---
well, neither are your experiences the same as they were
yesterday, so that's not really material.  Others will retort
that your duplicate isn't exactly the same as you (it's
memories are ever so slightly different).  But your duplicate,
if created only moments ago, is vastly more similar to you, by
any objective measure, than is a future version of you  weeks
from now, or a past version of you from weeks ago.

True, it was almost the first thing that we learned as babies,
that the boundary of our skins demarked what is and what is
not "I".  It's also true that if you pinch someone, his 
duplicate will not cry out.  We may be separate animals, but
we are not separate people.  All the things that are really
important about me, and with which I identify, are equally
true of any close duplicate.

Lee Corbin

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