X-Message-Number: 14773
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000 19:40:20 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: Re: One thing in two places, at once?

>    #14765: One thing in two places, at once? [david pizer]

David Pizer wrote in #14765
>Location has something to do with identity.  No *one* thing
>can be in two places at the exact same time in this universe
>that I know of yet.  Yet, that seems to be what the "Memory
>is ALL that counts" people are saying.

First, as I said, I don't think that memory is all.  I wonder,
who does?  I would like to hear their criticism of the notion,
put much better months ago by someone else on this list, that
in addition to memory, attitudes and beliefs are surely
important to our personal identity.  If some vain, arrogant,
hotheaded, deeply religious, extremely cruel and sadistic
individual came to have my exact memories, he still wouldn't
be me.  Does anyone think that they would still be the same
person after such a transformation?

Secondly, on being in two places at once, it's true that of
physical things, we agree that it's never possible.  A certain
stone or even computer system can never be in two places at the
same time.  (There is a very minor problem here talking about
relativity theory, which forbids exact simultaneity, but your
point is very well taken.)

But naturally, many of us deny that a person is just a physical
thing, any more than "A Tale of Two Cities" is a physical thing.
It's a pattern of course---so we're yet at a standstill here. 
You think (perhaps) that a person is like a physical system, 
and we think that a person ought to be considered to be a pattern.

I do not believe that either concept can be shown to be self-
contradictory, or absolutely wrong.  But I do believe that
considering a person to be a thing leads to some awfully 
peculiar consequences.  For one thing that will be very important
in the future, if you don't believe that a person is a pattern,
you will find it pointless to back yourself up periodically.

Lee Corbin

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