X-Message-Number: 14847
Date: Sat, 04 Nov 2000 14:53:05 -0500
From: david pizer <>
Subject: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

>From: Henri Kluytmans <>

snip

>This was my hypothetical scenario :

>Your body is frozen (in this hypothetical example it will 
>be a perfect vitrification, so no repairs will be necessary). 

>Your body is taken apart atom by atom. All the atoms 
>are labeled when they are stored away. The locations 
>of every atom are stored in a database. Then the body 
>is build up again, atom by atom, to its original state. 
>Every original atom is put in its old place. The body 
>is reanimated.
>Would you mind ?

I think I would mind.  The new person on the other end might not.  

>(And if you would mind, could you please elaborate on 
>why you would mind? )

I am not as if the reassembled person is going to be as much a survival of
the original person, then if the person is not taken apart, but reanimated
as is.  If the frozen person was a perfect vitrification and no repairs
were necessary, I am more confident that any frozen original person who was
not tampered with is the original person.

 If selfhood is a unique continuing process, we now have to know if the
re-assembled person is a continuation of the original process or a new
process.  I don't have enought info to make that decision yet.  But.......
why take the person apart?  If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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