X-Message-Number: 21306
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2003 00:57:55 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Survival Through Duplicates

Dave Pizer makes a long reply to my recent posting concerning whether 
survival of a person could occur in a duplicated body (something which, as 
has been remarked, could be an important issue in cryonic resuscitation and 
later survival). I say yes, he says no. I'll try to limit my response here 
to a few salient points.

Pizer said:

"If the body, which contains the brain, is not the person, then you are 
describing some sort of nonmaterial dualism. At least, you are claiming the 
mind is nonphysical. If it is nonphysical, it does not exist in this 
universe in which everything is physical."

I disagree that "everything is physical". What about pi? Or other 
mathematical concepts? What about a symphony? These things need some 
involvement with matter, it is true, to be observed and experienced, but 
they are something apart and distinct from any specific material thing. I 
also bring up the example of a book, which I claim may be said to survive 
in its copies yet is something apart from them. And yes, I do feel the mind 
is nonphysical, and so is the person. (Interestingly, in my book I 
distinguish between the mind and the person, but that is something of a 
technicality.)

I said before, "a 'book you write' is not purely and simply the copy of the 
book you put on your shelf, after it finally comes back from the publisher."

Pizer said in reply, "Of course it is. It is a copy, not to be confused 
with the original."

In response to this, I submit that a book could be written without there 
being an "original." If, for instance, you imagine the text is encoded, as 
you type it out, in sound pulses or radio waves that are broadcast and 
rebroadcast, perhaps being multiplied many times before you have created 
all the text, which is never stored in static form anywhere. If you want to 
be limited to more primitive technology, you could imagine a setup where 
each individual page is continually being multiply copied and the 
copied-from page destroyed as the book is being written, so at no point in 
time do we ever have just one "original". Yet we could have one text, thus, 
reasonably, one book only, just stored in a funny way.

Pizer also said, "the essence of a person is experiencing, not lifeless 
information." There are a number of things I could say in reply to this, 
but one point I think is especially worth making. I am arguing, above, that 
a book is not simply a specific copy but something apart from its copies. 
This is contested by Pizer, but even if the point is conceded, it still can 
be claimed that the book example does not apply to persons because books 
are only lifeless things anyway. A person, apparently, must still be 
"embodied" as a material thing, or it can't exist. But I submit that this 
does not follow, even though a functioning person is not simply a static 
entity such as a book. It is possible also to think of an ongoing *process* 
from an informational standpoint, so that one process-in-progress could 
have several instantiations, much as a book can be said to have them. Maybe 
a passable illustration from everyday experience is a performance of a 
musical composition. It is "something in motion" not just a static body of 
information. Yet "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony" is not just some particular 
performance, nor is it some particular copy of the score. It is not, I 
submit, any material thing yet it is something very real. Ditto people.

A final thought is that matter, which is so mutable and really ephemeral 
and evanescent when you examine it closely, is not so "real" at all as 
*some* things we have to class as immaterial. Pi will outlast any material 
record of its digits, and I hope to outlast any one body.

Mike Perry

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