X-Message-Number: 21320
Date: Sat, 01 Mar 2003 08:13:07 -0500
From: Francois <>
Subject: For David, about message 21314

<snip snip>

>This argument appears to be air-tight, so don't tell me about books and how
>you feel when you wake up, if you want to prove a duplicate surviving the
>original's death equals the survival of the original, find a hole in the
>above argument.

There is no hole. Even if object B is a perfect copy of object A, by even
the strictest possible definition of perfect, object B is NOT object A, that
is trivially obvious. But that's not really what we are talking about here,
is it? You seem to argue that the physical distinctiveness between A and B
is an impenetrable barrier to the continuation of self. It is not. The
person existing in A will jump the gap between A and B, and will exist in A
and in B. If A is destroyed, then the person in A is also destroyed,
obviously. Notice that I didn't say person A, I said person in A. The person
in B still exists, therefore the person still lives.

Maybe a little example about something else will clarify what I mean by
person in A being the same as person in B. A ruby is red in color. If I
duplicate this ruby atom for atom, the resulting stone will also be red in
color. However, at no time did I duplicate something in the ruby that could
be called red. The red color of a ruby is an emergent property of the
stone's structure. Recreate the structure and you recreate the color. The
color red of ruby A is the same as the color red of ruby B. A person is also
an emergent property, the emergent property of a brain's structure. The
person in brain A is the same as the person in exact duplicate brain B. If
ruby A is destroyed, the original red color still exists in ruby B. If brain
A is destroyed, the original person still exists in brain B.

Francois
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