X-Message-Number: 7928
Date:  Sun, 23 Mar 97 18:40:44 
From: Dave Pizer <>
Subject: Reply to "Many Worlds and Many Words"

Pizer Replies to Perry

Mike Perry seems to me is still holding the position that a duplicate is the 
same as the original person merely if it contains all the same information.

Mike and I began to differ (and debate this) about 10 years ago.

Mike's position was that *information* was enough to comprise the total 
needed for a person to survive.  If all the information from the original 
person was put into a new person (brain, computer-type-brain, big book?, 
long movie?), then the new person is the original person.

My position was that information *AND* the part of the originial 
brain that senses self-awarness were both needed to continue to 
exist for a person to survive.  I called it the "self-awarness-continuum."

I think Mike's argument works against him when he points out that 
information in a present person changes over time, but we still continue 
that to be the same person surviving.

If this is true (and I think it is) then it is not just information that 
gives the definition of a person surviving, but the self-awareness hunk of 
brain-meat that must continue to exist and work for a person to survive.

Frankly, I don't really care about if a duplicate is me.  The question that 
is crucial to any Immortalist is "how can  *I*  *survive*?"

Dave

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