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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Souls
Message-ID: <1626@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 30-Aug-85 13:50:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1626
Posted: Fri Aug 30 13:50:20 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 31-Aug-85 08:47:14 EDT
References: <581@utastro.UUCP> <1322@umcp-cs.UUCP> <588@utastro.UUCP> <621@mmintl.UUCP>
Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week
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> Neither side seems to me to have focussed on the key point here.  It seems
> to me that what is being proposed here is that the "resurrection" consists
> of the reconstituting of the body more or less exactly like it was just
> before death.  Presumably the health will be improved, but at a minimum
> the memories and attitudes will be the same.  Clearly this does not require
> that anything of the person exist in the interrum (sp?).
> 
> The question is, in what sense is this the resurrection of the "same" person,
> instead of just a "copy"?  To make the question more pointed, suppose two
> such "copies" are made simultaneously; are both the same person?  [ADAMS]

You answer your own question (after you bring up the same question I ask
in an earlier article).  If you reconstruct someone as they are at the
moment of death (body, brain, memory, etc.) then what will they be when
you reconstruct him/her?  Dead, that's what.  Even assuming we're not talking
about someone dying of a debilitating disease or a gunshot wound or something
reasonably prolonged (I'd hate to think of that as a "reasonably prolonged"
death---poor choice of words).  If we're talking about someone who dies
suddenly.  If you reconstruct from some moment before death, you have
built a copy of a person who has not died, who could not recall his/her own
death because it had not yet been recorded in the brain.  If you do what
Frank suggests, improving the health in some way, you have altered the
person's chemical structure, and thus it is clearly NOT the same person.
-- 
"Wait a minute.  '*WE*' decided???   *MY* best interests????"
					Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr