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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: LAST WORD on "souls" (I hope!)
Message-ID: <635@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 20:33:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.635
Posted: Thu Sep  5 20:33:20 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Sep-85 11:23:36 EDT
References: <581@utastro.UUCP> <1322@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 22
Summary: Is the same person as need not be an equivalence relation


In article <1619@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:
>
>You're right about the perfect copy idea, but of course that brings us to the
>old transporter argument.  If a transporter existed that scanned your body
>at point A, "disassembled" it, and reconstructed it at point B, you might
>have the following problem. If the transporter's scanning-at-point-A and
>reconstructing-at-point-B functions worked, but the disassembler didn't,
>would there then be two "you"s after the faulty process had completed?
>The proper phrasing of the question would be "would there be two of the same
>person?"  The answer in either case is no.  Since Charles has repeatedly
>denied his belief in souls, we can skip over them and assume that a material
>copy produces an exact copy of the "person".  Each person will assert (if
>it was me that was transported, for example) that he is Rich Rosen.  [...]
>But would there be two of the SAME person?"  I still say no.  Yes,
>the copy would be an exact copy at the moment of reproduction, but thereafter
>the very different experiences that each would have would make them different
>people.

This isn't quite the point.  The question is not "are they the same person
as each other?" but "is each of them the same person as the person before the
transmission?"  I submit that the answer to the second question can be yes
even though the answer to the first is no.