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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
From: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: More Atheistic Wishful Thinking
Message-ID: <647@mmintl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 10-Sep-85 01:55:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: mmintl.647
Posted: Tue Sep 10 01:55:19 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Sep-85 08:27:40 EDT
References: <1115@mhuxt.UUCP> <1473@umcp-cs.UUCP> <1648@pyuxd.UUCP>
Reply-To: franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams)
Organization: Multimate International, E. Hartford, CT
Lines: 26
Summary: different does not mean completely different


In article <1648@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes:
>
>If you assert that mind is separate from the physical brain and body, you are
>again talking souls.  But if perchance you're not, what would it mean
>to have a disembodied mind or brain without exactly the same input and output
>devices (the rest of the body)?  The experience would be completely different,
>it would be a different person.
>-- 

The experience would be somewhat different, which would make a difference in
the person.  Does that make it a different person?  Not necessarily.  You are
different, and your experiences are different, every day.  Forty years from
now your experiences will be very different.

Suppose we make the input devices as much like the original body as possible.
At some point it becomes impossible to tell the difference from the original
body.  Certainly at that point you will grant identity with the original
person.  At some point before that the differences are noticeable, but no
more than the differences in our experience from day to day, or from year
to year.  I would find it very hard to deny identity in such case.

Now, I could go on, and argue that the appropriate limit can be pushed out
farther than that, but I don't think I need to in the current context.  One
can, *in principle*, transplant a brain into another body; and it is correct
to identify that person with the person where the brain originated.  Whether
such a transplant is doable in practice is irrelevant.


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