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From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Nature of Personal Identity
Message-ID: <1641@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Sep-85 00:44:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.1641
Posted: Fri Sep 20 00:44:01 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Sep-85 14:04:53 EDT
References: <664@mmintl.UUCP> <739@utastro.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD
Lines: 53

In article <739@utastro.UUCP> padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) writes:

>> I think you are making the mistake of assuming that "shares identity with"
>> is an equivalence relation.  Just because a copy of you shares identity
>> with the you as of and before the copy was made (which the current you
>> also shares identity with) does not mean that it shares identity with you.
>> Again, a *perfect* copy is not required, since a perfect
>> copy would be dead.  The boundary between a copy good enough to share
>> identity and one not good enough is fuzzy, like all real world boundaries.

Let me first state that Frank appears to understand perfectly what I am
getting at here.

>All of this indicates that the word "identity" is being used in at least
>two different ways here; one as a statement of likeness, and another as 
>a statement of "selfness". The copies are identical with the original in
>the former sense at least. I see a problem with the resurrection claim
>in that if multiple copies are allowed, and in principle they are if
>identity is defined only by structure and organization to the exclusion
>of the need for a soul, then there is no way that the copies can be 
>identical with the original in the second sense. 

The second sense must be, in the absence of souls or like supernaturalities,
simply a more restricted version of the first.  The second in that sense is
the only meaning we are concerned with.  Now, it's not really clear to me
what the problem is with being able to "multiply resurrect" someone.  Be
that as it may, if "all ther is" is brain organization and impulses, then
"selfness" must lie there, and one must be able to copy the selfness.  But
(and this is very important) they do not share that selfness with each other.

Denying selfness in structure also gives rise to a very serious problem.
One could make an argument that the consciousness is destroyed by sleep or
coma, instead of becoming dormant.  (Evidence at the moment doesn't support
either one, and on certain linguistic levels, they amount to the same
assertion.)  If this is so, and selfness is not in structure, then it seems
necessary to conclude that the self is destroyed each night.  BUt regardless
of this, there is for normal people a strong identification of themselves
with previous waking versions of "themselves"; if this has any validity,
then selfness must lie in structure, and selfness can be copied.

My guess is that Padraig is bothered because he cannot conceptualize how his
awareness can "fork".  I cannot either.  But I think the problem here may be
a failure in the concept itself.  Awareness is an instantaneous thing,
existing only in the present.  I don't see anything wrong with one's
awareness "following' ht e original.  But what of the awareness of the copy?
Everything that ought to be necessary to transmit awareness is there, even
the mental causality.  So I think that, until people start copying people in
this way, the answer can't be known, and even if it is done, I'm not sure
that the answer can be known, since the perception is as subjective as it is
possible to get  This is what leads me to the conclusion that asking "which
way it goes" is the wrong question.

Charley Wingate


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