From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Mon Jun 11 2001 - 20:53:33 MDT
I had written (case 6 in 7)
6. Anticipates future experiences of duplicates, but only one in
particular.
This is the nearly incoherant "closest continuer" theory. If you
must die, but N duplicates of you were made at several points in
the past, then you "really are" whichever one of them survives
and is the most similar to you. Your soul, or identity, is
transferred by hidden celestial machinery into this particular
one, but somehow not into any of the others.
to which John Clark responded
>>I see no reason to be limited to one.
By this, I take John to agree with the intent of my #6, namely that
symmetry is preserved across duplicates. If you are to be suddenly
duplicated both to Spitsbergen and to Honolulu you should take both
a warm coat and a swimming suit. Not because you **may** be in
either place, but because you **will** be in both places. (Of course,
it is beneath consideration to suppose that there is any telepathic
contact post duplication. It's simply that according to the symmetries
embedded in physics, you will be in Spitsbergen and you will be in
Honolulu.)
However, J. Goard writes
>I do see a reason [to be limited to one], in the very definition
>of the thought experiment. If something is a duplicate of me,
>then it doesn't have an awareness extending across several bodies,
>because I don't have such a thing, and such a radical difference
>would be more than sufficient to make one thing not a "duplicate"
>of another.
Yes, but I think that you were not using the same terms as we. After
the fork, each instance may wish to claim that the other duplicate
is "not him". That's a different argument.
For the sake of communication, however, I insist that even after
duplication, each duplicate agrees to **call** the other "my
duplicate", even though, of course, they are no longer identical.
This is how the term is used in our culture. We should allow the
intended meaning of "suppose that in Honolulu there is, as we speak,
an exact duplicate of you, who was created an hour ago, and who
is now surfboarding" without objecting to the definition of what
a "duplicate" is. This is the usage of "duplicate" as a noun, that
has been in use for decades. We say "absolutely identical" to
describe two duplicates who have just been created an instant ago,
or to describe two instances that are somehow being held in
identically progressing states.
>If you believe that by duplicating a body, a single awareness
>will then coexist across the multiple bodies, then you're really
>challenging the possibility of (personal) duplication itself.
Exactly. No one was saying that.
>I'm a bit thrown by the word "particular" in the above.
>Personally, I wouldn't anticipate future experiences of
>one *in particular* -- more like one *randomly*. That
>is, assuming I could know for sure that they were true
>"duplicates". If so, then one by definition could not
>have more or less subjective continuity with the original
>than the others do. Chance splitting sounds bizarre, but
>I believe it's the only solution compatible with the
>definition of the problem, short of saying that
>duplication is really impossible.
Here is where John and I (and a number of people) part company
with you. You seem to think that *you* now would become one
of *them* randomly. You seem to be saying that it might be
the case that *you* go to Honolulu, and there is only a zombie
(or something) in Spitsbergen. Is this what you mean by "chance
splitting"? That your soul goes to one, but not the other?
Lee Corbin
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