From: Dan Fabulich (dfabulich@warpmail.net)
Date: Tue Oct 22 2002 - 14:33:47 MDT
gts wrote:
> I think there is nothing wrong with that picture and I see nothing wrong
> with the unnamed "special relation." In my mind your present-person
> clearly has a special relation to your past-person. However the question
> here is whether that relation is one of "identity of personality." I
> believe it is not.
Actually, I explicitly want to bracket that question. It's my argument
that we can solve the moral problems and questions posed by personal
backups/dupes/xoxes etc *without* settling the question as to whether your
dupe is "really you". [In fact, I think something stronger: we *must* do
this, because there can be no answer to the identity question, as it is
malformed.]
Ultimately, if we *can* settle the moral question, it will become clear
that the question of "identity" is mere semantics, like the Ship of
Theseus problem, "angels on a pin" and other well-known metaphysical
problems. If we know what to do, then it doesn't matter what we call it.
> The key point here is that the son's decision to keep or break the
> promise will depend on the son's moral assessment of his father's past
> promise -- *not* on some false belief that "father equals son."
This is a perfect example from my point of view, because we often think
that it's morally correct for family members to lay down their lives to
protect each other, despite their relatively limited causal origins.
Arguments from familial relations and common origins underpin a lot of
arguments for laying down your life for your tribe, your race, for members
of the human race, or for other living creatures.
If you think that it's specially more plausible for fathers to lay down
their lives for their own sons, relative to any random person laying down
his/her life for another, well, all the more so for personal duplicates.
That special relationship that connects you with your past-person in the
context of promises holds as well for present personal duplicates;
whatever it is that's motivating us to keep past promises is the same
thing that's going to motivate us to "lay down our lives" for our xoxes.
The point of this is not to argue that this is the way to "really" solve
the problem, but rather to point out that somebody who believes that they
are the same person as their copy will be under the same moral obligations
as somebody who believes that they are a different person from their copy,
and for the same reasons, modulo their differing definitions of
"identity."
The whole argument could be translated using a definition of "identity"
which allows us to say that dupes are the same person... nothing morally
relevant would be lost in the translation.
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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