From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Oct 31 2002 - 12:00:03 MST
Lee,
1) Bob gets forked into Bob1 and Bob2.
2) Jack, a friend of Bob's, has no knowledge that his old friend Bob has
forked into Bob1 and Bob2.
3) Bob1 visits Jack on the day after the forking. Jack cannot, by any
means possible, determine that his old friend Bob has forked.
4) Then along comes Bob2, who joins Jack and Bob1 at lunch.
5)"Strange," says Jack, "I thought there was only one Bob!"
6) Bob1 and Bob2 both say they think they are the same Bob Jack has
always known.
7) "Maybe so," says Jack, "But I suspect you two are nevertheless
different people. Allow me to conduct a thorough survey of your
personalities."
8) Jack then tests both versions of Bob with an exhaustive set of
personality tests. Among them is a simple test of food preferences. All
tests show Bob1 and Bob2 to be identical, except for the food preference
test. For some reason Bob1 rates pizza significantly higher than Bob2.
Bob1 rates pizza 7 on a scale of 1 to 10, while Bob2 rates it only 4 on
a scale of 1 to 10.
9) "Strange," says Jack, "you two appear to be exactly the same person,
except that Bob1 likes pizza a lot better than Bob2. I wonder how that
can be!"
10) "Oh!" exclaims Bob1, "I guess I should mention here that I stopped
for pizza on the way home from the fork-master clinic. It was the best
darned pizza I ever had! I'm definitely going back for more next time I
get a chance."
11) Jack then concludes rightly that Bob1 and Bob2 are not the same
identity after all, even if they are very similar. He realizes it would
be absurd to consider them to have the same non-nominal identity,
because when Bob1 refers to himself as "I" or "me" he is referring to
someone who rates pizza as a 7, and when Bob2 refers to himself as "I"
or "me" he is referring to someone who rates pizza as a 4. Small those
this difference may be, it is nevertheless true that Bob1's and Bob2's
ideas of self have different referents.
12) Jack then wonders why it is so hard to explain this to his friend
Lee Corbin.
-gts
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