From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 13:32:54 MST
gts wrote:
> Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
>
>> ### If you buy Mr. Hefner's memories and other data structures, and
>> change your brain sufficiently to resemble Mr. Hefner as much as he
>> resembles his yesterday's recording, you would become Hugh Hefner,
>> both subjectively and in a manner verifiable to a judge.
>
> There is a lot more to Hugh Hefner's identity than his memories and
> data structures. There is also his face and body (old, but I hear the
> ladies still love it) and there is his property and his business
> empire, and his personality (which may or may not fall under your
> "data structure" category).
### The ideas you describe above are something new in this thread - you say
the material configuration of Mr. Hefner's environment is a part of his
*personal* identity?
This is new to me.
-------
>
> To be Hugh Hefner one would need to be and have all those things. But
> this is to say only that to be Hugh Hefner, one must be Hugh Hefner.
### You aren't saying that Mr. Hefner deprived of his bank account and silk
pajamas would be no longer Mr. Hefner, are you?
------
>
>> If Mr. Hefner, perhaps in need of funds, agrees to such a
>> transaction, perhaps first accepting some of your memories and
>> effectively merging the two of you, this would be a consensual
>> agreement and it would have to be recognized by the legal system.
>
> If we merged then the result would be someone entirely different from
> Hugh Hefner, even if we agreed legally to call the merged individual
> "Hugh Hefner."
### Say, if I, in full possession of my mental faculties, decide to open a
direct and reciprocal neural link with my computer, and exchange about 1% of
my data, am I still me? What if I do the same by reading and writing ?
Now, let's say, instead of contacting my computer, I open a link to Mr.
Hefner (with his consent). Am I still me if I am able to access Mr. Hefner's
memory of publishing his first issue of Playboy, in a first-person
perspective? (of course, while still aware of my own memories, and personal
history).
What if we keep exchanging memories, with full mutual consent, to the point
where all our data structures are identical? At which point (%-wise) does
Mr. Hefner stop being himself (legally, in terms of interpersonal
relationships)?
Do you see an objective yardstick for measuring such smooth transitions, or
would you rather agree that identity is, after all, arbitrary, a matter of
taste?
-------
>>>
>> ### This is another possible approach - if your copies do not feel
>> you are the same person, you should feel free to act accordingly (as
>> in announcing the Splintering, and denying access to property).
>
> Yes and I think this is the only correct approach. One's copies are
> not the same person, even if they differ only slightly. And they
> become more different from one another with each passing moment.
### It's OK if you see it as the only correct approach to your own
identity - but what I really want to know, is whether you also think *I* am
obliged to treat myself this way.
Rafal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:16 MST