John K Clark <johnkc@well.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Jul 1998 rrandall6@juno.com (Randall R Randall) Wrote:
>
> >If you are standing in a room looking at an *exact* duplicate
> >(except for position) of yourself, do you imagine that you would
> >be unable to tell which person you were?
>
> Certainly I'd know which person I was, I'd be the one who was staring at
> something that looked and acted just like me. If the room had no windows had
> cylindrical symmetry and both bodies were standing an equal distance from the
> center then there would only be one conscious being in the room. If I wanted
> to complicate things a little more I could, just for fun, extend the optic
> nerve, perhaps by some radio link, so that the image that the eyes one body
> received would be sent to the brain in the body of the other, but absolutely
> nothing would change because the signals were identical.
>
> If the room did not have cylindrical symmetry then the information they
> received from their senses would be different so they'd diverge and there
> would be two conscious being in the room. Both would think they were
> John Clark and both would be correct.
>
I'll give you the same answer I gave Bryan Moss:
Wrong. Suppose my copy and I want to move the table to one side. If we both point to the same wall, one would be pointing left while one would be pointing right. Obviously we are not acting the same. If we both point right or we both point left, we will be pointing at different walls. Obviously we cannot agree on which wall to point towards. Since we are different people in different locations, it is impossible for us to both act and react identically. As in this situation, we must diverge.
-- Harvey Newstrom <mailto:harv@gate.net> Author, Engineer, Entrepreneur, <http://www.gate.net/~harv> Consultant, Researcher, Scientist. <ldap://certserver.pgp.com>