hal@finney.org (hal@finney.org) writes:
>I see two connections between Leonard's situation and some of the
>issues we have discussed. One is the question of whether Leonard's
>life has any meaning, and indeed whether in a meaningful sense he is
>living at all. With his memories constantly being erased, is there any
>point to staying alive? Dying would erase his memories and his future.
>But his memories are already gone, and in a way the point of a future
>is to give you new memories. If those are going to be taken from you
>as well, then what is the point of living?
15 minutes of memory is more than zero. It isn't clear to me why there
would be any threshold (other than zero) below which the value of memory
drops to zero.
>Some have argued that such a picture is appealing because even though
>they will change so much as to be unrecognizable, the changes will be
>gradual so they will still be, in a sense, the same person. However I
The last part of that sentence sounds like something I might have said, but
I have trouble believing that anyone finds loss of pleasant memories appealing.
I hope to reduce my rate of memory loss, but as long as some memory
loss appears unavoidable, there seems little benefit to feeling upset
about it.
-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Peter McCluskey | This space under construction. http://www.rahul.net/pcm |
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