From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Thu Oct 31 2002 - 10:58:53 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Amazing. I think that it is *you* who don't take the God's eye
> point of view,
>From a bird's eye view, I mean that you should look down at the forking
process from above, so to speak, and see that the individuals diverge
into separate identities, regardless of what people with no knowledge of
the fork might conclude upon meeting either of the forks. Your arguments
rely heavily on the perceptions of people who have no knowledge of the
divergence that occurs at the fork.
My thought experiment was meant to be taken a face value, only as
*example* of the type of shifting of perspective that I see in your
arguments. You dissected it first, without first considering it at face
value, which is not the way I intended to be used.
Eugene and I agree on the relevant point that divides us: that the forks
will diverge immediately and be non-identical.
How can non-identical people have the same identity? Your answer seems
to rely heavily on the fact that *unwitting* witnesses will have no
reason to be believe anything unusual occurred. They will believe they
are encountering the same person they knew pre-fork. But these unwitting
witnesses are not aware of the entire situation -- they are not seeing
the problem from a bird's eye view.
If the unwitting witness met with both forks at once and surveyed their
personalities in sufficient detail, he would discover and be perplexed
by the differences in personality between them (differences which could
be very subtle or very apparent depending on the passage of time and
events). How would he account for the differences in personality, Lee,
except by acknowledging that the two are in reality different people
with different non-nominal identities?
-gts
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