From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Nov 05 2002 - 18:02:18 MST
Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> gts wrote:
> > To say publicly that I changed my position on the question of
> > attacking Iraq is to say, in effect, that:
> >
> > "In the past I was a person who believed one way about attacking Iraq
> > but in the present I am a person who believes the other way about
> > attacking Iraq. I am therefore a different person now than I was in
> > the past, at least in this respect."
>
>
> ### All you need to make the change of personality official is to have a
> new backup (who will then contain your newly acquired political
> convictions), or destroy (or otherwise disown) the old backup.
Yes, though this would not cover more subtle changes in personality that
might also have occured, e.g., a slight change in one's attitudes about
pizza as described in my previous thought experiment. In that experiment
the subject's opinion of pizza improved as a result of stopping for pizza on
his way home from the forking clinic.
Subtle or great, important or trivial, any personality change is, in
principle, sufficient reason to consider one's backup a different person.
And personality is ever-changing in response to our ever-changing
experience. To avoid personality changes we have no choice but to
make backups at each instant.
-gts
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