From: Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Date: Tue Jul 14 1998 - 23:50:01 MDT
harv@gate.net (Harvey Newstrom), writes:
> Some people claim that killing the original biological copy is not
> murder and does not result in death as long as an identical uploaded
> copy exists.
>
> If destroying the moving, thinking body is not murder or death, are
> people claiming that this person is not alive? If it is alive, how can
> this life be terminated without calling it murder and death? If it is
> not alive, when did it used to be alived, when exactly did it cease to
> be alive, and by what definition?
I would say that the consciousness of "the person" resides equally in the
copy and in the upload (so long as they are synchronized; once they get
out of sync they are not the same, of course). Hence stopping one of
them does not stop the consciousness of the person.
So in your example, I'd say that the body and brain is alive, but that
killing it does not kill the person, because the person encompasses more
than that body.
Hal
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