From: Sean Stickle (stickle@cfed.org)
Date: Fri Dec 03 1999 - 09:14:45 MST
> >Never, never, never sacrifice the stories. In the final analysis
> >all we've got that makes us unique is collections of good stories.
> >(Our skills we can change, our appearence we can change, the underlying
> >genes and even the hardware we run on we can change, but the stories
> >remain our own.)
Actually, they don't. Make a copy of yourself that includes memories, and
whadya got? Two of you, which is by definition non-unique. Big deal. The
idea that psychological continuity somehow defines a unique person in rubbish.
I can come up with half-a-dozen ways to create a psychologically continuous
person that is not you (which I would steal from Derek Parfitt's devastating
analysis in "Reasons and Persons") and yet, is you. If all you want out of
uploading is immortality, think again. Hell, you aint even the person that you
were ten years ago (and I don't mean that you've grown, I mean you are as
different from that person as you are from me, ethically speaking).
Anyways, that's my two bit of reductionist philosophy for the day.
-- Sean Stickle Technology Systems Manager Corporation for Enterprise Development stickle@cfed.org 202.408.9788 x 215
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