If the duplicate says “I did X on my nth birthday” it’s not true since it didn’t even exist.
Correct.
So what does the duplicate say when I point out that it didn’t exist at that time?
When talking to you, or someone who shares your attitude, my duplicate probably says something like “You’re right, of course. I’m in the habit of talking about my original’s experiences as though they’re mine, because I experience them as though they were, and both I and my original are perfectly happy talking that way and will probably keep doing so. But technically speaking you’re quite correct… I didn’t actually do X on my 9th birthday, nor did I have a 9th birthday to do anything on in the first place. Thanks for pointing that out.”
Which is closest to your last option, I suppose.
Incidentally, my duplicate likely does this in roughly the same tone of voice that an adoptive child might say analogous things when someone corrects their reference to “my parents” by claiming that no, their parents didn’t do any of that, their adoptive parents did. If you were to infer a certain hostility from that tone, you would not be incorrect.
It gets very difficult to call this “memory.”
It’s not difficult for me to call this a memory at all… it’s the original’s memory, which has been copied to and is being experienced by the duplicate. But if you’d rather come up with some special word for that to avoid confusion with a memory experienced by the same body that formed it in the first place, that’s OK with me too. (I choose not to refer to it as “knowledge of what the original did”, both because that’s unwieldy and because it ignores the experiential nature of memory,, which I value.)
but then in what sense is it a duplicate?
Sufficient similarity to the original. Which is what we typically mean when we say that X is a duplicate of Y.
“I’m in the habit of talking about my original’s experiences as though they’re mine, because I experience them as though they were” appears to be a form of delusion to me. If somebody went around pretending to be Napoleon (answering to the name Napoleon, talking about having done the things Napoleon did, etc) and answered all questions as if they were Napoleon but, when challenged, reassured you that of course they’re not Napoleon, they just have the habit of talking as if they are Napoleon because they experience life as Napoleon would, would you consider them delusional? Or does anything go as long as they’re content?
To be honest, I’m not really sure what you mean by the experience of memory. Mental imagery?
It has nothing to do with being content. If someone believes they are Napoleon, I consider them deluded, whether they are content or not. Conversely, if they don’t believe they are Napoleon, I don’t consider them deluded, whether they are content or not.
In the example you give, I would probably suspect the person of lying to me.
More generally: before I call something a delusion, I require that someone actually believe it’s true.
I’m not really sure what you mean by the experience of memory.
At this moment, you and I both know that I wrote this comment… we both have knowledge of what I did. In addition to that, I can remember writing it, and you can’t. I can have the experience of that memory; you can’t. The experience of memory isn’t the same thing as the knowledge of what I did.
Though on further consideration, I suppose I could summarize our whole discussion as about whether I am content or not… the noun, that is, not the adjective. I mostly consider myself to be content, and would be perfectly content to choose distribution networks for that content based on their functional properties.
Correct.
When talking to you, or someone who shares your attitude, my duplicate probably says something like “You’re right, of course. I’m in the habit of talking about my original’s experiences as though they’re mine, because I experience them as though they were, and both I and my original are perfectly happy talking that way and will probably keep doing so. But technically speaking you’re quite correct… I didn’t actually do X on my 9th birthday, nor did I have a 9th birthday to do anything on in the first place. Thanks for pointing that out.”
Which is closest to your last option, I suppose.
Incidentally, my duplicate likely does this in roughly the same tone of voice that an adoptive child might say analogous things when someone corrects their reference to “my parents” by claiming that no, their parents didn’t do any of that, their adoptive parents did. If you were to infer a certain hostility from that tone, you would not be incorrect.
It’s not difficult for me to call this a memory at all… it’s the original’s memory, which has been copied to and is being experienced by the duplicate. But if you’d rather come up with some special word for that to avoid confusion with a memory experienced by the same body that formed it in the first place, that’s OK with me too. (I choose not to refer to it as “knowledge of what the original did”, both because that’s unwieldy and because it ignores the experiential nature of memory,, which I value.)
Sufficient similarity to the original. Which is what we typically mean when we say that X is a duplicate of Y.
“I’m in the habit of talking about my original’s experiences as though they’re mine, because I experience them as though they were” appears to be a form of delusion to me. If somebody went around pretending to be Napoleon (answering to the name Napoleon, talking about having done the things Napoleon did, etc) and answered all questions as if they were Napoleon but, when challenged, reassured you that of course they’re not Napoleon, they just have the habit of talking as if they are Napoleon because they experience life as Napoleon would, would you consider them delusional? Or does anything go as long as they’re content?
To be honest, I’m not really sure what you mean by the experience of memory. Mental imagery?
It has nothing to do with being content. If someone believes they are Napoleon, I consider them deluded, whether they are content or not.
Conversely, if they don’t believe they are Napoleon, I don’t consider them deluded, whether they are content or not. In the example you give, I would probably suspect the person of lying to me.
More generally: before I call something a delusion, I require that someone actually believe it’s true.
At this moment, you and I both know that I wrote this comment… we both have knowledge of what I did.
In addition to that, I can remember writing it, and you can’t. I can have the experience of that memory; you can’t.
The experience of memory isn’t the same thing as the knowledge of what I did.
Though on further consideration, I suppose I could summarize our whole discussion as about whether I am content or not… the noun, that is, not the adjective. I mostly consider myself to be content, and would be perfectly content to choose distribution networks for that content based on their functional properties.