The point is, “you” are exactly the following and nothing else: You’re (i) your mind right now, (ii) including its memory, and (iii) its forward-looking care, hopes, dreams for, in particular, its ‘natural’ successor. Now, in usual situations, the ‘natural successor’ is obvious, and you cannot even think of anything else: it’s the future minds that inhabit your body, your brain, that’s why you tend to call the whole series a unified ‘you’ in common speak.
Now, with cloning, if you absolutely care for a particular clone, then, for every purpose, you can extend that common speak to the cloning situation, if you want, and say my ‘anticipation will be borne out’/‘I’ll experience...‘. But, crucially, note, that you do NOT NEED to; in fact, it’s sloppy speak. As in fact, these are separate future units, just tied in various (more or less ‘natural’) ways to you, which offers vagueness, and choice. Evolution leaves you dumbfounded about it, as there is no strictly speaking ‘natural’ successor anymore. Natural has become vague. It’ll depend on how you see it.
Crucially, there will be two persons, say after a ‘usual’ after cloning, and you may ‘see yourself’ - in sloppy speak—in either of these two. But it’s just a matter of perspective. Strictly speaking, again, you’re you right now, and your anticipation of one or future person.
It’s a bit like evolution makes you confused about how much you care for strangers. Do you go to a philosophers to ask how much you want to give to the faraway poor? No! You have your inner degree of compassion to them, it may change at any time, and it’s not wrong or right.*[1]
Of course, on another level, from a utilitarian perspective, I’d love you to love these faraway beings more, and its not okay that we screw up the world because of not caring, but that’s a separate point.
The point is, “you” are exactly the following and nothing else: You’re (i) your mind right now, (ii) including its memory, and (iii) its forward-looking care, hopes, dreams for, in particular, its ‘natural’ successor.
You have mentally sliced the thing up in this way, but reality does not contain any such divisions. My left hand yesterday and my left hand today are just as connected as my left hand and my right hand.
As I write, call it a play on words; a question of naming terms—if you will. But then—and this is just a proposition plus a hypothesis—try to provide a reasonable way to objectively define what one ‘ought’ to care about in cloning scenarios; and contemplate all sorts of traditionally puzzling thought experiments about neuron replacements and what have you, and you’ll inevitable end up with hand-waving, stating arbitrary rules that may seem to work (for many, anyhow) in one though experiment, just to be blatantly broken by the next experiment… Do that enough and get bored and give up—or, ‘realize’, eventually, maybe: There is simply not much left of the idea of a unified and continuous, ‘objectively’ traceable self. There’s a mind here and now and, yes of course, it absolutely tends to care about what it deems to be its ‘natural’ successors in any given scenario. And this care is so strong, it feels as if these successors were one entire, inseparable thing, and so it’s not a surprise we cannot fathom there are divisions.
What I give up on is the outré thought experiments, not my own observation of myself that I am a unified, continuous being. A changeable being, and one made of parts working together, but not a pile of dust.
A long time ago I regularly worked at a computer terminal where if you hit backspace 6 times in a row, the computer would crash. So you tried to avoid doing that. Clever arguments that crash your brain, likewise.
The point is, “you” are exactly the following and nothing else: You’re (i) your mind right now, (ii) including its memory, and (iii) its forward-looking care, hopes, dreams for, in particular, its ‘natural’ successor. Now, in usual situations, the ‘natural successor’ is obvious, and you cannot even think of anything else: it’s the future minds that inhabit your body, your brain, that’s why you tend to call the whole series a unified ‘you’ in common speak.
Now, with cloning, if you absolutely care for a particular clone, then, for every purpose, you can extend that common speak to the cloning situation, if you want, and say my ‘anticipation will be borne out’/‘I’ll experience...‘. But, crucially, note, that you do NOT NEED to; in fact, it’s sloppy speak. As in fact, these are separate future units, just tied in various (more or less ‘natural’) ways to you, which offers vagueness, and choice. Evolution leaves you dumbfounded about it, as there is no strictly speaking ‘natural’ successor anymore. Natural has become vague. It’ll depend on how you see it.
Crucially, there will be two persons, say after a ‘usual’ after cloning, and you may ‘see yourself’ - in sloppy speak—in either of these two. But it’s just a matter of perspective. Strictly speaking, again, you’re you right now, and your anticipation of one or future person.
It’s a bit like evolution makes you confused about how much you care for strangers. Do you go to a philosophers to ask how much you want to give to the faraway poor? No! You have your inner degree of compassion to them, it may change at any time, and it’s not wrong or right.*[1]
Of course, on another level, from a utilitarian perspective, I’d love you to love these faraway beings more, and its not okay that we screw up the world because of not caring, but that’s a separate point.
My reply to clone of saturn applies here also.
You have mentally sliced the thing up in this way, but reality does not contain any such divisions. My left hand yesterday and my left hand today are just as connected as my left hand and my right hand.
As I write, call it a play on words; a question of naming terms—if you will. But then—and this is just a proposition plus a hypothesis—try to provide a reasonable way to objectively define what one ‘ought’ to care about in cloning scenarios; and contemplate all sorts of traditionally puzzling thought experiments about neuron replacements and what have you, and you’ll inevitable end up with hand-waving, stating arbitrary rules that may seem to work (for many, anyhow) in one though experiment, just to be blatantly broken by the next experiment… Do that enough and get bored and give up—or, ‘realize’, eventually, maybe: There is simply not much left of the idea of a unified and continuous, ‘objectively’ traceable self. There’s a mind here and now and, yes of course, it absolutely tends to care about what it deems to be its ‘natural’ successors in any given scenario. And this care is so strong, it feels as if these successors were one entire, inseparable thing, and so it’s not a surprise we cannot fathom there are divisions.
What I give up on is the outré thought experiments, not my own observation of myself that I am a unified, continuous being. A changeable being, and one made of parts working together, but not a pile of dust.
A long time ago I regularly worked at a computer terminal where if you hit backspace 6 times in a row, the computer would crash. So you tried to avoid doing that. Clever arguments that crash your brain, likewise.