He admits that the possibility of duplicating a person raises a serious question about the nature of personal identity, that continuity is no solution to this problem, and that he can find no other solution. But he doesn’t seem to consider that the absence of any solution points to his concept of personal identity being fundamentally flawed.
Interesting. However, I don’t see any problems with the nature of personal identity. My hunch is that I’m actually not confused about it.
In a lifetime, there is continuity of memories and continuity of values and goals even as they slowly change over time. I can trust that the person who wakes up tomorrow will be ‘me’ in this sense. She may be more refreshed and have more information, but I trust her her to act as “I” would. On the other hand, she might be excessively grouchy or suffer a brain injury, in which case this trust is misplaced. However, she is not me personal-identity wise for a variety of reasons:
I do not have access to her stream of consciousness.
I do not have operative control of her body.
[In both cases, the reason is because her thoughts and actions take place in the future. Eventually, I will have access to her thoughts and control of her body and then she becomes “me”.]
Personal identity exists only for a moment. It is the running of some type of mental thought process.
Suppose I was duplicated overnight, and two byrnemas woke up in the morning. Both byrnemas would have continuity with the previous byrnema with respect to memories, values and goals. However, neither of them are the personal identity of byrnema of the night before just as whenever I wake up I’m not the personal identity of the night before, exactly for the reasons I bulleted.
With the two duplicates, there would be two distinct personal identities. You simply count the number of independent accesses to thoughts and motor control of bodies and arrive at two. Both byrnema have a subjective experience of personal identity, of course, and consider the other byrnema an “other”. However, this “other” is similar to oneself in a way that is unprecedented, a twin sister that also has your memories, goals and values.
I think duplicates would be most problematic for loved ones. They would find themselves in a position of loving both duplicates, and being able to empathize with both, but not really caring so much if one was deleted, but being very distraught if both were deleted. That would be strange, because we haven’t had any experience with that, but I’m sure we would adjust well enough.
People would take risks with their person, but only after checking and double-checking that their backup was recent and well. People wouldn’t care if their person died—they would understand (now through experience rather than introspection) that what makes them them is their memories, values, goals and a moment. And the moment is transient anyway. The illusion of self existing for more than a moment would be broken.
The post you linked to by Ben Best mentioned the impossibility of a personal identity in two different physical locations. Actually, interestingly, it would be possible to have an identity in two physical locations. To do this, you would need to stream the sensory data of two bodies into a single brain, located anywhere. As long as the brain had access to both bodies’ sensory data, and could operate both bodies, and there was a single shared stream of consciousness, then that person would be physically located in two places at once. (But this is completely different from just duplicating a person.)
If you care about a person, then while you might not care as much if a recent duplicate or a recently duplicated person were lost, you would still care about as much if either of them suffers..
As is implied by my ‘recently’, the two will diverge, and you might end up with loyalty to both as distinct individuals, or with a preference for one of them.
Also, I don’t think parents value each of newborn twins less because they have a spare.
I’ve just read this article by Ben Best (President of CI): http://www.benbest.com/philo/doubles.html
He admits that the possibility of duplicating a person raises a serious question about the nature of personal identity, that continuity is no solution to this problem, and that he can find no other solution. But he doesn’t seem to consider that the absence of any solution points to his concept of personal identity being fundamentally flawed.
Interesting. However, I don’t see any problems with the nature of personal identity. My hunch is that I’m actually not confused about it.
In a lifetime, there is continuity of memories and continuity of values and goals even as they slowly change over time. I can trust that the person who wakes up tomorrow will be ‘me’ in this sense. She may be more refreshed and have more information, but I trust her her to act as “I” would. On the other hand, she might be excessively grouchy or suffer a brain injury, in which case this trust is misplaced. However, she is not me personal-identity wise for a variety of reasons:
I do not have access to her stream of consciousness.
I do not have operative control of her body.
[In both cases, the reason is because her thoughts and actions take place in the future. Eventually, I will have access to her thoughts and control of her body and then she becomes “me”.]
Personal identity exists only for a moment. It is the running of some type of mental thought process.
Suppose I was duplicated overnight, and two byrnemas woke up in the morning. Both byrnemas would have continuity with the previous byrnema with respect to memories, values and goals. However, neither of them are the personal identity of byrnema of the night before just as whenever I wake up I’m not the personal identity of the night before, exactly for the reasons I bulleted.
With the two duplicates, there would be two distinct personal identities. You simply count the number of independent accesses to thoughts and motor control of bodies and arrive at two. Both byrnema have a subjective experience of personal identity, of course, and consider the other byrnema an “other”. However, this “other” is similar to oneself in a way that is unprecedented, a twin sister that also has your memories, goals and values.
I think duplicates would be most problematic for loved ones. They would find themselves in a position of loving both duplicates, and being able to empathize with both, but not really caring so much if one was deleted, but being very distraught if both were deleted. That would be strange, because we haven’t had any experience with that, but I’m sure we would adjust well enough.
People would take risks with their person, but only after checking and double-checking that their backup was recent and well. People wouldn’t care if their person died—they would understand (now through experience rather than introspection) that what makes them them is their memories, values, goals and a moment. And the moment is transient anyway. The illusion of self existing for more than a moment would be broken.
The post you linked to by Ben Best mentioned the impossibility of a personal identity in two different physical locations. Actually, interestingly, it would be possible to have an identity in two physical locations. To do this, you would need to stream the sensory data of two bodies into a single brain, located anywhere. As long as the brain had access to both bodies’ sensory data, and could operate both bodies, and there was a single shared stream of consciousness, then that person would be physically located in two places at once. (But this is completely different from just duplicating a person.)
If you care about a person, then while you might not care as much if a recent duplicate or a recently duplicated person were lost, you would still care about as much if either of them suffers..
As is implied by my ‘recently’, the two will diverge, and you might end up with loyalty to both as distinct individuals, or with a preference for one of them.
Also, I don’t think parents value each of newborn twins less because they have a spare.