Right, but causal descent is common to the physical and psychological views. ‘Physicalism’ among philosophers generally doesn’t refer to some kind of ‘same atoms’ view. That’s an incoherent view long before we bring in considerations of quantum physics, and the ‘same particles’ issue. Mostly that kind of physicalism is restricted to people who are wrong on the internet.
Physicalism among (most) philosophers who hold that view is the claim that your identity is tied to a particular animal (or whatever hardware) that has physical persistance conditions (like the processes which keep it alive, etc.). If you create an atom-for-atom duplicate of that animal, and then kill one of the two of them, you haven’t therefore killed both of them. They’re not identical in that sense, and that’s the sense of ‘identity’ that physicalists are calling personal identity.
So nothing about quantum physics, so far as I can see, makes a difference to this question.
Right, but causal descent is common to the physical and psychological views. ‘Physicalism’ among philosophers generally doesn’t refer to some kind of ‘same atoms’ view. That’s an incoherent view long before we bring in considerations of quantum physics, and the ‘same particles’ issue. Mostly that kind of physicalism is restricted to people who are wrong on the internet.
Physicalism among (most) philosophers who hold that view is the claim that your identity is tied to a particular animal (or whatever hardware) that has physical persistance conditions (like the processes which keep it alive, etc.). If you create an atom-for-atom duplicate of that animal, and then kill one of the two of them, you haven’t therefore killed both of them. They’re not identical in that sense, and that’s the sense of ‘identity’ that physicalists are calling personal identity.
So nothing about quantum physics, so far as I can see, makes a difference to this question.