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>From: chalmers@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Subject: Re: red light / blue light scenario
Message-ID: <1991Dec21.011306.10492@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
Organization: Indiana University
References: <1991Dec20.004238.11206@smsc.sony.com> <1991Dec19.222126.2296@arizona.edu> <1991Dec20.202630.14526@smsc.sony.com>
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 91 01:13:06 GMT
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In article <1991Dec20.202630.14526@smsc.sony.com> markc@smsc.sony.com (Mark Corscadden) writes:

>  1)  Tomorrow he'll be duplicated.  The duplicate will have a Very
>      Horrible Thing happen to him.  The original Mr. Skaggs will have
>      a Very Nice Thing happened to him.
>
>  2)  Tomorrow no duplication will take place.  The one and only
>      Mr. Skaggs will face a lottery.  There is a 1 in 10 chance
>      that a Very Horrible Thing will happen to him, and a 9 in 10
>      chance that a Very Nice Thing will happen to him.

I can't strongly enough recommend Derek Parfit's _Reasons and Persons_,
Part 3, for a really good discussion of just this kind of issue.  When
I read this a few years ago, I went in with the strongly-held intuition
that one bears a deep, important relationship (call it "personal
identity" if you like) to one's "continuer" that one doesn't bear to
one's duplicate.  Parfit's book tested that feeling to the limit,
to the point that I'm nowadays a somewhat reluctant reductionist about
personal identity (i.e. it just comes down to memory, psychological
continuity, etc, so that tomorrow's duplicate is as much "me" in a
deep sense as tomorrow's continuer is).

I still hold the intuition strongly enough that I wouldn't step into
a Star Trek teletransporter, though.  If I was about to be shot, the
fact that a duplicate of me was being constructed halfway across
town would only seem to be a minor consolation.

Anyway, the Parfit book is published by Oxford University Press.
Terrifically entertaining, with vivid but highly methodical arguments
and very clear writing, it represents philosophy at its best.  (Maybe
I should go into the blurb-writing business?)

-- 
Dave Chalmers                            (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."


