Our Identity

Originally posted by Palynka
*sigh* We're clearly not communicating, tw.

Please see my point about the self being continuously dynamic and not just an interconnected sequence of static states. The copy can never be a continuous continuation of my self.

Edit - This point, IMO, is exactly why bbarr "accepted" the first objection, but pointed out that it wasn't enough for the other two thought experiments.

Originally posted by twhitehead
But I am claiming that the copy most definitely [b]is a continuation of yourself. It has exactly the same cause/result relationship as the future 'original', with the only real difference being in the atoms making up the pattern. Just before the copying, a neuron fires in one part of your brain resulting in a thought occurring in both the copy and the original. Why is the original considered the 'true' continuation and not the copy?[/b]

Originally posted by bbarr
Wait, why is your duplicate not a real person? There are literally billions of real people in the world that are not identical to you.

Originally posted by divegeester
Being identicle to me has nothing to do with whether or not the being (or anyone else as you imply) is a real "person". In this experiment I am the "real" person by very fact of my temporal and physiological origin, the other being is an imposter, a fake person albeit an identical one, but a fake non the less.

Originally posted by bbarr
No, you are both real people; both persons with all the entitlements, rights and obligations attendant to being a person. You are both agents, with beliefs, desires, goals, etc. You both have lives that can go better or worse. That your duplicate has an admittedly bizarre origin is irrelevant to whether he is a person. That something is a copy does not mea ...[text shortened]... ct duplicate of my cat is still a cate. A perfect duplicate of a person is still a real person.

Originally posted by divegeester
If I make a perfect duplicate of a dollar bill, 1 billion times and go and buy shares on wall street. Will I go to prison?

Originally posted by bbarr
Yes, but this shows nothing. Counterfeits, like other forgeries, are such because they lack certain relational properties. Whether something is a truck, cat, or person is determined by its intrinsic properties. That it is a forgery of a Degas does not mean it is not a painting, after all. In the person example, your duplicate is a forgery of ...[text shortened]... e; to be such that we could completely discount him in our moral deliberations? That is absurd.

Originally posted by divegeester
I agree with you on the moral standpoint on killing a sentient being but I'm not sure where morality would come into my thinking in this hypothetical situation; to alow it to do so would cloud objectivity. The OP was asking whether or not the person would be the same person; i say it wouldn't as i would be dead and the other person wouldn't. I'm just ...[text shortened]... was the first decision for the 'mind and flesh' being. Lack of origin and authenticity.

Originally posted by divegeester
If I make a perfect duplicate of a dollar bill, 1 billion times and go and buy shares on wall street. Will I go to prison?

edit: we cannot be objective and ignore origin and authenticity

Originally posted by Palynka
Not possible. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

Originally posted by divegeester
An interesting thread, thanks.

If i had gone through the machine and been replicated at the other end (lets say in the same room) by an identical arrangement of different atoms, and my original self was no longer in one piece but billions; then I would have to say that I was dead and a replica stood in my place. In fact if it was possible in that in en have the moral position to destroy it again?

An interesting physical, and moral dilemma.

Originally posted by divegeester
Being identicle to me has nothing to do with whether or not the being (or anyone else as you imply) is a real "person". In this experiment I am the "real" person by very fact of my temporal and physiological origin, the other being is an imposter, a fake person albeit an identical one, but a fake non the less.

Originally posted by Palynka
Sounds potentially very reasonable, but if anything this thread shows that it's the nitty-gritty of the details that tend to cause problems.

What bothers me about the stability of traits is that when I look at a picture of when I was 7 or 8, I like to think that is indeed "me". What I am now is clearly not independent of what I was "then", but of course ...[text shortened]... f a good, not too technical, book recommendation about this I would appreciate it.

I enjoy this thread big time🙂

It seems to me that almost all of you, amici miei, you attempt to take “Self” for granted through Experience -Your experience, that is; I make this assumption because you are all talking about the necessity of establishing specific standards that you attribute to “Self”, which they all are grounded in the World 2 and then they have to be accepted by the consciousness of the individual at every time unit “as is”.

However without Experience there is nothing left for us to help us grasp the concept of “Self”. So, once your “Self” is separated from your body, your sensing, your cognition, your volition and your consiousness you remain with “No Self”. Of course you cannot have consciousness without the previous four qualities, you cannot have volition without the previous three qualities and so on. And you cannot have consiousness without a body. So, the sole agent for this Experience is “Self” as you imagine it by means of the World 3 (an idea, a theory) through your interpretation of that idea/ theory by means of World 2.

Then, when you have to offer your opinion once you enter a probability that ends up with a duplication of "yourself", you wonder how is it possible to have “two” instead of “one” body, which both of them are guided from a Single Consciousness? Over here, some of you you left common sens behind and you took a dive in Theology like my friend divegeester, or you followed somebody elses' variations like my friend Palynka. But for the sake of the conversation I admit that, if this probability was becoming real as barr posed at his first post of this thread, then both BodySouls of "yours" will have the same standards that you accept in order to establish the concept of “Self” when you accept that you “have” just “one” body (for the time being I leave aside the fact that we already have “two” bodies and that we all know very well how it feels)!

It seems to me that this mental construction that you call “Self” is solely a product of your sixth sense -of your mind; you use this product in order to define yourselves as “Self” within the plexus of the World 1 (as you perceive it through your Experience). This approach could sound fine for everybody who is definitely sure that his mind is not deceiving, thus that this specific theory of his mind is the Reality itself. However the multiple contradictions that they arise from this approach they force me to separate not myself from the truth of my insubstantiality😵

Originally posted by black beetle
I Of course you cannot have consciousness without the previous four qualities, you cannot have volition without the previous three qualities and so on.