On May 30, 10:28 pm, wdst...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(William December Starr) wrote:
> In article <g0uq2c$rg...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> mch...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Michael Alan Chary) said:
>
> > In article <g0t0tp$ki...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> > William December Starr <wdst...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> >> If "*immediately*" is taken literally -- meaning, I suppose, that
> >> only single Planck-Wheeler intervals pass between (a) "snapshot
> >> of living Samantha is taken," (b) "Samantha is struck by effects
> >> of weapon" and (c) "Samantha is dead," and then the snapshot from
> >> (a) is used to reconstruct Samantha -- then _I_ would say that no
> >> homicide has occurred[*1]. Various societies' legal systems may
> >> feel otherwise, of course.
>
> > Interesting theory. I invite you to argue it out with her family's
> > estate lawyers depending on how wealthy she is.
>
> Hmm. Now *there's* an on-commission case: take New Samantha's side
> and if you win then she's legally the same person she always was and
> can access her bank account and pay you; lose and she's a penniless
> ward of the state and you get zilch. (Unless a judge makes new law
> by declaring her an heir of legally-dead Samantha, anyway.)
>
> > How about not immediately? How about a second? Two seconds? A
> > minute? An hour? (Roger Zelazny's _Isle of the Dead_ used this
> > sort of things as a plot point, actually.)
>
> I can't give a specific answer. There are two categories of time
> here: (1) intervals so short that zero or close-to-zero human
> wet-brain cognition can take place in them, and therefore zero or
> near-zero change can occur to my identity during that time; and (2)
> longer intervals, during which I _do_ change, but "not very much."
>
> In case (1) I'd have no problem -- no problem regarding continuity
> of self, anyway -- with the idea of being stopped and then later
> restarted. With regard to (2), I'd acknowledge that the me that
> lived through those seconds, minutes, hours, days, was about to
> cease to exist, but at the same time I'd feel pretty good about the
> fact that something "close enough" to me would exist following the
> restart. And no, I don't claim either (a) that's entirely rational
> or (b) that "not very much" or "close enough" can be quantified.
>
> When the interval is longer - weeks, or months, or years[*1], it
> gets different. I'd still probably feel better about impending
> non-existence knowing that something that once _was_ me would
> survive me, but I admit that's really irrational.
>
> *1: ObSF: the "beta" instance of the central character, Steward, in
> Walter Jon Williams' VOICE OF THE WHIRLWIND, "resurrected" from
> a backup copy when the original (the "alpha") died, and was
> missing the last fifteen years of the dead man's life.
>
> >> *1: _Other_ crimes or torts may have been committed with Samantha
> >> as the victim, of course, and they may be ones that don't exist
> >> yet in any real-world legal system because the cir***stances
> >> have never arisen, but I don't think that she has been killed.
>
> > Well, then for her there is no difference. Are you willing try it
> > yourself should the occasion arise? (As Larry Niven once said,
> > "I'm not going to ride in one of the damned things.")
>
> As stated above, make it fast-acting enough that no experiential
> part of me is lost and I'd be okay with it. Until/unless somebody
> demonstrates that some other part of me -- the hypothetical soul --
> is lost in the process anyway.
>
> --
> William December Starr <wdst...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
A copy of you is just that. Even if it thinks it's you. I liked the
end of Rogue Moon where the note in the copy's pocket (which the copy
would have remembered writing) says something like "remember me for
her". Scotty on Star Trek insisted that it (the output of the
trans****ter) was *not* just a copy, at least in that Blish novel.
Spock didn't think it mattered. As I recall, McCoy definitely did
think it mattered.
You don't need hypothetical soul (like a hypothetical James Brown).
If you die, you die. Doesn't matter whether a copy (even a "perfect"
copy) lives on. Some new person will be living "your" life, thinking
he's you. You don't need the concept of soul to have a concept of a
self aware consciousness that exists, and at some point ceases to.
The problem is that from the outsider's point of view, it's not
possible to determine if the person that came out is the same person,
in the sense of continuity of consciousness, that went in. For
reductionists, that ends the controversy.
Of course, when you wake up in the morning, you really can't be sure
you're not just a copy as well. And over a period of years, you are/
become in some respects just a copy. This is getting too strange.
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