Higgo James wrote:
>
> Well said, but I'm not sure your definition of 'I' holds. There are
> infinitely many 'Chris Maloneys' born in a hospital of the same name of
> parents of the same name... etc etc etc who are in no way connected with
> you. Besides, these identifiers are all social naming conventions. And
> perhaps you'll change your name tomorrow.
>
Okay, you're right. I was just trying to define a root of the tree
somewhere. Perhaps I should have said, go back in time along the
thread that me-here-now is on, to the exact time of my birth, and
then define that thing as C(0,{}). There are still conceivably
problems with that, if you consider that worlds might fuse as well
as split, then there's no unique path back in time.
But another point I was trying to make, and which you emphasize when
you say "perhaps you'll change your name tomorrow", is that there
are people walking around who are "me" in the sense that they are in
the set C(t,B), but who have very little resemblance to me-here-now.
So you have to be careful when using terms like "me", or even
"me-like objects".
--
Chris Maloney
http://www.chrismaloney.com
"Knowledge is good"
-- Emil Faber
Received on Tue Jun 08 1999 - 03:29:44 PDT