RE: Interested in thoughts on this excerpt from Martin Rees

From: Stathis Papaioannou <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 16:36:58 +1000

CW writes:

> >From: Stathis Papaioannou
> >Do you believe that IF you vanished at point A and a copy of you created at
> >point B who was physically and mentally similar to the original to the same
> >extent as if you had walked from A to B you would have survived? If you
> >answer "no" then you are opening yourself up to the possibility that would
> >not survive the walk either. If you argue that the copy might be
> >physiacally the same but mentally different then you are saying there is
> >some non-physical basis to identity which survives walking but not
> >teleportation, which I suppose is possible, but there is no reason to
> >believe that such a strange thing would or could have evolved.
>
> I can't compare teleportation of human beings with walking since
> teleportation is still a fiction now.
> It's also unknown if there is something non-physical in human (or living)
> beings.

Yes, but it's still possible to imagine what would happen *if* something were
done that at the moment seems impossible. If sodium chloride were produced
by a machine which causes the transmutation of hydrogen into other elements,
would it still taste salty? I would say that the answer is "of course", whether or
not such a machine could ever be built. I don't even see how it is *logically*
possible that pure NaCl could taste different depending on where it came from.

Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Fri Aug 04 2006 - 02:38:59 PDT

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