On 27 Feb 2009, at 10:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> 2009/2/27 Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>:
>
>> Gosh! And what if the backup has been done last year, or one
>> minute ago? I
>> will be dead too? Less dead?
>
> This shows a potential problem the psychological criterion for
> personal identity. If I am facing death it is little consolation to me
> if a backup was made an hour ago, since I (the presently speaking I)
> will not be able to anticipate any future experiences. Only if there
> exists some copy who will have a memory of my present experiences
> would I not object to dying, and this would require a backup updated
> every moment. In that case, I should also object to an hour of memory
> loss, due to a medication like midazolam. But I don't think that
> taking midazolam is tantamount to dying. Inconsistency! Either I have
> to agree that taking midazolam is like dying, or I have to agree that
> dying while leaving an old (how old?) backup behind does not matter.
> If I agree to the latter, then I give up worrying about the thing I
> don't like about dying, which is the fact that I won't be able to
> anticipate any future experiences. And if I give up worrying about
> that, then there isn't anything else that worries me about dying. So
> if I think that taking midazolam is no big deal (which I do), to be
> consistent I should also think that death is no big deal.
>
Correct, but only at the G* level. Assuming comp this seems to me
valid. (but you can't *known* that comp is correct, beware the trap).
Death and suffering of others still matters, which makes me doubt this
is a serious problem for the psychological criterion of personal
identity. Eventually it is only a problem of right, or a tree of
sequences of problems of right.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Fri Feb 27 2009 - 13:21:14 PST