Re: Reasons and Persons

From: George Levy <glevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 31 May 2006 19:51:21 -0700

Russell Standish wrote:

>This would imply that there exist "islands" of indentity, and having
>limited awareness in time and multispace, we can only ever be aware of
>one instance from each island, but that might change with technology.
>
>BTW another analogy is the islands of geneflow within biological
>species. Within biology, we have such things as ring species, where
>two species at a location (eg Britain) cannot interbreed, yet can
>interbreed with neighbouring species to the east and west in an
>interrupted chain that circumnavigates the pole. (Sorry I may not be
>explaining the concept of ring species too well - look up Wikipedia).
>
>In such a case, perhaps "ring identities" such as Jesse Mazer <->
>Bruno Marchal do exist - but I'd like to be surer of the analogy. Also
>ring species are the exception, not the rule, in Nature.
>
>

If we can define an intermediary state common to all species then we
will have bridged all the isolated island.
It seems that at the embryonic stage and possibly at the fetus stage,
rhe nervous circuitry is so simple that it may be common between all
individual of a specie and there are no identity islands. So we could
say with near certainty that Bruno Marchal and Jesse Mazer used to be
one and the same.
In addition we may assume that embryonic and fetal development allows
for a continuous distribution of neurons in the brain rather than in
discrete space positions, and an incremental connectivity of the neurons
such that any particular neuron may differ by a single connection. With
these assumptions we may infer that there is a continuity in personal
identity from anyone to anyone.

George


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Received on Wed May 31 2006 - 22:52:25 PDT

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