Brent Meeker writes:
> > If the duplicate did not feel he was the original, then he wouldn't have
> > "all the memories and personality of the original", would he?
>
> Well that's the question isn't it. Is there something besides memories and personality that makes
> you you. Could you feel that your memories belonged to somebody else? I think that no duplication
> is going to be perfect - it's just a question of whether the difference will be detectable with
> reasonable effort. If one remembers having a green pencil in the first grade and the other
> remembers having a blue one, how could anyone know which is right?
Is the duplication process good enough to match or better the mechanisms naturally in place to preserve the functional integrity of the brain from moment to moment? That is the question that needs to be answered. It would be unreasonable to speculate that the duplicate may not be the same person as the original based on some test which, if applied consistently, might also cast doubt on whether we are still the same person from moment to moment in ordinary life. Putting it differently, maybe we *aren't* the same person from moment to moment: maybe we are constantly dying, to be replaced by a close, but necessarily imperfect copy. After all, nature will not evolve a system to perfectly preserve mental attributes throughout life just because such an arrangement is aesthetically pleasing. Preservation of the majority of memories, personality, other learned and instinctive behaviours, and a *belief* that we are the same person throughout life so that we will plan for our future well-being are the only qualities that evolution could act on. Since our brains are being continuously rebuilt at considerable metabolic expense, any subtle mental quality that has no effect on behaviour would be ruthlessly pared away by evolution's razor.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Tue Jun 27 2006 - 06:59:26 PDT