Re: personal identity

Wei Dai (weidai@eskimo.com)
Wed, 7 Jan 1998 22:39:10 -0800


On Wed, Jan 07, 1998 at 11:58:19PM -0500, Robin Helweg-Larsen wrote:
> If all the information (including memories) in your brain and body could be
> read off into a computer (uploaded), would that computer memory be you? What
> if the original brain and body were destroyed in the uploading? What if they
> were left intact?
>
> What if the uploaded memories were fed into a fresh body? What if identical
> copies were fed into several fresh bodies? What if the original brain and
> body were not still around? What if they were? Would you be the original (if
> it existed), the program, or one or more of the copies?
>
> The program would not change, but the original (if it existed) and the copies
> would diverge away from it and from each other. Which would be you?

All of them would be me, but I would not be any of them. To reiterate,
A is B if and only if A remembers being B, where A and B are mind states
(or person-stages).