I would be prepared to travel in a device that ‘destroyed’ me and built only one copy, because I believe that the persistence of identity over time is implausible in any circumstance. Subsequently, I find nothing so unique about the device that I should fear its usage – it would not ‘destroy’ me in a way that is different from life itself. I shall demonstrate why such persistence is implausible by examining two ‘persistence conditions’ (Olson, 2002, edited Zalta, 2016) used to prove it, namely the physical and psychological continuity accounts. With regard to the former, I propose that the lack of physical continuity between the copy (or copies) and myself would not necessarily rule out numerical identity. With regard to the latter, I propose that there
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Rather, I believe that physical continuity alone is an insufficient criterion for persistence. Imagine that, at some point in this continuity, Person A’s mind was swapped with Person B’s, importing across her psychology and memories without affecting the physical makeup of her brain or body (Olson, 2002, edited Zalta, 2016). It might well be true that subsequent physical states of Person A are continuous with pre-swap physical states, but the fact that Person A is now governed by a completely separate mind makes her an intuitively distinct person. At the very least Person A would now be more identifiable with the body of Person B, suggesting that psychological continuity better accounts for persistence than physical continuity.
Though the copy (or copies) would not have physical continuity with the initial person that entered, so long as the copy retains psychological continuity we would not really be ‘dying’ at the point that we use enter the device. It is therefore safe to conclude that a reluctance predicated on a conflation of physical destruction with the cessation of existence would be
Rather, I believe that physical continuity alone is an insufficient criterion for persistence. Imagine that, at some point in this continuity, Person A’s mind was swapped with Person B’s, importing across her psychology and memories without affecting the physical makeup of her brain or body (Olson, 2002, edited Zalta, 2016). It might well be true that subsequent physical states of Person A are continuous with pre-swap physical states, but the fact that Person A is now governed by a completely separate mind makes her an intuitively distinct person. At the very least Person A would now be more identifiable with the body of Person B, suggesting that psychological continuity better accounts for persistence than physical continuity.
Though the copy (or copies) would not have physical continuity with the initial person that entered, so long as the copy retains psychological continuity we would not really be ‘dying’ at the point that we use enter the device. It is therefore safe to conclude that a reluctance predicated on a conflation of physical destruction with the cessation of existence would be