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Isn't that the same as submitting your clone to fear and torment because you will not have a lasting memory of surviving all that? What's the practical differe

Isn't that the same as submitting your clone to fear and torment because you will not have a lasting memory of surviving all that? What's the practical difference other than timelike distance between you rather than spacelike distance?

tenuousemphasis 14d ago
There's a great free Yale lecture series called Death that goes into this. https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176/lecture-12 https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176/lecture-12 Version 1: A mad scientist swaps your mind with another person's (Linda's), then asks which resulting body he should torture. Intuition says spare the one with your personality, so personality looks like the key to identity. Version 2: He's going to torture you, but first gives you amnesia, then makes you believe you're Linda, then gives Linda your memories. Intuition says don't torture your body, so the body looks like the key.
- card_zero 14d ago
  Premised on being utterly selfish and not caring about Linda. Leaving that aside, is this really a great and clever question? In version 2, your minds are swapped, so it's the same question. The difference is that you have been "driven crazy" and "deluded", but in what sense? If the objective is to avoid yourself being tortured, it's unclear which one is yourself, simply because the question relies on the unclear fictional process of "making you believe you're the other person", and the question itself implies you shouldn't trust that process. It could be made shorter: "A mad scientist comes along and does something mysterious, so that you might not be yourself any more! So, are you? Ah, you don't know! Gotcha!" The original is in Problems of the Self, 1973. (Or it's an essay titled The Self and The Future.) I've got hold of that, am reading. The original version is really long. The first six pages are just really making a meal out of describing all the ramifications of the simple sci-fi concept of a body swap. Yes, unfortunately it seems to be not very good. "He now further adds that at the moment of torture I shall not only not remember the things I am now in a position to remember, but will have a different set of impressions of my past, quite different from the memories I now have. I do not think that this would cheer me up, either." So, the problem with this is that it's nonsense, like saying "You are not you, but you are! Now if something happens to that person, does it happen to you?" Well I don't know, Bernard, it depends what your rather silly words mean. He's just playing the shell game with the word I. Then at the end (ten pages later) there's a messier version: "he could have gone on and produced two persons each with A-like character and memories, as well as one or two with B-like characteristics". So it seems that the confusion and non-neatness of the swap is the whole point. Thing is, I'm not even very concerned which one is me. I suppose, alright, I do prefer me-like characteristics. So I'll take the half-dozen clones who seem vaguely right, that's good enough for me. Whatever.
card_zero 14d ago
No, there's a difference, in that my clone would get PTSD or some similar trauma as a result, which is a waste of a large part of that clone's life. In the version where I'm drugged into forgetfulness, I've only wasted a day, for science and profit.
- ajuc 14d ago
  PTSD and other results of trauma do not require a memory of the thing happening to you. In fact often people don't remember the thing that caused the trauma. It's enough that your nervous system adapts to the unsafe environment. It doesn't have to know why.
  - card_zero 14d ago
    Oh yes, I daresay. I mean to include that sort of thing with "memories" anyway. The drug might not be physically possible in reality.
- deleted 13d ago
  [deleted]

tenuousemphasis 14d ago

There's a great free Yale lecture series called Death that goes into this. https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176/lecture-12 https://oyc.yale.edu/philosophy/phil-176/lecture-12 Version 1: A mad scientist swaps your mind with another person's (Linda's), then asks which resulting body he should torture. Intuition says spare the one with your personality, so personality looks like the key to identity. Version 2: He's going to torture you, but first gives you amnesia, then makes you believe you're Linda, then gives Linda your memories. Intuition says don't torture your body, so the body looks like the key.

card_zero 14d ago
Premised on being utterly selfish and not caring about Linda. Leaving that aside, is this really a great and clever question? In version 2, your minds are swapped, so it's the same question. The difference is that you have been "driven crazy" and "deluded", but in what sense? If the objective is to avoid yourself being tortured, it's unclear which one is yourself, simply because the question relies on the unclear fictional process of "making you believe you're the other person", and the question itself implies you shouldn't trust that process. It could be made shorter: "A mad scientist comes along and does something mysterious, so that you might not be yourself any more! So, are you? Ah, you don't know! Gotcha!" The original is in Problems of the Self, 1973. (Or it's an essay titled The Self and The Future.) I've got hold of that, am reading. The original version is really long. The first six pages are just really making a meal out of describing all the ramifications of the simple sci-fi concept of a body swap. Yes, unfortunately it seems to be not very good. "He now further adds that at the moment of torture I shall not only not remember the things I am now in a position to remember, but will have a different set of impressions of my past, quite different from the memories I now have. I do not think that this would cheer me up, either." So, the problem with this is that it's nonsense, like saying "You are not you, but you are! Now if something happens to that person, does it happen to you?" Well I don't know, Bernard, it depends what your rather silly words mean. He's just playing the shell game with the word I. Then at the end (ten pages later) there's a messier version: "he could have gone on and produced two persons each with A-like character and memories, as well as one or two with B-like characteristics". So it seems that the confusion and non-neatness of the swap is the whole point. Thing is, I'm not even very concerned which one is me. I suppose, alright, I do prefer me-like characteristics. So I'll take the half-dozen clones who seem vaguely right, that's good enough for me. Whatever.

card_zero 14d ago

No, there's a difference, in that my clone would get PTSD or some similar trauma as a result, which is a waste of a large part of that clone's life. In the version where I'm drugged into forgetfulness, I've only wasted a day, for science and profit.

ajuc 14d ago
PTSD and other results of trauma do not require a memory of the thing happening to you. In fact often people don't remember the thing that caused the trauma. It's enough that your nervous system adapts to the unsafe environment. It doesn't have to know why.
- card_zero 14d ago
  Oh yes, I daresay. I mean to include that sort of thing with "memories" anyway. The drug might not be physically possible in reality.
deleted 13d ago
[deleted]