3-4. When are two people the same person? (Cryonics)
Description
This article is from the Cryonics FAQ, by Tim Freeman tim@infoscreen.com with numerous contributions by others.
3-4. When are two people the same person? (Cryonics)
Cryonics and, especially, the technologies required to reanimate
people from cryonic suspension, open new questions about who we are.
People interested in cryonics often disagree about questions of
identity that arise in various conceivable circumstances.
One way to resolve this is to treat it as a matter of definition.
We can define two people to be the same if they remember the same
childhood, and if the process by which they came to remember the
same childhood also copied most of their other memories and other
skills. Of course, there are other possible definitions.
Another approach is to use the person-as-software metaphor.
Deciding whether two people are the same is a similar problem to
deciding whether two pieces of software are the same. The
applicability of this simplier problem to the problem of comparing
people is debatable, but the exercise is a good one especially in
light of current debates on software copyrights.
Or one can defer to medicine. The identity questions raised by
cryonics are identical to those faced in medicine today when
considering partial amnesia, stroke survival, brain diseases, etc.
Another alternative is to suppose there is some as-yet-explained
physiological feature which acts as the seat of consciousness. In
this case, two people are the same person if they share this
particular piece of flesh. Preserving this feature becomes
important, and replacing it during revival is not an option.
Last but not least, some people believe in souls. With this
notion, two people are the same person if they have the same soul.
Since the laws that souls obey have not been empirically
explored, this model doesn't make clear predictions about the
consequences of cryonics.
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