On 6/22/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Lee Corbin</b> <<a href="mailto:lcorbin@rawbw.com">lcorbin@rawbw.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Exactly. Or they might believe that they'll become a particular<br>sun flower, or a particular river that they're fond of. And they'd<br>be just plain wrong, if not nuts.<br></blockquote></div><br>Nor is this entirely a straw man. For example, in Philip Pullman's classic 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, a dying character (with clear authorial approval) anticipates continued existence as "part of everything" on the grounds that his atoms will survive; as one reviewer puts it, "This is the very height of narrative dishonesty... Atoms are just atoms, and if that's how we end, let's not prettify it with misty-eyed descriptions." We can see that the reviewer is correct: while there may be room for philosophical disagreement about whether one is justified in anticipating continued existence as a duplicate, there is no coherent philosophy in which one is justified in anticipating continued existence as something which entirely lacks the capacity for thought.
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