[ExI] Uploading and selfhood

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Mon Mar 31 02:28:44 UTC 2008


Jef writes

> Personal identity is always only a function of perceived agency
> **by an observer**, regardless of the physical, functional or
> ontological status of the entity on whose behalf it acts, and even
> when the observer is the agent itself.

It's a good thing that the subordinate clause "and even when the
observer is the agent itself" is added, or one would evidently
not survive the destruction of all the world's people and animals
except oneself.

But if personal identity is, as you write, only a function of perceived
agency by some observer, then what about this following case?

Suppose that there exists today a certain person who has rather
low status for various reasons.  One of these reasons is that he
is convinced beyond any doubt that he is the Emperor Napoleon
of the nineteenth century.  When it's objected to him that it is
not possible for Napoleon, born 1769 (as he well knows) to
alive in the year 2008, he makes various denials of one kind
or another. (It's partly because of the incoherence---just from
our point of view, mind you---of his answers that his status is
so low, and that he's receiving help in a mental institution.)

Now then.  A terrible plague manages to kill off everyone but
him, as well as all Earth's animals. There is---it seems to me---
but one of your "observers" remaining, and that is this individual
himself.  Would you say that since "Personal identity is always
only a function of perceived agency by an observer....even
when the observer is the agent itself", that the fact of the matter
is this:

     The Emperor Napoleon (1769- ), formerly of France, but
     now living in a certain city in the U.S., turned out to be the
     last living human on Earth?

Lee




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