Comment on I want to save myself

Sat, 21 May 2011 19:36:32 GMT

It's only when we start talking about cryonics, teleportation and cloning that the hidden absurdity of 'selfhood' comes to light.

What absurdity? Here's you, Neil, and that's Tyler. It's possible to tell who of you two is Neil and who is not. A copy-Neil might be about the same thing as Neil, but this doesn't interfere with the simplicity of telling that Tyler is not the same thing. You can well care about Neil-like things more than about Tyler-like things. It's plausible from an evolutionary psychology standpoint that humans care about themselves more than other people. By "myself" I mean "a thing like the one I'm pointing at", and the rest is a process of evaluating this symbolic reference into a more self-contained definition; this simple reference is sufficient to specify the intended meaning.

Discuss