PHL100Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: If And Only If
Document Summary
So we"ve been discussing the psychological continuity theory. As a reminder, this is what it says: Now it"s time for us to consider a new kind of case and a new kind of problem for a theory of personhood and personal identity over time. Suppose that someone were to invent teletransportation, and that the transporter works as follows. A person enters the machine and it scans their body, recording all of their body and brain"s information. But in an instant their body and brain"s information is radioed to another location, where local matter is combined in accordance with the information. Many have the intuition that the replica person is numerically identical with the person who entered the transporter. Body theorists cannot accept this intuitive view. That is because, given the way we have described its operations, the transporter destroys the bodies of the people who step into it. But psychological continuity theorists appear able to accept it.
