I Pose A Question

I am taking a course called "PHIL120 Reason & Reality" as an elective this semester. Needless to say I love this class, it is so interesting. Even more so that I am thrown for a loop when my opinion falls in a very small minority. So we were talking about personal identity today, and the scenerio posed to the group I was in (although I worked on my own, I detest working in groups) was this (it isn't word for word because I had to turn in the paper):

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"A women by the name of Alma is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and has 3-6 months to live. She is determined not to give up and will do anything to live on.



3 weeks after the diagnosis, a person comes up to her offering the chance to live. A new medical advancement had been made, and a company called 'eternity' had been formed. The company would produce an exact clone of her in a few months time without the cancer. Including all of her past memories, personality features, likes, dislikes, ect. All the things in her brain that formed her outside of her appearance. She agrees to this procedure so that she can live on with her family.

The clone is sussceful and has no problems what so ever. The day the clone is finished, Alma dies in the hospital, sorta. The old alma with cancer dies, but the clone lives on. The cloned alma remembers having cancer and goes on to live her life with her family and friends with no problems.

However, her brother claims that it is not Alma and that it is an imposter, despite being exactly the same in every way. He sues the company because of this."

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So that is the scenerio. Once I fit it together in my head, I had a million questions and ideas. There are three theroies to personal identiy in philosphy that we have learned. The body theory; which says that a person is who they are by the body they are in and what the body is made of. The memory theory; which says that a person is who they are by the memories they have. and the soul theory; that a person is who they are by the soul inhabiting that person.

Most of the class follows the memory theory, or peices of it. I believe that the soul theory makes the most sense out of all of them, which brings me to my questions that I have. Even so you could just ignore the theories, and form your own idea from what natrually makes sense to you, which is what I did. In this case Alma dies and lives at the same time for a moment. So I would believe that Alma's soul would transfer to the other body, and continoue on because she is exactly the same. But since in her old body, which has no connection to her new body, she died. Would the new Alma suddenly remeber the experience of dying? I really am not sure what to make of this but it really got my gears turning and I have been thinking of it all day. It is diffucalt for me to explain how I feel about most of this because words don't exsist for it, and I am not very good with written word.

Take this other scenerio. What if there is a non-exsistant period. Where alma doesnt exsist because she had died and the clone was not finished yet. How would this fall over. Would Alma remember having spiritual experiences to this? or not? I am not sure of this because the way I see it, it could go either way. The first thing is, what is the point of Alma dying then reliving. A situation this rare and profound has had to have been planned and layed out beyond control, so it would come down to who was to gain from this experience. If Alma was ment to transcend this reality then she would retain it. But what if her family and people around her where the olny ones who are ment to experience the effects of this odd situation, then mabye Alma would not be able to remember what happned, nor be allowed.

Then there is the strangest situation. What if both alma's exsist at the same time. This is nearly impossible for me to explain to myself. The olny thing that fits is her spirit would split into two to fill these bodys, but then would there be some kind of psysic link between them? This is different from twins, and I find it very very odd for another "soul" to inhabit the new alma who has the same memories feelings personality aspects and everything as the original did. A different soul would not fit right, there would be visiable changes. Yet, for this something has to fill the gap. what would happen if they were to meet.

I've partly run out of steam, and I fear that I am rambaling very badly at this point so I will stop. Take what you want from this, it is just what I was thinking, and I am curious to everyone elses takes on this, and if everyone else finds this as facenating as I do.

 

I think he was, I don't remember exactly in the paper, like I said I had to turn it in.

Oh of course this question is not answerable! I just put it up so we could talk about it. I am not looking for an end all be all answer to this!

I am agients cloning as well. I don't think we should prevent that technology from advancing. But the idea of clones bothers me...

 

*nod* that is more or less how I look at it. It is a circular pathway, each definition has its own reason to it. That is why I find this so facenating, because it can not be answered, and it can be answered in any way imaginable at the same time.