Identity Across the Multiverse
Amy Kind,
The Splintered Mind,
Feb 09, 2022
Starting with Arthur C. Clark's A Fall of Moondust and John Christopher's The White Mountains, I read a lot of science fiction when I was younger. As this article notes, science fiction has looked at the question of personal identity every which way. What is it to say that I'm the same person over time? What would we say if I crossed worlds or dimensions or split into multiple entities? As a philosopher I also considered the matter, but I've never been comfortable with the discipline's desire to come up with 'one right answer' to these questions. I think of my own identity one way (specifically: if I think it's me, it's me) and people in the community think of it differently (specifically: physical bodily continuity). The interesting questions revolve not around which of these views is right, but around how these views intersect, for example, in questions about knowledge and skills, responsibility, authority, consent and agreement.
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