Jonny

Okay one night bob is in a bar, he is drunk, and all of the sudden a group of scientists slip some sort of drug into his drink to knock him out. They take him to the cloning lab and clone him. After he is cloned, they bring his body (still passed out) into a room and seat him on a chair. Meanwhile... they take his clone (also passed out in this case) and bring it into a seperate room. So then you have Bob (the original) and Bob2 in two seperate rooms. By the way the rooms are completely identicle, and both bobs are seated in the same position as each other. They don't know that they have been cloned. And finally they awake from being passed out. The last thing they both remember is that they were in a bar drinking, and now all of the sudden they are in a room. Moments later a loud speaker comes on in each room at the same time and makes the following request...

"Please define a dog"

Would both bobs give the excact same definition? At the excact same speed, with the excact same emotive tone, with excactly the same stutters and everything?

If this event ever took place, wouldn't a materialist have to hold that the bobs would say excactly the same thing in the excact manner as each other, since both of their environments were identicle up til that point?

tronvillain

Well, ignoring the potential existence of random elements and the difficulty inherent in creating an accurate copy, we would have to hold that they would respond in the same way. What is your point?

Christopher Lord

If they where perfect copies, and you managed to maintain perfect environment sync until some time after the question has been asked, then yes, absolutely.

Small differences would VERY quickly pile up, diverging the thoughts in any other case.

If two copies where placed in two different envronments (even visually identical environments with slight variations), you would see divergence after mere seconds.

Francois Tremblay

Got to agree with those answers. If the conditions are perfectly identical, the answers will be the same... you know, because of metaphysical determinism. Of course the conditions CANNOT be perfectly identical (since at least the spatial coordinates are not the same), but I'm sure some differences are relatively less relevant than others...

Someone7

Materialism isn't committed to determinism.

Francois Tremblay

What's your point ? Materialists aren't committed to fluffy bunnies either.

tronvillain

I think the options are limited to strict determinism and probablistic determinism. Actually, those appear to be the only options whether you are a materialist or not.

Dr. Retard

The point is that Jonny's question for materialists can be answered affirmatively only if antecedent states completely determine subsequent states -- that is, if determinism is true. So the fact that he posed this as a "question for materialists" might betray a misunderstanding on his part -- the misunderstanding that materialism entails determinism.

crocodile deathroll

Yes I agree small differences even differences that are virtually infinitesimal will very quickly explode into very large neurobiological differences like the configuration of identical twin cells after they divide after about of week of gestation. But if one Bob1 died about 20 years later then I find it quite plausible Bob1 one will continue to live his life inside the body of Bob2 from that point of time 20 years earlier when he was cloned.
The same may quite plausibly happen to identical twins. When twin1 dies about 80 years later then he/she will reexperience the life within the body of twin2 in a "soul" swap.

Soul is a dirty four letter word in science or for a materialist. I prefer to use the term consciousness as it does not invoke the same kind of Cartesian dualism as the soul.

The consciousness of Bob1 and Bob2 both originated from one source, but they both developed into 2 unique individuals. The same principle for all entities of consciousness like the expressions on consciousness in all the scientists performing that cloning procedure. I believe all entities of consciousness originated from something like a genetic mutation millions of years ago. In other words all expressions of consciousness is reductable to a single unified principle, and when you die you become one with that principle, but in the course of the evolution of the brain differences very quickly pile up and you become somebody else, and that somebody else may well been in the past relative to your present perceived life and not the future.
You must consider that when you die you will forget that you were ever been born in the first place

tronvillain

Gibberish.