It seems to me that you are thinking about some “stronger” form of cloning. The framework that I was thinking in was that the “clone” was a similar-but-distinct entity, something like a Twin materialized out of thin air instantaneously. But it seems that you are thinking of a stronger form where we should treat the two entities as exactly the same.
I have difficulties conceptualizing this since in my mind a clone still occupies a distinct time, space and consciousness as the original, and so is treated distinctly in my eyes. (In terms of being judged for the morality of actions that the original committed).
I will try to think of a situation / framework where this “stronger” form of cloning makes sense to me.
Say someone commits a crime, then goes into a scanner, destroyed, and recreated somewhere else. is it agreed that they’re the same person? if so, it would make sense to still blame them for the crime.
Now let’s say we discovered that this person never actually destroyed themselves, they were scanned and cloned, but faked getting destroyed.
Should the “clone” now be declared innocent, and the “original” declared guilty instead? or should both of them be declared guilty?
Yeah, that makes sense. The way I came to think of it is that person A commits a crime, then faints and is unconscious after that. Afterwards, a separate nefarious cloner then clones person A in a black box, so one person A goes in, two persons A come out from the cloning black box. Person(s!) A awake, and having a strong conscience of their crime, turn themselves in. Since they have exactly the same memories and conscience, they are indistinguishable from the point of view of being the person who committed the crime, both internally and externally.
This is actually a good question. I feel that both persons should be declared guilty, since cloning oneself (whether intentionally or not) should not give one an automatic-out from moral judgement. I am not as sure about whether the punishment should be equal or shared.
It seems to me that you are thinking about some “stronger” form of cloning. The framework that I was thinking in was that the “clone” was a similar-but-distinct entity, something like a Twin materialized out of thin air instantaneously. But it seems that you are thinking of a stronger form where we should treat the two entities as exactly the same.
I have difficulties conceptualizing this since in my mind a clone still occupies a distinct time, space and consciousness as the original, and so is treated distinctly in my eyes. (In terms of being judged for the morality of actions that the original committed).
I will try to think of a situation / framework where this “stronger” form of cloning makes sense to me.
Let’s see if i can help.
Say someone commits a crime, then goes into a scanner, destroyed, and recreated somewhere else. is it agreed that they’re the same person? if so, it would make sense to still blame them for the crime.
Now let’s say we discovered that this person never actually destroyed themselves, they were scanned and cloned, but faked getting destroyed.
Should the “clone” now be declared innocent, and the “original” declared guilty instead? or should both of them be declared guilty?
Yeah, that makes sense. The way I came to think of it is that person A commits a crime, then faints and is unconscious after that. Afterwards, a separate nefarious cloner then clones person A in a black box, so one person A goes in, two persons A come out from the cloning black box. Person(s!) A awake, and having a strong conscience of their crime, turn themselves in. Since they have exactly the same memories and conscience, they are indistinguishable from the point of view of being the person who committed the crime, both internally and externally.
This is actually a good question. I feel that both persons should be declared guilty, since cloning oneself (whether intentionally or not) should not give one an automatic-out from moral judgement. I am not as sure about whether the punishment should be equal or shared.
See my thoughts here on full/distributed punishment