As I understand it, you agree that R1 and R2 would not be the very same individual, even if they were exact copies of each other (i.e., two identical tokens of the same type)
I don’t have a single definitive answer to the puzzle of Personal identity.
The traditional solution to the problem of Personal identity is soul theory—there is an unchanging immaterial part of a person which continues through bodily changes. Rationalists reject soulful theory, and expect that the adoption of physicalism, as an alternative, is sufficient to solve the problem.
But there is more than one non-soul theory:
material continuity
pattern continuity
social construction
nihilism (no answer).
Computationalism (a subtype of pattern continuity)
These are clearly different, because they give different answers to the puzzle cases. For example, a form of teletransportation that destructively scans your body at transmission and assembles a new one out of local material would preserve identity by pattern continuity but not by material continuity.
Having said that if you exist in two places, that is evidence that there are two of you...and if the two of you can diverge and become non identical that is further evidence.
I’ve started to doubt myself—whether this is merely a “human language game.”
I don’t have a single definitive answer to the puzzle of Personal identity.
The traditional solution to the problem of Personal identity is soul theory—there is an unchanging immaterial part of a person which continues through bodily changes. Rationalists reject soulful theory, and expect that the adoption of physicalism, as an alternative, is sufficient to solve the problem.
But there is more than one non-soul theory:
material continuity
pattern continuity
social construction
nihilism (no answer).
Computationalism (a subtype of pattern continuity)
These are clearly different, because they give different answers to the puzzle cases. For example, a form of teletransportation that destructively scans your body at transmission and assembles a new one out of local material would preserve identity by pattern continuity but not by material continuity.
Having said that if you exist in two places, that is evidence that there are two of you...and if the two of you can diverge and become non identical that is further evidence.
What I’ve been calling social construction?