Moon

Over spring break (Yep, another post about spring break. What was I supposed to do besides sit around and think?), I watched a fantastic little movie called Moon. I don’t want to give too much away, but it involves clones. And of course, when we’re talking about clones, we can quite naturally talk about personal identity.

One particularly interesting thing about the clones was they were implanted with the same memories and started off with the same bodies, yet they took on completely different personalities and characteristics. One spent years working on a small model town, while another was fond of exercising and punching bags. But even with these differences, they really believed they were Sam Bell. They thought there was continuity between their memories and their “activation.”

Emotions and actions are absolutely vital to the plot of the film. Sam and Sam struggle to come to terms with the stunning realization that they are just clones. How real are emotions, then? How important are actions? And how real are we? The moon base’s AI was continuous; the clones died. Time means something, even to clones. In this case, especially clones.

What are the implications for this in regards to the afterlife? We’ve talked a lot about how personal continuity plays a large role in describing some meaningful continued existence, but to what degree? Sam and Sam and Sam and Sam all had a continuity of memory. They even had a continuity of body organization. But they weren’t the same persons.

I think resurrection could potentially have the same problem with personal identity that the issue of cloning has. Hypothetically, if I was cremated and God created a new body for me ex nihilo, would I be the same person as before? Or if the body I possess now was resurrected, what would preserve the link between me now, in this body, and the person then, in this body?

It’s late and this is all making my head hurt a little. The only thing that’s clear to me is that I should have taken Science Fiction and Philosophy or Minds and Machines.