When a body meets a body
Imagine an ovoid, bilaterally symmetric, deterministic universe. The universe is symmetrical in its terrain, landscape, and all other material physical features, as well as in its laws of nature. The same events which have transpired on one side of the ovoid have also transpired on the other side for the entirety of the universe’s history.
Yourself and a physical duplicate of yourself, each starting from one pole of the ovoid on its long axis (equidistant from the center) begin walking towards each other at the same velocity. Is it possible for you and your duplicate to walk past each other, or even to engage in meaningful verbal interaction? It seems not: every move you make would be countered by your duplicate, and vice-versa. It seems that it would be like trying to walk past your reflection in a mirror. Likewise, every utterance you make would be made simultaneously by your duplicate, making effective communication impossible.
I don’t know if anything philosophically important really hinges on this; it’s just an interesting little thought experiment that occurred to me.
Yourself and a physical duplicate of yourself, each starting from one pole of the ovoid on its long axis (equidistant from the center) begin walking towards each other at the same velocity. Is it possible for you and your duplicate to walk past each other, or even to engage in meaningful verbal interaction? It seems not: every move you make would be countered by your duplicate, and vice-versa. It seems that it would be like trying to walk past your reflection in a mirror. Likewise, every utterance you make would be made simultaneously by your duplicate, making effective communication impossible.
I don’t know if anything philosophically important really hinges on this; it’s just an interesting little thought experiment that occurred to me.
Comments (16)
The echo of the sound of the self,
All occurring in the absence of an embodied community.
More so, when a body never meets a body and it becomes normal... what then?
[quote=Wikipedia: Narcissus (plant)]Narcissus poeticus which grows in Greece, has a fragrance that has been described as intoxicating.[/quote]
I get the same problem when I reach out to try and touch all those porn stars. I hit a flat screen.
Fun. I can think of one "move" that would not be the same, if we use the term generally to mean things like events and outcome: I raise my right hand and say "I am raising my right hand". The difference between me and my duplicate is that I am telling the truth, where as my duplicate is lying.
Everything on the other side of whatever side your on is could be affected by whatever the mysterious rules are.
It reverses front to back.
That said, I think my mirror image would be antimatter possibly? Don't know enough physics to say one way or the other.
Already getting nauseous about perspective.
Where is the reversing? Isn't it that because mirrors don't reverse things that you think that they do? Because if you were to take obi wan, and turn him around (reverse him) that his sword would be in the other hand? It's not an expectation based on how you think things ought to look if things were ways that they ain't?
Interesting point. Would it change anything if the duplicates each said, for instance, "I am raising my western-most hand" as opposed to right/left? How would one define directional coordinates in such a universe?
Mirrors reverse chirality. Here is Groucho Marx negotiating a common understanding of chirality with his own mirror image. (They're starting to reach an agreement at the 1:55 time mark.)
Alright, new attempt to find a difference, by involving free will. In this universe, my duplicate necessarily replicates my every move, or vice versa. Therefore if I have free will, it does not. If I am the master, it is the slave. Or vice versa, but we cannot both have free will or be the master. Kind of like the characters in 's Youtube videos (hilarious by the way).
However...I do see a solution so far as communication is on the menu.
When we think in solitude, we are in a sense communicating with ourself.
So, your mirror image may do exactly what you do, but we could make progress in this self-reflection.
How does one recognize oneself? What gives us a unique identity that can be percieved to allow the distinction self - notself?
One might say: I wasn't feeling myself that day. (Of course Groucho replies: Who were you feeling then?)
I'm interested in how preoccupied we sometimes are by these identity questions. All that logic that puzzles over Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain or Clark Kent / Superman.
And yet before the turn of the 19th-to-20th century it wasn't that uncommon to leave one life, travel over mountains or an ocean, say, and begin again under a new name. Until Bertillon and the fingerprinters and photographers got organized, who was to know who had been who?