Giving the Devil His Due

Abstract

wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, publication in all the major journals. But the sales pitch was novel. 'You are a materialist,' he said. 'And whatever sophisticated, functionalist or anyway anti-reductionist, views you hold about the nature of consciousness, you don't believe that as a matter of fact any person survives the death of his human body. So why not take our fabulous offer? When you die - after a life enhanced by the package of material and other goods which we tailor to your requirements - if your beliefs are correct, there will be no person from whom we can collect the immortal soul which you contract to supply.' He wanted an answer right away, of course, but it seemed too good a deal to resist - after all, as he said, I had already given post-mortem survival, personal identity, and the nature of consciousness considerable deliberation in the past. A few evenings later there was a familiar whiff of sulphur and I was irritated to see that he was back. No one had said anything about a follow up visit. 'Right then,' he said. 'It's time for you to start fulfilling your side of our bargain.' 'Hang on,' I replied. 'Haven't you forgotten that my soul isn't forfeit until I have died? And clearly I'm not dead. In fact I never felt better.' For the first time his face assumed something of a diabolical look. 'Well, actually,' he said, 'you may need a bit of time to take this in but last night you were visited by one of our teams of experts when you were asleep. We filled your bedroom with our special anaesthetic gas so your spouse wouldn't notice your absence. You were taken to one of our nearby facilities and there entirely replicated in new living tissue. Your old body underwent a painless termination and we replaced you in your home without disturbance. Since we last met, you have died and - as you pointed out just now - you are still very much persisting. Hence my return visit.' I'm ashamed to say that my first impulse was to deny forcefully that it was conceivable that I was a replica. Thoughts of brains in vats flooded my mind in a none-too-systematic way. Surely I could know that I had not been secretly replicated? Wasn't it somehow incoherent to suggest that I might have been? My muddled state was complicated by the blinding realisation