Of course the government analogy is actually much fuzzier than the molecular person argument, because when you get a new molecule of some amino acid in your liver, it is presumably identical to the old one, whereas a new senator is only substantially the same---given the tolerances of the system---but naturally not identical.
On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 5:47 PM, Charles Brown <cb31450 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 3:29 AM, James Heartfield <james at heartfield.org>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > In the 1970s Caudwell's work was in print with Lawrence and Wishart, and
> was by default the first port of call for anyone interested in Marxism and
> art. I spied a copy of his Art and Illusion on the shelves of the fantastic
> poet Tony Harrison when he was being interviewed on the TV.
>
> ^^^^^^^^
> CB: I have a copy of the Lawrence and Wishart edition right here.
>
> ^^^^^^
> >
> > Lastly, Charles makes the argument that we are not the same people we
> were. This same argument was made by the reactionary Joseph Barker,
> defending slavery and himself against charges of inconsistency, as recorded
> by a contemporary, the Chartist Adams:
> >
> > At one meeting, Barker was challenged from the audience, a letter in his
> name of some years earlier, against slavery was produced. Was he the Joseph
> Barker who had written it? ‘No,’ was the astonishing reply. ‘It is, as
> everybody knows, a physiological fact that the particles of the human frame
> are all changed in the course of every seven years. More than seven years
> have elapsed since that letter was written; therefore I am not the Joseph
> Barker who wrote it!’ W.E. Adams, Memoirs of a Social Atom, 1968, p 400
>
> ^^^^^^
>
> CB: Good point, James , although in this case, don't have to go to the
> molecular level. Evidently, Joseph Barker had changed in that he had
> changed his opinion on slavery. He had turned into his opposite.
>
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