I just thought of an interesting thought experiment that we might explore in our discussion of free will vs determanism.
Let us say there exists a machine that can completely replicate, bit of matter, by bit of matter any organism that is given to it. Simply by scouring the world around it for a bit of matter that resembles that bit of matter in everyway (eg, it finds a electron with such and such propertys in the organism, if goes out to find one with just the same properties and uses it to make the new replica organism). Somone may say that this is not “physically” possible to which i would disagree but i dont think that anyone could disagree with the fact that this machine is logically possible to create.
So now we take a sperm, we ram it into an egg so that we get an embryo that has all the potential to grow up and become a human being and we toss it into our machine so that we have embryos that are exacally the same in every way… Kinda like an uber cloning machine, except were going beyond mere genetics.
Next we invent a machine that does the exact job that the womb does and put one of our embryos in one, and put anouther one in anouther in EXACALLY the same way. Their orientation is the same, their elevation is the same, its all the same. Next we place these two machines in two TOTALLY identical rooms. Identical in EVERYWAY. These two rooms are also TOTALLY insulated from the outside world. Imagine them as two rooms placed in the farthest reaches of our universe and then a couple billion light years further just to make sure that there is nothing in our universe that could effect them in any way. Again, while this may not be physically possible to do, it surely is logically possible. These two rooms also have machinery in place that will be able to sence the needs of the children and provide for them in the most optimal way possible.
What do ya think would happen? 1 minute later, 1 day later, 1 month later, 1 year later?
If you ask me what would happen is that the two kids be born on the same day, would fall out of the machine exacally the same way, wiggle in exacally the same way, and crawl off in the same direction at the same time when the time came. They would cry at the same time, they would get hungry at the same time, and the machinery would end up responding at the same time to the same needs until they eventually died at the same time from the same reasons and their bodies would decary exacally the same way and turn into dust at the same time. At any point an observer would look in on the room i bet they would be mirrored in everyway.
Given the circumstances what reason could there possibly be for it to turn out any different? What reason could there ever be for one child to do one thing that the other did not. Lets even pretend for a second that free will does exist and that these children can make their own independant decisions. Why would one ever choose to do one thing that anouther did not also choose? What influence could there have been that would make one choose one thing over anouther?
*** in hindsight i realzie that i was presupposing determanism here ***