Question

Toward the end of The Science of Freedom, you brought a series of thought experiments that serve as a kind of “self-test” for the reader, to see whether he is a materialist or not. The first was Avshalom Elitzur’s. I found it problematic (as a materialist), and I’ll explain why.
You asked (or Elitzur asked) two questions. The first is whether you would agree to be killed and then have an exact copy of you created (at the moment of death), which would live in your place and receive money. My answer to that question is yes. As far as I’m concerned, that is exactly like going to sleep at night in dreamless sleep (or maybe fainting).
In the second question there is already some trickery. You asked whether, if the scientist told you that your copy already exists and is on its way home, would you then be willing to let them kill you? Here the answer is no, for a simple reason: the brain of the copy that is going home is no longer your brain. It is now experiencing something different from what you are experiencing (it is experiencing the walk home). That brain is different, just like the brain of any other person as far as I’m concerned. That change already makes it a different person, and therefore you will not “wake up” again in his body after they kill you. So if you answer “no” to the second question, that does not prove that you are not a materialist.