256 NONMONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSwould not – that honor would be expected to go to the later Edward. In
scenario four, one would also expect the later Edward to be identical to the
earlier, whereas in scenario three there is no later Edward for the honor to go
to (or else there are too many).
The different results problem has to do with the entailments of the
Complexity View being different from what, intuitively, we would expect.
What matters is not this fact, but what lies behind it. We now turn to that.
Reflections on the scenarios: the problem concerning logical
impossibility
In scenarios one and two, the Complexity View requires that Tedward be
identical to Edward, and in the second that both Tedward and the later Edward
are identical to the earlier. But it is logically impossible that the earlier Edward
be identical both to the later Edward and to Tedward. So the Complexity View
requires that something contradictory be true. No contradiction can be true. So
the Complexity View is false. While it is convenient to put the second scenario in
terms of “(the later) Edward and Tedward” this is only a convenience. The point
is that whichever of the beings that walk out of Double Copier we call “Edward”
(or whatever we call them), there are two of them. Hence they are not identical
to one another. On the Complexity View, both should be the same person as the
Edward who stepped into the Double Copier. That is logically impossible. So the
Complexity View is false. It should be remembered here, and throughout the
discussion, that it is metaphysical, not epistemological, identity conditions that
are relevant here.
Similarly, the Complexity View requires that in scenario three Edward is
identical with both Tedward and Nedward, which is logically impossible since
Tedward and Nedward are distinct. Again, while it is a convenience to give
names to the beings who emerge from the Double Copier-Annihilator, whatever
name one uses (and whether one uses any names or not), the Complexity View
entails that both the beings who emerge are identical to the Edward who entered,
and they cannot be. Similar comments hold regarding scenario four with the
Double Copier; the Edward who entered the machine, given the Complexity
View, is identical with three distinct persons, whatever they are (or are not)
called. Again, what entails the logical possibility of the logically impossible is
false.^26
Reflections on the scenarios: the perfect resemblance mistake
There is another way of looking at the difficulty. What lies behind these
different results is this: given a Complexity View, the sheer fact that there