When Jones asks whether he would have existed if created from a slightly modified sperm and the same egg, at least three distinct answers are coherent — indicating the question is not settled by physical overlap.
coherent(de Finetti's usage in the context of the Dutch Book argument for probabilism)
A subject is coherent if their unconditional degrees of belief do not permit a Dutch Book (a guaranteed loss through a combination of bets) to be made against them
personal identity(Philosophy of personal identity)
The relation of sameness holding between a person existing at one time and something existing at another time, analyzed here in terms of psychological continuity
Why is this so? Imagine the case where we are not sure whether it would have been Jones’ body – and, hence, Jones – that would have been created by the slightly modified sperm and the same egg. Can we say, as we would for an object with no consciousness, that the story something the same, something different is the whole story: that overlap of constitution is all there is to it? For the Jones body as such, this approach would do as well as for any other physical object. But suppose Jones, in ref