Quote:
Originally Posted by vicky_molokh
That's a very interesting set of questions. It might indeed turn out that person-0y.o. and person-18y.o. have practically nothing in common that they don't have in common with most of humanity. Which, if it is indeed the case, we have to accept as a moderately uncomfortable truth. That's the price of having definitions - sticking to them.
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person-0y.o has an inherent interest in the welbeing, liberty, and chattels of person-18y.o that supersedes anyone else's interest, if any. It follows that in the earlier pre-crime example punishing person-18y.o is also a punishment against person-0y.o.
It may be useful to contemplate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_somnambulism as a legal precedent for treating person-like mindsets that spring from the same human being, but have separate memory tracks and apparently separate wills and decisions after one or both having undergone changes in cognitive content from changes in the medium of mentation. The sleepwalking persona can represent a (short-lived) xox; it's interesting to contemplate if the restored wakeful persona can be considered a xox of the original as well.