Let us consider Kid Nichols.
The following is a hypothetical, theoretical thought experiment. Do think carefully, very carefully. Carefully, indeed!
Assume Nichols' skeleton is unearthed and is articulated together with space-age plastic and metals - so the skeleton can stand upright intact and move freely along all joints with force, remaining intact. Further assume this articulated Nicholsian skeleton is then attached to an advanced pitching machine, so that the skeleton is made to go into a windup (or pitch from the stretch with runners on base) and the arm can move normally, so that the skeleton can hurl a baseball, for strikes, at 95+ MPH. Also, the skeleton can thrown breaking pitches, change ups - do everything a major league pitcher - a great pitcher - can do. The skeleton will also be able to field bunts. Let's further assume that after pitching a full game, the machine needs 3-4 days for maintenance - so that this contraption, which we shall call from this point forward "The Kid Nichols Skeletal Cyborg" can be put out to the mound every 4-5 days. Just like a starting pitcher today. Assume that the Nichols skeleton is able to win 20 games in a season pitching for a major league team. Two questions arise.
1. Should those 20 wins (as well as all other statistics complied - losses, strikeouts, walks, ERA, etc.) be added on to Nichols' lifetime W-L record?
2. If the skeletal cyborg keeps on winning year after year, can Nichols then eclipse Cy Young's record for career wins? It is Nichols out there pitching, is it not?
4 comments:
Riiiight. And I suppose you would argue that graduates of University College London can claim to have been taught by Jeremy Bentham?
This is a rather banal question about identity. The more interesting side is the flip side: where do steroids end and laser surgery begin? That's not a very well explored line. Identity? That's sill stuff of science fiction. In that hypothetical there's no difference if Justin Masterson took a piece of Kid Nichols' bone out to the mound every time. Or what if for some reason Greg Maddux gave a blood transfusion to some pitcher mere minutes before that pitcher took the mound? No one would dare argue that Maddux deserve credit.
Ultimately, it's not partial DNA itself but agency that matters here. And Kid Nichols wouldn't even have close to agency.
Sir,
I will have agency. Sir, that is me pitching out there, on the mound, in the sun, under a blue sky, the flags whipping in the wind. It is I, Charles Augustus "Kid" Nichold. What? So, I'm only a skeleton? Are a skin-musclest? Are you prejudiced - aye, bigoted! - against those of us deceased, those of us of mere bone? How DARE you! What next, you latter day Cap Anson? Who else cannot play major league ball?
I see unto you: if it is I on the mound - either bone or, as in my younger days, flesh and sinew - I must, repeat must, get credit for my work.
Now, then, Sir, before I bang you in the head with my humerus bone, agree that I will win 20 games this year.
Thank you,
your ossified friend,
THE KID NICHOLS SKELETAL CYBORG
It's the machine, not the skeleton, doing the work. The skeleton is just a conduit, and could be replaced with any other. If the machine is powered by the brain of Kid Nichols, maybe you've got an argument, but unfortunately that particular piece of hardware has been lost to time and decay.
Sir -
But it is I out there, I, Kid Nichols. What? A player makes a shoestring catch and the ball nestles in the webbing of the glove. Without the glove, the ball falls. Who made the catch?
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