Seems to me there’s a base assumption that hasn’t been explicitly asserted, yet most posters are operating on … that the ‘transported’ individual / item is composed of physically different matter (atoms) than the original.
As I recall the original Star Trek transporter (aside from a few out of sync episodes, and completely disregarding all fan fiction and later bastardized versions/interpretations) disassembled the original person and then moved the individual atoms (the exact same atoms, not copies) from point A to point B, then reassembled those atoms into the original person. It did not build a copy of the person out of locally available matter, but literally transported the actual atoms of the original to a new location, then reassembled those atoms into the original person using a blueprint (pattern) which simply defined how to reassemble the atoms.
Under that understanding of a matter transporter, there is no issue with “is it a copy or is it me” because in this case it is irredeemably you.
Actually … that’s a neat scenario, and is very similar to the story Kiln People by David Brin. There are artificial bodies that you ‘download’ a copy of yourself into, they (the copy) go run off and do stuff while you are busy doing other stuff. When the copy completes its mission, it returns to ‘home base’ and uploads its memories into the original. The copy expires as the artificial bodies have short shelf-lives. It would be a bit of drag to be the ‘you’ in the copy and know you’re gonna die at some explicit point in the near future, but IMO it would be so cool to be the original and get to absorb the memories of the copies.
As it happens, my scenario was inspired by The Wisdom of Demons by Larry Niven, and by some old novel by IIRC Fredrick Pohl which included the idea of interstellar teleportation that worked by creating copies of people; they didn’t bother destroying the original is all.
Horror stories about serial killers’ donated organs aside, that doesn’t work. There’s no reason to believe that creating a person using carbon from your body would function any differently to using carbon created from scratch. Once you’ve been rendered down to an atomic slurry, I’d say any unique you-ness is gone.
That would prove the existence of souls with a near-certainty, yes - as would the case where the new body was created and briefly lay inert until they got around to killing the original. (Which would be a handy way to achieve immortality - keep the data to reconstitute your younger body on disk and run off a copy and switch to it whenever you start to feel creaky.)
Didn’t the original Star Trek transporters briefly immobilize the subject during dematerializion and rematerializion? I always presumed that they were being put into a sort of stasis for the duration to allow non-instantaneous scanning of the original to work, and to validate that the result was correct.
Actually it would solve the identity problem, in my opinion.
In this thread it seems there are two criteria based on the examination of which one can decide you’re “you” or not. One is observable properties/behavior of the result - if it looks like you and thinks like you and thinks it is you, then it’s you. The other is based on continuity of physical location, basically - we know that two carbon atoms aren’t the same if we see that they’re in two different places at the same time.
If you get reduced to an atomic slurry and then rebuilt into your original self afterwards, I’d say that you meet both criteria, at least after the dust has settled. Being slurrified is just a change in physical (and mental) state, comparable to going to sleep, except that the human body doesn’t usually automatically switch back from the state of slurrification. A closer example would be going dead for a few minutes on an operating table and being resuccitated - and in that case too we accept that the person is still the same person afterwards. So I think that slurrification would be the same thing in principle, and not cause any real identity problems.
These are all just assertions, though. You haven’t demonstrated that slurrification-reconstitution is like going to sleep and waking up rather than it is like killing you and substituting a copy. We experience the world, and self-identity, and selfness subjectively (from our own points of view), not objectively (from other people’s observation of us). Thus, your proof of continuation of identity must be subjective from the point of view of the pre-transported subject, not from the point of view of either an observer or from the post-transported subject (because that would be begging the question). Unless we can come up with a way to test it from that point of view, we cannot prove continuation of identity.
Using ax scenarios, what if the transporter/copier takes your original atoms, along with new ones, and creates two versions of you with a mix of original and new atoms. Is there any original anymore, or is that the same as creating two new duplicates? And what if the machine doesn’t do this immediatly, and another machine creates a duplicate of the first machine, then destroys the first one, and then one or more copies exit the duplicate machine.
And so on.
The questions seem to lose meaning if there is no such thing as a ‘soul’, traditionally defined as something distinct from the material form. If you are copied non-distructively, the copy is another person, just like you at the time of the copy, but not you. Its memories are not based on its own experience, they are just copies of yours.
I think I would be like Bones, and never trust those things. And didn’t Spock once recreate Kirk based on information stored in the transporter? Was he still Kirk after that? Will there be a law requiring duplicates to be labeled as such? This is why nominations for the Supreme Court are so important.
But what if divergence is too much of a problem? Perhaps “attunement” is necessary: each soul can animate its own body and no others, and even an out-of-date body is an unsuitable host. Thirty years of experiences and memories have a profound effect on one’s psyche, rendering a soul incompatible with the body of its past self. Likewise, thirty years on the “other side” could make a soul incompatible with a reconstructed body, even one exactly before the person in question died. Maybe if you wait to long before reconstructing a new body, the soul is reincarnated into a new identity.
The amount of leeway could be years, or it could be minutes. Perhaps even a few moments (such as drawing a playing card) are enough to make body and soul incompatible. That would make the fax/shredder teleporter the only kind that works; the process must be scan, slay, transmit, assemble, animate.
Everything you have ever said on the entire internet, and in real life too, is just assertions. (Arguments are composed entirely of assertion.) So don’t pull that crap on me.
If slurrification-reconstitution is subjectively different in any meaningful way from going to sleep/waking up somewhere else, then you’ve changed the person and they will no longer meet the criteria of observable similarity. For the obvious example, if a dead body comes out the other end, then there’s clearly something amiss. And if it’s the dead body of a purple-woolled sheep, then even moreso.
But the discussion here pretty explicity presumes that the person walking out of room B remembers walking into room A - subjectively. In other words he’s already tested it from his point of view and passed the test - even if the original version of him is still around! If that doesn’t count for that aspect of the self-identification, then neither would going to sleep at night and waking up a moment later in the morning - you’re a different person! Oh noes!
Pheh, I think not.
Well, I just said that if that did work, it would be a handy way to achieve immortality. I wasn’t giving you my personal guarantee it would work.
ETA: and if you don’t use this method to achieve your immortality, what method do you use, Max?
Okay, then. Once your body is disintegrated then you are dead and no matter the characteristics of what is reconstructed, it cannot be you. Q.E.D.
Two things can be observably similar in all respects without being the same individuals subjectively.
When the very question is whether the pre-transported individual subjectively continues to exist, you cannot rely on the the memory of the post-transported individual. That’s question-begging.
In order to make this conclusion, you have to assume that “his” point of view is the same as the pre-transported individual’s point of view. You can’t do that, because the very question we’re asking is whether the two have the same point of view.
The question on the table is whether transportation is like sleeping or whether it’s like dying. If you assume that sleeping is like dying, then there is no question to dispute. There’s only a dispute if you agree that sleeping and dying are not the same.
Again, there are two separate criteria that can be used to assess whether person B is the same as person A:
He walks like a duck and quacks like a duck.
Continuity of physical existence (as in, in physical space).
Dramatic failures of either of these criteria typically lead to one doubting that it’s the same person, though if the other criteria is met the sameness might be accepted anyway. (Example: I’m completely different from me at 1 year old, but since you can draw a Family-Circus dashed line from him to me I accept that he was me and I was him.)
What you’re saying here is that 1, alone, isn’t enough to firmly state that person A is person B. You’re apparently right; there’s considerable debate in this thread and few say that person A and person B can exist at the same time in separate places and still be the same person.
But you also seem to be rejecting that criteria 1 and 2 together are sufficient critera to establish sameness - you seem to be adding a third:
Hasn’t changed “too much” (and reversed the changes) between then and now.
This is a dodgy criteria because it doesn’t really define “too much” - what counts? I think you moved your arm at least an inch between now and an hour ago; is that too much? I think so. And if not, going to sleep certainly is - your entire thought processes have changed! And god help you if you developed 5’oclock stubble anytime in the last few days.
Sleeping is like dying, for the purposes of this discussion - presuming that you recover from being dead, as happens in the turned-to-slurry-and-back teleporter scenario.
Those are both objective criteria. Do you accept the fact of your existence based solely on the existence of objective criteria? Descartes didn’t. Cogito ergo sum is a subjective criterion, after all.
If you assume that away, then there is little left to discuss.
I accept the fact of my existence based on considerably less criteria than those, and so did Descartes - ergo sum, and all that.
I accept that I’m the same person as that little baby I see in pictures solely due to second-hand reports that that thing qualifies by criteria 2. I certainly don’t remember being that baby. Perhaps I popped into existence at the age of 4, or possibly yesterday. (I’d need implanted memories if it was yesterday though.) But despite the extreme flimsiness of the evidence I believe that I was once a baby, specificially the one in the photos my mom shows me.
(I know if I was wise I’d assume that she’s a liar and that the pictures were fabricated by communists, but I’m pretty dumb that way.)
Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yes, you don’t seem to like those two objective criteria. Well, do you think you’re the same person you were five seconds ago? If so I’d like to hear how you manage it without relying on objective criteria - specifically including my criteria 1 and 2.
Feel free to argue against it if you like. The best way to do it would be to provide a clear definition for “too much”, and then talk me accepting your inevitably-arbitrary definition.
erm … matter == energy. Same thing different forms, either can change to the other without inherent loss of ‘selfness’.
The ST transporter disintegrates you (please read that word carefully, disintegrate /== destroy), converts all components of you (energy as well as matter all the way down to the quantum state) to pure energy, transmits that energy to another location, uses the template / blueprint to reintegrate the transmitted energy back into you in the exact same form (again all the way down to the quantum level) that you were in when you were disintegrated. There is no “loss” of you, as all “you” are is completely there. From the subjective perspective, all that happened is that “you” instantaneously transported from point A to point B without any perceivable movement or change to the subjective self. As long as the technology works as expected, there is nothing left behind to worry about.
Unless you posit that there is something other than matter/energy that is part of you and hence not transmitted and reintegrated? And even if you posit such (which would be required for your argument to work) I don’t buy it :-). I’m aware of no scientific evidence available to support such a position, and using the eminently logical “you == matter + energy == energy” concept, the holistic ST transporter design is flawless.
You are being deliberately obtuse. The change that is “too much” is one that causes sufficient damage as to cause brain death, or death of the specific part that defines your consciousness.
What if we convert all the atoms of your body into, say, a toaster oven. Is this toaster oven still “you” in any way that matters? If we then convert that toaster oven back into a simulacrum of your body, is it “you” again, from your subjective viewpoint? If not, why is such a minor change destroy your “you-ness”, when completely disintegrating you supposedly doesn’t?
Only from the subjective perspective of the person created. We don’t dispute that. What we care about is the subjective perspective of the person disintegrated.
That’s rich. You’re the one claiming that atoms removed from your body have some kind of memory, that distinguishes atoms-that-were-once-you from otherwise identical atoms.
Going to sleep or under anaesthesia isn’t shutting your consciousness off - more like putting it on standby. Your brain waves continue, they just slow down. Being disintegrated, on the other hand, would actually stop them.
Even if the damage and the brain death get promptly reversed? Why?
That’s a big toaster oven. And yeah, it kinda is still you.
Suppose a witch turned you into a newt, but you got better. Are you still you, or a completely different person?
And I will add that when somebody turns Fred into hamburger, while carting the perpetrator off to jail we all still say, “Poor Fred, look at him now - he’s hamburger.”
In the case where a person is turned into a toaster oven, shipped to the destination, turned into a newt, and then turned back to themselves (with no memory of being a newt or a toaster oven, but full memory of their life prior to that point), who has a subjective perspective that contradicts the idea that the resulting person is the original, and when did they have it?
