Agnostic stance couched in weasel words? 
I know it’s difficult, but try not to think of consciousness as some sort of unique and magical thing.
Another analogy that might help. Think of a work-in-progress story. Halfway through writing it, a copy is made, and two authors continue it in two different directions. Which is the original? The answer is both, and neither.
See TV-Tropes: Expendable Clone for an interesting discussion of this theme. And many examples.
No. It’s not a question that can be properly answered, because it asks something (“Which single boolean choice of outcome will occur?”), when the design of the scenario does not provide a single outcome - it provides a pair of complementary outcomes.
Identical up to the point of waking. After that, they begin to accumulate different memories, because the two of them will not have the same experiences.
This is why the stories of “resurrecting someone from a DNA sample”, etc. can never work. Suppose you die tomorrow. We take a sample of your blood, extract your DNA, gen up a clone, speed-age it up to your present age while implanting language and basic knowledge like math, etc. When it wakes up, it ain’t gonna be you. It doesn’t have the memories of things like the skinned knee at age four, the first kiss, etc., all of which combine to make you uniquely you.
You mean after the experiment I would become a pair of complementary selves?
You would become ‘they’. And complementary only in the question of which room.
I’d think of that as being from a strictly conceptual viewpoint, rather than a material one, because in a material viewpoint, the paperwork says That Body was the original and That Other Body just came off the assembly line. If the crew gets them mixed up later, that’s bad paperwork.
But I do agree that conceptually we are none of us the exact person we were five minutes ago. I’m not up on the views of today’s physicists on time, but in Thief of Time by Pratchett, time was explained to be granular. There was a smallest quantum of time and between one quantum and the next the universe disappeared and reappeared in a slightly different state.
I agree that both Me1 and Me2 are equally experiencing this disappearance and reappearance.* And I agree that the internal experience of self would be the same. But there is a history of past quanta associated with each one. One walked in the door after however many years of running around under the illusion that I exist, while the other woke for the first time after a briefer manufacturing process. If you get too sub-atomic about it, then an illusion of personal existance is all that’s available to any Me, including the Me reading this.
*assuming the theory is correct
(I also wouldn’t be complimentary. I’d probably say, ‘damn, woman, you need to lose weight.’)
The problem with this question, which I’ve enjoyed debating many a time in the past on the SDMB (was that me though, or just someone I remember being?) is that the idea of personal identity is so compelling, that people tend to go off hunting for anything that makes the ‘original’ distinct from the duplicate, then seize upon that, claiming that this must be the important difference that makes me ‘me’, and the copy ‘just someone that thinks he’s me’.
Last time we debated this, someone was arguing that unbroken continuity of process was the really important difference; the time before that, it was the specific atoms, or maybe their quantum states that was the really important difference. People are convinced there is a really important difference before they have any idea what it might even be.
What it boils down to is that, even for many non-religious people, there’s a compelling notion of possessing what amounts to a soul (albeit not necessarily an immortal one)
This doesn’t make sense to me. Using boolean logic there are four choices of outcome.
- I cease to exist (never wake up)
- I wake up in room1
- I wake up in room2
- I wake up in both rooms (which means I would get sensory input from two different, spatially separated environments)
Which of those corresponds to your “two complementary outcomes”?
- There are now two separate things which used to be ‘you’.
The problem is that, after the duplication, ‘I’ isn’t what was at the beginning. The question itself is flawed, because it asks for a singular outcome, when a pair of complementary outcomes are to happen.
Whichever room you expect to wake in, one version of you will be right, the other wrong; that is the sense in which case your two identity-descendants are complementary. They can’t both be right, because the question posits that two different things will happen to them.
You said in post #79 that you accepted that both of the individuals have an equally valid claim of being you, and that they are distinct individuals.
This conclusion is made by an EXTERNAL OBSERVER. In my experiment there’s only one observer - myself.
I, before of after the experiment, couldn’t care less how many things would claim being me, ALL I want to know is from what place (environment) I would be receiving the sensory input after the experiment.
Ok, let’s brake the outcome down into two possibilities:
- I survive
- I die
Is this legitimate to ask and what is the possible answer?
Ones again, I couldn’t care less which version of myself is right or wrong, if there’s only one observer - me - there’s no point in asking who is right or wrong.
Right, what’s wrong with it?
No, there is not only one observer, at least not for the whole experiment. This is why the question is flawed; the rules change halfway through the game.
Point of view, external or otherwise doesn’t even matter - the question is flawed in a way that it wouldn’t yield a sensible answer if we were talking about cutting an apple in half - which half is the original apple? They both are. But there was only one apple, so which half is the apple?
You start off with one thing and end up with two things, which in the case of the apple, are just parts, but in the case of you and your duplicate, are both identical and complete descendants of the original - it just doesn’t make sense to ask “which of these two is the one?” There are two now.
What rules changed?
In what way other observers influence the outcome?
You don’t supply any argument to support your claim that the question is flawed.
Well, is this question flawed: “will I survive or will I die after the experiment?”
This is not the question, the question is “will I survive?”
Yes you will - both of you.
Then from which room would I receive the sensory input?
You won’t be one thing any more, but two separate things, having divided into two things from being only one thing previously. I can only imagine you’re being obtuse by now.
You will be in room A and another you will be in room B. Both of these individuals will experience their own separate narrative, branching off the single one from the day before.
From which I infer that you are deliberately trying to avoid the issue which implications, I’m sure, you are very well aware of and prefer throwing ad hominems instead.