I believe as per the OP that you are dead and the recombined person is just a copy. Here’s why: if you cut yourself into two pieces, you’re dead. If you cut yourself into 100 pieces, you’re dead. If you cut yourself into 100 quadrillion pieces, you’re dead. You aren’t going to survive the process that takes you apart. What is keeping you alive when your constituent parts are all separated? You’ve taken a life form, broken it into its constituent parts and then reconstituted it into a new life form that’s a copy using building blocks again. I think the copy with “believe” it’s you, but in reality, the real you died once you broke it into trillions of pieces.
Given my understanding of Quantum Mechanics, such teleportation belongs more to realm of fiction then to reality.
Wrong: fingers have been grafted back on.
Seriously, this is a bad example. The “transporter” idea doesn’t “cut you into pieces,” but – in some versions of the fictional instrument – moves all of your particles, every single electron, including the chemical bonds.
It isn’t as if two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom are moved from here to there, and then allowed to recombine in the normal process of oxidization. What arrives at the end is an unbroken water molecule.
If the guy who steps out of the transporter cannot be differentiated from the guy who stepped in…then what possible difference does it make if he was “killed,” given that he was functionally “brought back from the dead again?” It’s a difference that makes no difference.
Of course a person will emerge at the destination identical to me, with all my memories, and the first thing they may think is: “It worked!”*
This is part of the premise, and is only a solution for those who, frankly, still haven’t quite followed what the problem is about.
Let me put it this way (sorry long post coming up):
There are first-person phenomena: colours, tastes, thoughts etc.
These are neural phenomena and inherently private: stick a pin in your arm and I feel nothing. I can see your response to the pain, and reflect that it’s similar to mine. But I don’t get to experience it.
This is of course part of why I assume when my body dies, that’s the end of my consciousness too. I will cease to experience anything. I have no reason to think that I will see the world through another person’s eyes.
Put 7 living humans into a room, and there are 7 instances of consciousness. Kill one, and now there are 6, and so on. All completely separate. We all view consciousness in this way every day.
Now, the “You are transported” position implicitly makes the claim that if two consciousnesses are similar enough, then they are one instance. But we have no reason to suppose this. And it’s different to how we treat other nouns.
If you tell me there’s a person in the next room, and ask the question “Is he you?”, then I can answer “No” without hesitation. Because I’m not defining “me” as any entity similar enough to Mijin. I’m defining “me” as this instance of consciousness. And just as I can’t see out of your eyes, I’m not seeing the other room either.
And “similar enough” presents problems (which is why often these threads insist we only deal in absolutes). If the transporter has an error rate of K%, is it you, or a new person?
For the “you are transported” position, K matters, but we have no basis at all for knowing where to draw the line, and when we do the transport, we have no way of knowing if we are right.
- Of course if it were me, the first thing I’d think is “Sucks to be the guy at the source location, but cool, I get to live…”
This is really more of a phytoplankton question than a philodendron question.
But, to answer your question: no, once you are deconstructed into a sludge of subatomic particles, you are no longer the man you used to be.
I found this out the hard way, after tinkering around in the kitchen with my new food processor. The damned manual tells you how to frappe, but gives no clue how to un-frappe.
Thanks for a fine post.
ISTM the issue remains words. Philosophically speaking, if we can transport, we can also duplicate. And I would hold that IF we can create a duplicate of me in the next room, there are now two *instances *of the same person. Each instance would argue vehemently that it was fully the original person.
Yes, a third party observer could declare “Room 101 holds the original and Room 102 is the copy.” But at that time the difference is simply one of labeling, not of any actual fact. The Room 102 person is simply Theseus’ Ship writ large. All our atoms are replaced gradually via natural biochemical processes over a span of years. Effectively speaking, Room 102 person just got a complete overhaul all at once. And because the replacement happens at a meta-level far below the qualia that matter to personhood (presumably), we can dismiss it for the same reasons and to the same degree of certainty as we dismiss the notion that personhood doesn’t survive sleep or cellular respiration.
And equally obviously, if both instances are allowed to live and go about their days, they will quickly diverge into two distinct persons who share a lot of common history. Much as identical twin newborns are much more self-similar than they are at age 45.
My bottom line: Prior to the transporter/duplicator existing, we’ve never had to deal with the idea of personhood distinct from instancehood. Now we do. So it’s time to expand our concepts and develop more precise terminology to refer to these two separate phenomena that were previously held to be inseparable parts of a single whole.
Metaphorically speaking: Prior to Einstein there was just mass. Post-Einstein there is rest mass and relativistic mass. Similar, connected, but different nonetheless. Relativistic mass was always there; we just didn’t know about it.
Personhood is not instancehood and never has been. Right now the difference is real-world moot because we have no way to separate the two except in thought experiments. It may remain ever thus unless / until we can construct a real-world experiment.
Indeed. You ain’t getting me in one of those things. This is a whole different thing from those people in the 19th century who wouldn’t ride trains because they “knew” the human body could not withstand such speeds.
Thanks. But I covered a lot of points, and on reading back I thought it was quite hard to follow…hope it was useful.
Well the first thing to say is I agree about two instances of the same person.
Duplicate me and there are two Mijins, with equal claim to being Mijin. Fine.
What I’m saying is, essentially, two instances of Mijin is not the same as one instance of consciousness.
If I die, I have no more reason to suppose I’ll then live on as someone similar enough/identical to me than I would live on as Barack Obama.
The other thing to say is I think we should avoid terms like “original” and “copy” in the transporter problem, because it leads some people to misinterpret the problem as being about determining who is the original.
It doesn’t matter who is the original. I don’t care if I’m the copy and the guy in the other room is the original. And there are alternative phrasings of the problem that do without any concept of an original.
I would agree with that. But I would say this: there are many aspects of consciousness that we don’t have much of a handle on yet, particularly the hard problem of qualia. One thing that every professional associated with neuroscience would agree is we are certainly not at the general theory of relativity stage of understanding consciousness.
That’s not to say “What the bleep do we know” or it must be magic pixies, but I do expect some surprises as we uncover more and more of the neural correlates of consciousness.
Like I say, the best placed hypothesis right now is simply that there is never continuity of consciousness, even from second to second. You just think there is because you have the memory of the last second. This is best-placed because I’ve never heard any refuting argument against this, whereas both “You are transported” and “You are not transported” have strong counter-arguments.
But it’s an unpleasant proposition. I hope that reality is more interesting than this, and there’s a fourth hypothesis we haven’t thought of yet.
Yes, but again just doing a transport itself would tell us nothing.
“If I die…” If one of you dies and the other doesn’t, then you aren’t identical.
You are introducing a difference between the two individuals, and then complaining that they aren’t the same. Well, duh! One died and the other lived! Of course they aren’t the same!
If there are two exactly identical instances of “you,” then if, a nanosecond later, there is only one instance of “you” – who, precisely, has died? No information has been lost.
This is the problem with the “he lives on as me” argument: it presupposes that “he” and “you” are different. But that violates the “exact duplicate” hypothesis.
(And…yeah, I know, deja vu all over again. If there are two identical threads on the Transporter conundrum, and one of them gets erased…)
I’m not complaining of anything, and to me, whether the entities are qualitatively identical is irrelevant.
Duplicate me, then ask me and my duplicate the same 2 questions:
“How many Mijins are there?” - We would answer “2”
“How many ‘you’ are there?” - We would answer “1”
Or, if you prefer:
“Is the person stood beside you identical to you?” - “Yes”
“Is he you?” - “No”
Because this is the distinction I’m talking about. When I talk about “me” I mean this instance of consciousness.
And note that it’s really only for the “You are transported” position that differences present a problem.
Here you are suggesting it’s of critical importance whether we introduce a difference. But if I were to say that what if the difference is only a nanometre difference in a single atom’s position, no doubt you’d say that’s less than our brain changes from moment to moment, so it’s still me.
But then the question is: How much change to retain personal identity? At what point does it cease being a bad copy of me and start being a new entity? Does the line between transport and not-transport happen to be, through some incredible coincidence, exactly the same as the amount the brain changes from moment to moment?
If I split every water molecule in the universe bar one, no information has been lost, at least according to this meaning of information. Yet I’ve clearly made a huge change to the physical world.
Likewise obliterating one of the Mijins.
I’m not sure how your naming of hypotheses correlates to mine.
Is “he lives on as me” == “You are not transported” == Bodily Continuity Hypothesis, and “exact duplicate” == “You are transported” == Psychological Continuity Hypothesis?
…and many more threads before that. I only joined this one because once again some people were implying it’s really a solved problem, at least among scientists. I guess I should have been happy once all parties agreed it is not. 
I’m certainly damned if I know! I think they may all be independent sub-debates, not necessarily aligned with each other in that or any other way.
For instance, I don’t use “he lives on as me” at all. I don’t know what the phrase is supposed to mean. I do believe “you are transported” by the transporter. I would hope that “exact duplicate” is a well-defined term, but, in despair, I fear it may not be. And I don’t really know what “psychological continuity” means either.
For me, the only real point is “you are transported.” We see Jim Kirk phase out, then phase back in somewhere else. He’s the same guy he was in the first place. He’s still Captain, he’s still “Jim,” he still loves Carol Marcus, he has the same memories, he experiences the same qualia, he’s still a fatuous blowhard…
In my opinion, to say, “Jim Kirk is dead and has been replaced by an exact duplicate” is a meaningless claim. If the duplicate is “exact” then it really is Jim Kirk.
Unquestionably a philosophical debate, and not a scientific one.
Doesn’t it come down to what “dematerialization” and “rematerialization” mean?
Why is dematerialization even necessary? If one is “dematerialized,” then there must be some information sent as well in order to put those atoms back together, correct? Couldn’t the machine on the other side just use the information and local atoms to reconstitute the person?
If you say that the information and local atoms are not enough to reconstitute the person, then in what way do the original constituent atoms being sent along help in the process of reconstituting?
If you say that the information and local atoms are enough to reconstitute the person, then why are the original constituent atoms even sent?
OTOH, if you say that the entire person is actually transported, chemical bonds and all (per Trinopus), then I think “dematerialization” is a misnomer.
If “dematerialization” happens (whether those atoms are sent along or not) only to prevent a copy from appearing on the other side with the original person remaining, then I think you have your answer: it’s euthanizing the original person and creating a copy elsewhere (the situation in the movie The Prestige).
Now if you were to send information along to copy the person on the other side and then decapitate the original person instead of “dematerializing” him or her, then there would be no question that the original person is dead, right? Even if you sent the decapitated person’s atoms along and used them to form the copy (based on the information content of the person while still alive), that person was still killed, right?
Thus, I think the concept of “dematerialization” is fundamentally empty, and its use in the scenario basically renders any arguments based on the scenario meaningless.
Well Kirk is still Kirk…I think I can agree with that statement.
Duplicate Kirk and you have two Kirks. Kill one, and now there’s one Kirk remaining, who is Kirk.
But that’s only one side of the distinction we need to make here. The other is what has happened to each instance of consciousness.
I do the trick in The Prestige and now, there is a person in a tank of water.
That person is only seeing out of one set of eyes. The magician on stage receives a kiss from the magician’s assistant, but the person in the tank does not feel it. And in a few seconds, there won’t be any person that remembers what it was like to drown – this person’s story ends here.
In those last seconds perhaps this drowning man tells himself that he’s as much the person on the stage as he is the person in the tank. But I think he’s more likely to feel regret as for him it feels like the same kind of separation between his consciousness and another as it is with any other human.
In fact, the tank is quite soundproof and this drowning man doesn’t even know if the trick was successful.
Before you point out where I’ve gone wrong in this description, note that this is just laying the groundwork for an argument, so think carefully how you respond 
Certainly they’re separate. The guy in the tank is no longer identical to the man on the stage. There is a very significant environmental difference, and a huge cognitive difference. The guy in the tank knows he’s about to die horribly.
Tom Riker is no longer Will Riker. He was (“they were”) at one point, but have diverged.
I believe that a person “goes forward” as his duplicate, but once they’ve diverged, it is asking too much to “go back and then go forward again.”
Let’s go to a moment where there are two (essentially) identical duplicates. You make the pitch to them: “One of you will be drowned, and the other will get a load of money. Do you agree?” At that point, each of them has an equal opportunity of being the drownee.
Now, let’s pause there and ask: would you accept that bargain? 50-50 chance of drowning, or getting a big chunk of folding lucre? I think most of us would be very hesitant! So it takes a large stretch of credibility to imagine that they would say yes to this hellish bargain!
They’re identical, so if one agrees, the other does too. Fine. Let’s imagine they accept the deal.
In that last moment, while the deadly coin is spinning in the air, and the two guys are still identical, they can, correctly and truly and properly, say, “Oh, well: if I’m the one who drowns, at least I know that my consciousness as it is this instant, will continue forward in the other guy’s life.”
Then the coin comes down, and one of them learns, “Oh, poop, it’s me.” At that point, the identity is broken, and the guy who is to die no longer can say that his consciousness goes forward in the other guy’s life.
But at the moment when they were still the same, he can! And it’s true!
Speak for yourself, buddy. Ain’t no qualia in my selfhood…
Wouldn’t that make you a philosophical zombie? Everyone who has self-awareness has qualia: that’s kind of what the word means.
“What if the color everyone else sees as ‘red’ looks ‘green’ to me, but I call it red because that’s what I’ve been taught its name is.”
The concept of qualia is a total dead-end, because there isn’t a damned thing you can do with it. (Until we develop mind-reading machines, anyway. R.A. Lafferty wrote a funny short story with that premise.)
They don’t exist any more than qualia do. Dennet on p-zombies:
“when philosophers claim that zombies are conceivable, they invariably underestimate the task of conception (or imagination), and end up imagining something that violates their own definition”
No, that’s just “conscious experience” - “qualia” have extended special qualities (incorrigibility, ineffability, etc.) that render them incoherent as a concept. Similar to, although not the same as, how the monotheist “god” is an incoherent concept. If we use the word “qualia” just to mean “subjective experience” I have no quibble with that - but they are used in Philosophy of the Mind to mean something much more than that.
Trinopus:
The only type of transporter I would get into is a *Futurama *type tube transporter. Any type that breaks me down into any sort of parts, from big chunks to constituent particles, would be the end of my existence as I know it. Whatever results from reassembling my parts could conceivably be a conscious life-form, perhaps even a cool cat, like yours truly…but he wouldn’t be me.
If I travel in a Futurama transporter, at no point along the journey have I diverged, or bifurcated from myself, therefore I remain “me”. That’s not the case with any type of “breaking down into parts” transportation.
Just the act of breaking down is *“divergent.” *In your example, you don’t have to wait until the coin drops before the two subjects diverge into separate people; they diverged before the coin was even tossed into the air. The point of divergence occurred the instant they split from each other into separate locations. Or, in the case of transporters, divergence occurs the instant the departure guy’s brain crumbles into parts. At that point, it’s, “adios, amigo, don’t hold your breath waiting to be re-born.”
You admit that two identical beings are not the same once a change occurs in their circumstances (e.g. post coin-flip guys; two guys on stage, one of whom is drowning in a tank)–but those are just obvious, gross differences.
Don’t microscopic differences count, too? A microscopic difference to you may seem insignificant, but to a microbe, it’s pretty damn significant.
Simply occupying separate locations in space watching the same coin flipping in air dictates a significant difference in perception (causing at least a small difference in the laying down of brain engrams).
The only way two exactly configured beings can truly be the same is if they occupy the exact same locations in time and space. Since that’s impossible, remaining yourself through any type of material breakdown, or reassembly elsewhere is likewise impossible.
…that’s the way I see it, anyway.
There was a sci fi story that explored this (can’t recall author or title) where you could teleport and it basically made a perfect copy of you at the other end. But unlike Star Trek, the original was still there. So they killed the original person to maintain balance in the universe or some shit. The story was about the one who got away. Exploration of this issue about which one was the “real” one.
Huh. There is an even more uncomfortable possibility; that there are an infinite number of instances of you, in an infinite universe and/or in a multiverse/many worlds scenario; far from a lack of continuity, there is a possibility that every single one of those identical instances are you. They will instantly diverge and differ from one another because of stochastic effects, but at any particular instant they are all you.
I tend towards the idea that ‘continuity of consciousness is an illusion’ myself, but it is a very persistent one.