Not only can no one tell the difference, but no one has even made the effort to speculate on how the difference might be detected. One poster has said that one’s loved ones would “feel” the difference, but contributed nothing further to that idea.
You say, “I can’t see how it isn’t killing you.” Okay, you can’t. But several of us here can see how it isn’t killing you, most especially given that the transportee continues to exist, talk, reason, emote, remember, and interact philosophically with his universe. Tell Captain Kirk that he’s dead, and he’ll look at you, feel his own pulse at his wrist, and say, “Nope. I’m alive all right.”
Naked assertion is not an argument. In the transporter scenario, a man disappears from Dallas, and appears in both Spokane and Tacoma. We believe both are the “real person,” because both fulfill every possible objective test for selfhood and identity. Both feel themselves to be the real person.
You need to show us why this personal sense of identity is invalid. So far, you haven’t produced an argument, only repeated your insistence. Well, okay, we get it. You don’t believe it. Now tell us why we shouldn’t believe it.
What “naked assertion” am I making? It is pretty plain the assertion you are making here; that the person walking out of the transporter is one and the same as the person that walked in.
Again this defines identity differently to other objects. It’s irrelevant whether this coin over here and that coin over there are qualitatively identical. They are not one and the same coin.
Pay attention. I’ve given many reasons to support my position. I gave a nice analogy in post #79 for example, that I’ve asked several posts here multiple times to respond to, the response being tumbleweed blowing by.
That’s the problem - the concept of originality doesn’t necessarily hold for something that is dynamically created from moment to moment.
Also, it seems like there’s an unspoken notion that the property of originality or identity is something that has existence in its own right, rather than being a theoretical descriptor.
I’m playing with my Lego. I build a house. I take the house apart into individual bricks, put them individually into numbered compartments in a special box and carry them to the next room.
There, i build the house again, and owing to my super Lego nerd skills, i am not only able to build it the same shape, but because each brick was tracked, I am able to put each and every brick back in place as it was the first time I built the house.
Is the end result the same house? If not, what is different about it? How can that difference be measured or expressed as a real, non-imaginary thing?
(Please don’t anyone feel the need to point out that Lego houses have no consciousness. That is not relevant to the question in this post)
It’s an interesting question, but not really analogous to the transporter.
To modify the analogy to be closer to the original, we’d have to say something like this:
I have a lego brick, and hundreds of miles away is someone with a lego brick that happens to be identical to the atom. Clearly they have the same (intrinsic) qualities. But are they the same brick or two (entirely separate) bricks?
I have a lego house that’s on fire. 10 miles away someone has built a lego house that is identical, and also on fire. For some instant of time, the pattern of chemistry and heat of his fire is identical to yours. Is it the same fire?
It’s an analogy - and by their nature, they’re never perfect - this one was intended to dissect out a specific facet of the issue. Please would you answer (or ignore if you prefer) it as it stands?
There’s no gotcha waiting in the wings - this is just an interesting discussion about what we really mean when we say “the same”.
They are not the same objects, but interestingly, they are not different either. Crucially, they are fully interchangeable. Are you not conflating ‘separate’ and ‘different’?
This is an argument from ignorance: it is the equivalent of claiming a hoax is only a hoax after someone sees through it. If you’re going to base your opinion on someone’s subjective observation, there is only one that matters: the man who was disintegrated. Not his doppelganger’s, his.
No, I said that one’s loved ones would care that you’re killing this man, even if you do not.
To put it another way, imagine that your boss is an asshole who doesn’t care about his employees. One day, you are hit by a train and killed. But that’s okay, your boss was able to find someone with the same skill set to replace you. Does that mean that you and your replacement are the same person, just because the subjective opinion of an outsider says you’re interchangeable?
You are not telling Captain Kirk he is dead, you are telling a deliberately manufactured doppelganger of Captain Kirk that Captain Kirk is dead.
OK, I’ll answer it.
Intuitively, I would say it is one and the same house. But I am not basing that on any particular principle, and I see no reason to think it would necessarily always hold (i.e. any phenomenon caused by a physical object is one and the same phenomenon if you destroy and rebuild the object)
No, I am not conflating those things; indeed I have been the one trying to introduce formal terms like qualitatively and numerically identical to clear up the ambiguity of “same”.
And if they are not the same (numerically identical) objects, then crucially the person walking out the teleporter is not me. Because that’s what I mean by “me”. He has all the same qualities of me, but he is another, separate entity.
OK, I think we’re getting somewhere. In what ways would/could a phenomenon caused by the rebuilt object be different from a phenomenon caused by the object, had it never been rebuilt?
It doesn’t matter that Lego houses don’t exhibit the phenomenon we call consciousness - pick any physical phenomenon you like.
But I don’t think your sense of what you mean by ‘me’ is really based on numerical uniqueness - because there is no real-life situation (outside of the perfect teleportation device herein posited) where that is ever challenged.
There’s no real world situation because we don’t know how brains can “produce” subjective experience, and we also cannot create consciousness (or could even know for sure when we have succeeded).
When those things change, then the question because a practical, real-world consideration.
That was my point, but if the brain is a physical object doing things according to the laws of physics, and if this is the entirety of the picture, then an identical brain following the same laws should do the same thing (albeit in a different place).
None of this prevents us performing thought experiments on the topic.
I assume so yes. That two identical brains will support two identical consciousnesses.
Two. Not one.
Now this is the point where people on the “teleporter is you” side say “Sure, after a while you diverge into two…”. But I’m talking about before any divergence in qualities.
There are two, wholly separate entities, that happen to have the same intrinsic qualities.
I don’t think anyone would argue that they are not going to be separate - that’s the unique (and difficult) thing about this whole scenario. The question is whether there is any describable difference, between the two cases where something happens all in one place, or happens half in one place and the other half, in another.
In the end though, I think it all points to the notion of persistence being an illusion. If I bounce a rubber ball twice in exactly the same way, is it ‘the same’ bounce?
If I intend to bounce it, but pause and in fact bounce it a second later, is that the same bounce that would have happened?
As far as I can see, ‘the same’ simply isn’t a relevant descriptor for a manifest behaviour. My consciousness isn’t even ‘the same’ consciousness as it was five minutes ago, because it’s a dynamic phenomenon - if I was the ‘same person’ I was a fraction of a second ago, I would have to be thinking and doing the same things - frozen as if in amber.
Ask a schizophrenic if he believes he’s Napoleon and he may answer yes, but that doesn’t make him right.
You asked the wrong question and the wrong guy. Ask Captain Kirk if he was alive before he was transported and he will still say yes, but he too would be wrong. He didn’t exist before transportation, he’s simply referencing someone else’s memories. Then go ask pre-transported Kirk if he believes he will survive the transporter and he will probably say yes (or else he wouldn’t go in it). But, then put him in a time machine and fast forward him 5 minutes into the future, then back and ask him again. He’ll say,
[Hammy Kirk Voice] “it…was…horrible…nothing but a dark…abyss. Scotty…don’t beam me…anywhere…from now on…just…drive us away…slowly.” [/Hammy Kirk Voice]
Many of you are still confusing memories with self awareness (SA). They work together, but they are separate entities that can be handled separately. Let’s compare the two:
Memories: Always past tense. As soon as they are created and stored they are in the past, never in the present. In this argument they can be thought of simply as a book, an autobiography. Memories, for the most part, are static.
Self Awareness: Always in the present, never in the past. Think of it as the homunculus reading the book. SA is a dynamic process.
If I’m escaping a disaster and my only chance of survival is to transport away on a defective transporter, and the operator says, “we can only transport your memories or your SA, but not both”, I’ll choose my SA. I’ll start forming new memories as soon as I arrive. If I’m going to gamble on my future, I’m not going to choose something static and in the past, I’m going to choose something that will be in the present and ongoing.
Discussion of original vs. non-original is a red-herring. After the fact (after replication or transporter trip where departure and arrival person survives), “original” doesn’t matter—we agree that all versions are complete people, indistinguishable to all outside observers. The same can be said about a splitting amoeba—neither one is the original. To turn this line of reasoning around:
Imagine a pair of identical twins or clones who, coincidentally, have their particles arranged closer and closer to eachother’s over time, until they match perfectly at least for a moment (have them share a video and audio monitor and turn off their other senses, if it helps make this experiment work). So, you started off with two separate individuals and, at least for a moment, they became one. Which one died? Now, take off their shared monitors and they “diverge” again into two individuals. Which one was re-born?
Or, think of it in reverse time (forward or backward time should not matter in the universe, correct?). At Time 0 you have the transporter departure and arrival guy both alive; diverged into two individuals. At Time +1, you have only one guy. Which one died?
“The notion of persistence being an illusion” begs analysis. Why is the feeling of continuity more likely to be an illusion, than to be reality? There is no need for it to be an illusion, and for it to be reality is the simpler explanation. So, the burden of proof should lie with the “transporters don’t kill” crowd to make the case—something they, so far, have not done.
Things we agree on (I think) when comparing A and B (2 conscious beings with identical particle arrangements): A and B are both valid individuals who believe they came from the same person because they are referencing the same memories; A and B are indistinguishable to all outside observers; A and B look at each other and know that they are not the same person. A and B are constructed of two sets of particles that do not occupy the same space.
That last point seems always to be ignored, or poo poo’ed by the “transporters don’t kill” people. Why is it ignored? I believe it is very germane to the argument. Forget about memories for now (they are just in the past and have nothing to do with the here and now) and just consider perception and SA. Likewise, don’t distinguish between original and non-original, consider all copies to be equal and valid. No matter what method of replication you choose, each replicate’s consciousness has resided on different sets of particles separated in space, and they always have. In this respect, there is no point of divergence—now, past or future. From the instant the replicate opens his eyes for the first time, he is perceiving the world from a different vantage point (different location in space) from any other copy, and so, has already “diverged” into a separate human being. From the instant of creation he is living in the present via SA and imprinting new memories (it matters not whether he also brings along the book of past memories). Therefore, if all copies will always be separate human beings, how can the guy in the departure pod have a future in any of them?
So, where do you get this concept of there being a point of oneness from which you diverge into two or more? In real time, that point never exists. I believe you are basing it on “memories”, that there may be a point where memories match exactly before going their separate ways. But memories are always past tense and don’t matter.
So, that is my argument against surviving transporter travel.
The question of whether you are the same person over time is a similar, but separate question. And, admittedly, it’s a tougher question. But, again, why go with the more complex, staccato-life model of reality, when there is nothing to prevent the simpler, more intuitive, smoothly continuous model of reality to be true? With minor variation over time (one brick at a time), everyone’s consciousness sits upon a persistent substrate of brain matter from mortal birth till death. So if a critical mass and arrangement of matter persists over time, should not that which emerges from it persist, too? Why latch onto a wacky, mushroom-smoking theory when the simple, sober theory works just as well?
Note that way back in post #17 I actually defended the “Transporter moves you” position.
Like you, I think the most rock-solid position right now is that you simply never have continuity of consciousness. But, given what’s at stake, I would like to see more confirmation of this before we actually can create conscious entities, and the question becomes significant.
The reason I’ve mostly been defending “Transporter copies you” was because we seemed to have an influx of posters who thought it was trivially true that the transporter moves you, and seemed unaware of the countering arguments and thought experiments.
I don’t think this can be correct - in order for us to be aware of something, it has to have happened. Or to put it another way, (and maybe someone will correct me on this) I don’t think there is any process in the universe where effect is exactly simultaneous with cause. I don’t think there can be.
when the simple, sober theory works just as well?