Actually, I’m arguing to the contrary. If something that is materially and functionally the same, is somehow different than it would have been because the material and function was interrupted, then perfectly resumed, then that difference must by definition be immaterial.
If the mind, personality and consciousness of ‘me’ is solely a product of the configuration and behaviour of my physical material, then an identical configuration of material, behaving in an identical way, is the same thing. If it’s different, then the difference is by definition immaterial. Inadvertently or otherwise, the folks who are saying that interruption makes a difference, even after perfect restoration, are arguing for the existence of what amounts to an immaterial soul.
Personally, I think any good amateur philosopher ought to be able to argue either side of the issue with approximately equal facility. The “continuity” argument is not without value. If anyone here had been foolish enough to say, “It’s obvious that the person is the same after transportation as he was before, and only an idiot could think differently,” I’d be disagreeing with them, too! It isn’t obvious, and I hold it to be raw folly to say “only an idiot would think differently.”
(Note the very subtle difference, there, between idiocy and folly!)
Yes: that’s the problem, above, with the claim that people would “feel” the difference. Which specific physical sense is used, and what difference is being sensed? If it isn’t a physical sense, then the argument would seem to be based in some supernatural quality or other.
My old college philosophy professor argued that telepathy is impossible – on similar grounds to what we’ve read, above. He said: suppose Albert has a thought, and, somehow, Bill can ‘read his mind’ and know this thought. Well, it’s no longer Albert’s thought: it is Bill’s. So Bill can never know Albert’s thoughts, only his own.
I objected, saying that this makes communication impossible!
(And, since then, I have met people who hold that communication is impossible! You can never truly convey one of your thoughts to my mind, only put forward a signal that causes my mind to develop a thought that is no more than coarsely similar to your thought. My mind will never hold the fullness of your thought, only something that vaguely echoes it.)
Again, a good amateur philosopher ought to be able to argue pro or con. The philosophic method is very different from the scientific!
Pish Posh. Immaterial? Metaphysical?? Where on Earth do you get the idea I’m trying to invoke any of that nonsense into an otherwise staid and scholarly debate???
…:mad:…
…But, since you brought it up, God is part of the equation*. There’s a little Baby Jesus in everybody’s skull and [Del]Casper [/Del]the Holy Ghost crosses the synaptic clefts of all of our neurons. And all of you damned materialist atheists who don’t believe that can just kiss my grits and burn in hell!
My answer to your questions would have been “I don’t know”. All the questions you ask are well-established, unsolved, philosophical problems.
At this time, the most robust position is that consciousness is never continuous. But since there are still fundamental aspects of consciousness we still don’t understand (e.g. how brains “make” qualia), I would say it is way too early to claim certainty on this, even in a philosophical sense, let alone scientific.
The duplication illustrates a problem, rather than creates it. If a person is happy to conclude that a duplicate is, and always has been, entirely separate to the original, then they would also have to conclude that the transporter does not transport you.
Otherwise, they would get themselves in a mess trying to explain what “moves” between the original and duplicate when the original is destroyed.
If there’s one bit of progress I wish we could make in this thread, it would be for people to stop saying the other position requires souls.
As I said earlier, neither the “move”, “duplicate” or “consciousness is never continuous anyway” positions require souls (in their modern-day descriptions anyway).
In terms of your question, there is a clear physical difference: location. One body has had the set of events occur to it that results in it being here. Another body, with faked memories, has the set of events occur that results in it being created over there.
Objection: argumentative. They are transported memories. For you to say they are “faked” you would have to demonstrate that they are “fake” – i.e., in some way inferior to real memories. But the assumption of the thought-experiment is that the memories are complete. No lacunae. No newly-appearing blackouts.
The word “faked” is circular, as it depends on the assumptions which are in dispute here. I say they are just as real as your own memories are right now.
(Possibly more real than my own are. Pickle Integrity? Wha…?)
I’m sorry about that, but I really think it does. I’m not going to stop saying it until I am convinced it doesn’t.
Because the argument boils down to “even though everything would be materially the same, *something *would be different”
Given:
[ul]
[li]The mind is wholly a product of the physical material and operation of the brain (if not, what?)[/li][li]The physical laws of the universe are such that a consistent cause has a consistent effect[/li][/ul]
Then the end result ‘G’ of a chain of cause and effect that goes (scenario 1):
A→B→C→D→E→F→G
Is the same as the end result ‘G’ of a chain of cause and effect that is broken in two, thus (scenario 2):
[ul]
[li]A→B→C→D[/li][li]Stop and perfectly capture all attributes of state ‘D’[/li][li](Time Passes)[/li][li]Perfectly restore state ‘D’ exactly as captured[/li][li]D→E→F→G[/li][/ul]
The argument that in scenario 2, G is different because continuity has been broken, even though every measurable/describable natural attribute of G is the same, demands that difference to be immaterial/metaphysical.
Fine. But you should know that amongst philosophers the debate has long moved past this i.e. even proponents of the “teleporter moves you” position do not accuse the other side of assuming souls. So we would be treading old ground.
The “moves” and “duplicates” positions are two different takes on physical continuity.
Some things are different: location and the causal histories. These are physical differences.
Again, you never responded about the millions of light years hypothetical. If a brain identical to mine spontaneously appears a million light years away, and I die, do I now continue? Do I wake up further away from Earth than light could have got in my lifetime?
Again, this still confuses “different” in the qualitative and numerical sense. Of course there are no qualitative differences. But they are two, wholly separate entities the way two identical coins are wholly separate.
If I had one coin, then I make a perfect duplicate elsewhere, we wouldn’t talk of the coin “splitting”. So to talk about consciousness in this way, is to make it a special case; the very thing you are accusing the other side of doing.
I think we can treat location as trivial. I can change my location already.
And causal history is all water under the bridge. Its not something that has material existence of its own. Once something has happened, it’s history. Anything else that could have happened, yielding exactly the same effect, might as well be equally valid.
I don’t think I understood it at the timesl. I’ll try now.
The problem is the statement “Do I wake up…?”. What happens is someone wakes up, believing themselves to be you. But that’s all that happened to you this morning too. Yesterday is gone. Causal history is history.
We might as well call it splitting as anything else. Nobody (including the coin) can tell the difference.
No, I don’t believe there is anything immaterial involved in having a unique, continuous PI tied to brain matter. And, frankly, I don’t understand the resistance to accepting that as being a feasible, even probable, option.
Let’s first examine those two exact nickels that were discussed upthread. Do you, or do you not accept the following characteristics as being true: they are not one object, but two; both are made of the same type and arrangement of particles, but they are not the same particles, otherwise they would occupy the same location in space and be one set of particles instead of two; both nickels were never one nickel (you could never look at one nickel and say that it is actually two nickels occupying the same space and each atom will not split, resulting in the two); if one nickel was made before the other nickel, it’s accurate to say that the second nickel did not exist before it’s particles were arranged into a nickel, even though the first nickel already existed; assuming they don’t touch each other, the appearance or disappearance of one nickel will have zero effect on the other nickel.
So, they are identical nickels…but not the same nickel—they never were, they never will be, they never could be. They are unique objects in the universe. We accept that premise, and we do not view it as violating the materialistic model of reality. We did not have to include anything immaterial into the equation, like a soul.
…so why need we treat consciousness any differently? Replace the word “nickel” with the word “consciousness” in the above paragraphs and it makes sense.
Again, I maintain that it is the “memory” part of consciousness that bogs us down. For the time being, forget about memory and let’s give those two nickels perception and self-awareness. In the same manner that the nickels are objectively unique in the universe (see above), doesn’t it follow that they [Del]should[/Del] must also be subjectively unique?
To get from this point to “Anti-Transporter”, just look at the 4 Cases I listed in post #249 (i.e. if Case 3 is true, then Case 4 must also be true, and if Case 4 is true, transporters kill).
The “I’m not continuous in my own body/I die every day” issue is related, but different (and also discussed in #249). This is one of those thought experiments where you have to analyze and relate different cases in order to arrive at the complete answer. And still, we can only discuss probability since both sides are unfalsifiable. But, it’s still fun to do.
That’s the nub of my position, although I do believe that the processes of the brain do create something immaterial, emergent, and transcendent, something totally awesomely new (subjective experience). Perhaps that new something has special properties – it definitely does have special properties, to which we can all attest! But I doubt it has a special property of continuity of identity, other than that provided by memory.
I admit that this is an unsubstantiated assertion, but it’s consistent in all thought experiements proposed. I admit it could be false, that there could be some unexplained feature of identity that’s retained across discontinuities. I see no evidence for that, though – and furthermore, it complicates the hell out of a lot of thought experiments. It makes it unethical to reload a sentient program on a new computer, without any actual evidence to support the claim that this causes a “death”.
I agree. Still, I prefer the simpler explanation, which doesn’t require anything special. BTW, the continuity you’re referring to isn’t the continuity of the consciousness itself, which clearly is not continuous. So it’s some new thing you’re bringing into the equation.
No argument.
I disagree. Without duplication, there is only one consciousness. Continuity disruption is common anyway, and I don’t see this as a special case. I see the special case only as the duplication.
Right, but I never said that. I said that we end up with two instances, but there’s no basis for calling one the original. The fact that the atoms might be original is, in my view, irrelevant.
In my view, what moves is the brain state, and as soon as that brain state is “resumed,” that produces a subjectivity.
Right: those who are against teleporters are claiming there’s something (Personal Identity = PI) that exists separately from the brain state (the latter of which can be duplicated).
Right, so give it another name, call it “PI”, and Mangetout would be happy but consider that a “soul”. So, let’s dodge the semantic argument.
The question here concerns the concept of identity when discussing processes rather than inert things. I’m not surprised that philosophers differ over this matter. I treat consciousness as more like an amoeba (where you can’t say which descendent is the original) versus minting an identical coin (where you can say it). I would say the same about any data processing situation: it’s an amoeba, not a coin.
In any case, I’m not trying to convince you that you’re wrong, but rather to show that I’m being consistent, and challenge you to any type of test that would prove me wrong. I say that the only such test is to kill oneself, and that only answers the question if there is a soul that survives the death of the body – which nobody here is arguing.
As a (more or less) logical positivist, I say that’s conclusive (at least, until someone comes up with a valid test). Those who aren’t logical positivists can disagree.
You can change your location using physical processes, and your current location is a physical fact.
All this is debatable. I think I would lean on the side of disagree.
Relativistic physics tells us that two observers can disagree about whether two events are simultaneous or sequential, and both be right. This is very hard to square with the idea of the past not existing, or it not mattering how you get from A to B.
The positions “The transporter moves you” and “Consciousness is never continuous anyway” are two different positions. Which one are you taking here?
I think you are flipping between the two, because the millions of light years hypothetical is very problematic for “The transporter moves you”.
We don’t call or consider it splitting however, and have no reason to do so.
OK. So what is your answer to the millions of light years example?
(Namely: if a brain identical to mine spontaneously appears millions of light years away, and I die, do I now continue? Do I wake up further away from Earth than light could have got in my lifetime?)
Already answered: the same as if you did it two feet away. Why does the distance matter, unless it’s to disallow simultaneity?
One Mijin continues in the new location, one Mijin does not, in the old location. If you want, we can treat this the same as duplicating first and then killing one. The dead Mijin won’t notice anything, being dead. The live Mijin will have been transported. The transported Mijin will feel as much “you” as you do. Since we’re talking about what happens from the subjective viewpoint, that’s what matters.
I admit it leads to quandaries, such as the classic teleporter accident where the copy at the originating location doesn’t get disassembled, but nobody notices. Say, they thought the teleporter was broken and send Joe away until it’s fixed, but there’s another Joe out there. Nobody notices the problem until they both show up at work on Monday morning.
That’s an ethical problem caused by duplication. In my view, both Joes are equally Joe, although we might adopt a legal convention giving one priority. In my view, that convention would be arbitrary. Hopefully Joe has transporter duplication insurance so the “legally new” Joe isn’t left high and dry.
