I already answered this. I said:
Is your location an essential part of your identity as a person? If so, how is it connected? How does your personality cope with the constant change when you go for a walk?
That’s a good way of putting it.
I say they are the same, bar semantics. Consciousness being remade afresh at every moment ‘moves’ you to wherever that is happening, which at the moment, is always the same physical body we had the moment before. In the transporter scenario, it becomes possible for that to fork into more than one location, so I guess we have to call it copying.
In which case (and assuming no metaphysics) my position is exactly this: Consciousness is being copied afresh at every moment (with changes in process all the time), by the ongoing processes of brain and mind. Your present consciousness moved into your present body by means of ongoing copy/refresh processes (not necessarily all happening at simultaneous refresh rates, perhaps). It can’t very well be anywhere else, so we call this continuity.
Now let’s make one an exact duplicate. We take the nickel that my dad scratched his initials on. It’s got other marks indicating ownership. It’s got my dad’s skin oils and even some old DNA on it.
Now, by whatever mechanism I do not care, there are two of them. Exactly the same.
And now, I spin them around in a cup, and show you one.
Tell me which one it is.
They are both “my dad’s nickel.” Neither one can be said to be “the original.”
No one said they were “the same.” One is sitting to my left, the other two my right. One is heads-up right now, and the other is tails-up. But they are both “my dad’s nickel.” They are both “the same” in the respect that they share the identity of “my dad’s nickel.” There is no test in science that can show this to be untrue.
Exactly, and their history, interesting and different as it may be, is completely gone - it cannot be of any consequence to their current state, as it has no existence. Only their current state can determine what they are, because that’s all there is.
Their ‘having been’ the original, or ‘having been’ the copy, or ‘having been’ pushed up the arse of a camel, unless it is somehow materially measurable or quantifiable now, cannot be of any any consequence now.
Afterthought:
Are we, perhaps, arguing something different? Did you think I was claiming that the two nickels on the table in front of me were someone “only one nickel?” Obviously not. I can see two of them. They aren’t “the same object.” No one here has ever made that claim. Is that what you think you are rebutting?
I’m not saying “they are the same object.” I’m saying “they have the same individual identity.” They are both “the nickel my dad carried when he landed at Iwo Jima.” They are both “the nickel my dad had in his pocket when he proposed to Sally June Unforth, and she turned him down flat.” They are both “dad’s lucky nickel.”
(Actually, my dad was a Navy barber in WWII, and never left the Navy Base at Vallejo.)
(Any Scrooge McDuck fans here? Could Scrooge tell his “Lucky Dime” from an exact duplicate? If so…how?)
See above: that is a rebuttal to a claim no one here is making.
You’ve met my dad!
ahem … errrr… lucky guess. Yes, that’s it…
Ok. Now spin those nickels around in the cup a few more times. Then hand the one on the left a gun and tell him only one nickel may survive. Does it matter to him if he shoots himself or the other one? Why?
For those of you who answer “it doesn’t matter”; does it still not matter if the nickel on the right is exactly the same except for the date? How about if, instead of Jefferson and Monticello, it portrayed Bubbles Jackson and Neverland? How about if it was a dime? A turnip?..
At what point does it matter if you shoot yourself (the one who holds the gun) or the exact (or nearly exact) copy (the one not holding the gun)?
Also, I’ve noticed one or more of you shifting back to using the POV of an observer, instead of the POV of the test subjects—theirs is the only POV that counts in this experiment. The observers lack the subjectivity to make an accurate assessment.
Huh? How’s a nickel gonna pull the trigger? I’m guessing this is another joke that I’m completely missing.
Fuzzy logic, of course, but, yes, at some point the differences would be large enough to make the argument of identity fail. If the date is different, then it isn’t “the same” nickel. If my dad’s initials aren’t scratched on it, it isn’t the same.
The point of all of this is the physical identity. Take that away, and we aren’t looking at the same experiment any longer.
I say that it doesn’t matter at all. After you’ve shot one guy, the other guy is still alive. “The other guy” is alive, no matter which guy gets killed.
“Who are you?” “I’m the one holding the gun.”
As I said above, both kinds of observers are valid to the thought-experiment. Outside observers are invited to talk to Jim Kirk and ask him questions about his past life, in order to probe his memories. Meanwhile, we also ask Jim Kirk (or the two or more Jim Kirks) to probe their own memories and feelings. We ask him (or them) “Do you feel the same?”
Both observations are part of the claim to sameness.
The technology to recreate a person exactly as captured would be a game-changer in terms of the meaning of the word ‘kill’- in a similar sort of way that file backup technologies have changed the meaning of the word ‘delete’.
it’s like in Superman: if you send someone into the Phantom Zone, and bring them back later, have you “killed” the originals? They were bodiless for a time. Is that very different?
It’s a little like some opposition to gay marriage. “If men can marry men, then the word ‘marriage’ doesn’t mean what it used to.” Well, yeah. We’re looking at something that changes the meaning of a familiar word in the English language.
I still can’t wrap my head around anyone who would walk up to Captain Kirk and say, “You, sir, are dead.” Has an awful lot of sex for a dead guy, doesn’t he?
To put this another way. A teleporter would kill the sending-side instance of the person being transported, but the teleporter technology ensures that killing someone isn’t fatal any more.
I think the problem in this thread is about whether you regard your person as something which is continually pushing itself into the future, rather than continually retrieving itself from the past. I believe the latter is the only sensible view, because the future doesn’t exist yet (neither does the past, but the retrieval happens from memory).
We say “I will be here tomorrow”, but what that actually means is “Tomorrow, there will be me, here”
Now see here, speaking like Yoda will not make me change my mind about this transporter business!
Well OK, but failing to describe the properties of the thing that makes identical things different isn’t helping me either.
Your best, most succinct argument yet. However, it relies on our common-sense definition of what our identity is, and I’m convinced that definition doesn’t make sense when we go outside of the natural norms.
Still, it’s the kind of argument that everyone should at least agree is worthy of careful consideration. I think that to the vast majority of people on the planet, yours is the default, and the burden of proof would be on my side.
However, the vast majority of people believe in something that I don’t have any evidence of, and I put the burden of proof on those who say there is something.
That leads us to a mexican standoff. I definitely see your point. I hope you see ours, too (as you stand your ground and refuse to enter the teleporter).
Would you hop on that teleporter just before the planet blows up? I admit that saying “yes” wouldn’t contradict your position.
Personally, I think Tibby or Not Tibby put the duplicate position very well in post #274.
And I felt that the responses were just attempts to evade the argument rather than address it (but I don’t believe anyone here is arguing in bad faith).
Responses such as:
We can’t tell the difference between the two nickels…
So what? Nobody has made the claim that everything is objectively knowable. And in the case of consciousness, lots of things are not: for example, how could I ever tell the difference between a conscious entity and a p-zombie?
They have different histories as evident from their different locations.
…and nor can the universe because the histories are gone
This is at least as disputed as the topic of the thread.
But I’d say the weight of support is behind the idea that the past is not “just gone”, because for one thing, there is no non-local concept of a “present”.