Sorry I haven’t returned to the thread before now, I had a busy weekend.
Let’s address a few points raised so far.
Duplicate issues: For the purposes of the thread we should assume that duplication simply isn’t possible. The scanning process destroys the person at one end, or it simply doesn’t work due to safety protocalls. To ply devil’s advocate though, I think that both people are “me”. The copy is identical to me in every manner including memories and experiences. Upon duplication we would diverge of course, and he would no longer be “me” in the sense of person perception since “I” still exist. He should be given his own set of ID, marked somehow as an accidental “beta” version of me and allowed to do as he pleases.
Issues of interruption of thought: I posited in the OP that the process is instantaneous, or at least so fast as to be beyond our perception. However, assuming an interruption of thought occurs, I don’t see this as any different than being passed out or under anesthesia. I’m baffled that some of you seem to think that you would be a different person if put under. Does that absolve you of any relationships, obligations, past indiscretions?
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts: I don’t think this washes logically. Taking something apart and putting it back together does not create a new item. Even if you swap parts around, they must all work together to perform the same form and function. The process does not inherently create a new and different item distinguishable from the original configuration. I posit that it is the quality to be able to be differentiated from the original item that qualifies any given matter as “new”.
Quite the contrary. If GA is killing, then we should avoid GA at all costs.
I personally don’t know if it is or not, because I don’t know if there is as much of a continuity of brain function as there is during sleep.
But if it’s true that someone winks out of existence during GA only to have another, identical, person, reappear at the end, I just don’t see how that diminishes the horror of the physical death of the body.
If, by “I Dream of Jeannie” magical blinking, I move you a mile away, are you still yourself?
I think so…
Thus, if by magic, I create a duplicate of you, a mile away, but also leave the original right here, what actions would the duplicate now be expected to perform that “you” wouldn’t perform if you were moved a mile? What difference does the existence of the original have upon the behavior of the duplicate? What test can you propose by which the original can be distinguished from the duplicate?
I think Der Trihs is right: the duplicates are “you” for any meaningful definition. We simply have to get around our preconceived notion that “identity” is “unique.” A duplicating machine violates that notion; it allows for duplicate identities. Our philosophical notions would simply have to be altered to keep up with the new reality.
The law would have to hustle to redefine property rights!
The issue isn’t whether the identity is unique. It’s whether the “point of view” is unique. The gradula replacement of cells over a lifetime doesn’t make you a copy. It means that at any point X, you are an individual with a particular point of view, not just memories. When you are transported, that point of view is lost as soon as you are dematerialized, and can’t be restored. There’s no point during the life of a living bieng in which the point of view is completely destroyed like that. At no point is the entire physicality and mental process halted immediately and dismantled.
The point is that regardless of what you think about identity. The point of view that existed prior to the dematerialization would ceast having any experiences whatsoever.
Think about a transporter in which the original is never dematerialized, but the transporter merely creates an exact duplicate in a different place. If you then killed the original, would you think that the person who emerged from the other end was the same person who was killed at the starting point? This is the exact same situation that you have with the Star Trek style transporter. You’re killing the person who stepped into the machine. No matter how exact the copy is at the other end, it can never be the same person, because as soon as that second person is assembled at the other end, it has a different point of view than the person who started. There’s no continuity of identity.
I agree - I have said that there are fictional forms of teleportation that do not necessarily kill the cargo. This is one of them.
Your argument appears to be “how can I tell the difference between a device that creates a duplicate a mile away, and one that moves me a mile and creates a duplicate where I once was?”
First, you’re continuing to make the mistake of assuming that hiding the evidence is the same as making something not happen.
And my response is that, even if it leaves no evidence, you would have to know how it works to use it in the first place. There would have to be some mechanism by which you’ve automagically created an entirely new person to precise specifications, and understanding that mechanism would tell you what happened. Until that mechanism was understood, it would be both unethical and stupid to use it on people.
The matter is not you. You are the information stored in your brain. The physical components can be replaced, but the information remains the same. There may be some redundancy, but it’s all under the control of one system.
When you make a copy, there are now two sources of that exact information, and they are not under each other’s control. There are two beings. Seeing as one of them remained in place, while the other one required adding additional information, it is very clear which is the original and which is the copy.
Let’s say I copied a file from a CD to another CD. Obviously the file on the CD that started out blank is teh copy, and the CD that did not start off blank is the original. Let’s say I copy a piece of paper in a copy machine. Obviously, the one that was previously blank is the copy, and the one that was not is the original. Now let’s look at copying from one brain to another. Obviously, the information in the formerly blank brain is the copy, the other being the original.
If you can’t even grasp this most basic concept of copying, what chance do you have of answering this question?
BTW, the answer is simple. Consciousness is continuance. Even an anesthetized person has brain activity. If the brain completely shuts off, that’s called brain death. The information stored is deleted. Just because you’ve copied the file somewhere else doesn’t mean you didn’t just delete the original.
What your instincts tell you about consciousness is true. You would, after the copy, still be the person on the pad, and then you would be the one who is then destroyed. Sure, there’s another being out there that thinks he was actually transported, but he’s not you, as he was disconnected from you before you were destroyed.
I’m not sure what this means. The point of view changes when I turn my head to one side!
Someone going through a Transporter has as much a new “point of view” as someone going up in an elevator. Simply by being somewhere else, the p.o.v. is different. However, I’m presuming you aren’t talking about something quite this simple…
Why not, exactly? The guy who comes out has the some political values, the some morals, the same love for his wife, the same hatred for Klingons. How has his point of view, as an individual, been destroyed?
The Star Trek Transporter, as we see it, passes all tests for correct reproduction of the individual. No one can tell the “new” McCoy from the “old” McCoy. He himself can’t tell the difference! So…why do you insist there is a difference?
Agreed: the Transporter hasn’t been invented yet. Once it has been, then we can perform these experiments empirically, and make real scientific tests.
Why not? The duplicate is exactly the same. Bring the two together, and even they can’t tell the difference. The point of view has been duplicated. No detail, no nuance, no hint of personality, is missing.
As time goes by (James Blish mentions this in “Spock Must Die”) the experiences of the two will gradually diverge. The two will “grow apart.” In due course, one might become a violinist and the other a pianist. Two entirely new people will exist where only one did before. But in the instant after duplication, they are both Ray Jay Johnson Jr.
I have to disagree. This is the claim, but you haven’t demonstrated it to the satisfaction of doubters yet.
Again, why not? What kind of continuity do you demand? If I go to sleep in an airplane, and wake up in Hamburg, there is exactly the same degree of loss of continuity.
Well, it isn’t exactly an argument, but a question. The problem is, we have no way of answering it until the Transporter is invented. The best I can do is offer my opinion.
I don’t understand. What evidence am I hiding?
I certainly agree that lengthy testing would be necessary before such a device could ever be licensed for public use.
But let’s say that it is invented, is tested, and passes all tests. Once animal testing has shown that is is safe, a brave volunteer goes through. He is interrogated afterward in exhaustive detail. His best friends and family are brought in to see if they can detect any difference in his personality and behavior. Star Trek depicts the person as coming through without any detectable changes. After it’s been in general use for a couple of hundred years, and the worst that has happened is a small number of horrible accidents, plus one or two duplications, I’d say it seems a lot safer than the freeways!
I understand it just fine. It’s just that we inject a largely nonsensical version of the concept of “identity” when we speak of ourselves rather than some music CD.
But not conscious activity. And if identity requires continuity, then we die multiple times every night and a new version of us is awake in the morning.
I disagree. He’s the same pattern of information that is “me”; he’s just taken a spatial jump.
The teleporter is hiding the evidence - it is destroying a person, and then creating a new person that is sufficiently close that people like yourself and Der Trihs will say that they’re one and the same.
Your scenario is not internally consistent: if it is capable of creating a Thomas/William Riker pair, it is incapable of passing the necessary tests, one of which is explicitly that creating a duplicate will not create such a Thomas/William Riker pair but a pair of bodies that shares a consciousness.
Besides, as I already pointed out: anyone who does not understand the principle behind their teleporter well enough to already know it kills the user does not understand it well enough to have built it in the first place. You don’t need a test to determine a failure that is so inherently fundamental to your design.
Well…yeah… Now, to be fair, I have to be careful of circular argument. I’m presuming that no test ever performed succeeds in distinguishing the original from the duplicate. Star Trek: Jim Kirk has done it a hundred times, and has never shown any personality change (except in the one obvious case of system failure.) In practical terms, anything that works that well would seem to be working.
And here, I think you are engaging in circular reasoning. You’re saying that a pair cannot be “the same” by definition. But I’m saying that if no possible test can distinguish them, then they are “the same.” You say that the existence of duplicating accidents proves non-selfhood by definition, and I say that the definition is open to argument.
This is why I think the axiom “individuals are unique” would need to be re-assessed in a post-Transporter universe.
Sure, but this falls back to our initial presumptions. Does the Transporter “scan and replicate?” Or does it “cause a Dirac jump?” Nobody has ever actually built the doggone thing, so we don’t know. For the moment, it’s “TV Magic,” indistinguishable from I Dream of Jeannie and her magical blinking.
This is why I said it’s a philosophical argument, not a scientific one… Only when such a machine is actually built can the question be examined scientifically.
Philosophical questions almost always collapse into questions of definitions of terms.
Your understanding of the test is wrong. The “good” result is a teleporter that does not create a new copy of your consciousness and destroy the old. A teleporter that is incapable of creating a new copy of your consciousness, even when common sense would suggest it would, is thus the desired outcome.
It is not enough for the consciousnesses to be identical until you apply a stimulus, they must continue to be identical despite differing stimuli. If you start with person A and end up with persons B and C, is not enough for B and C to be identical only until you show B a blue square and kick C in the shins: B must sense that C was kicked in the shins and C must sense that B was shown a blue square - or at least show tendencies to that effect.
Just as there’s this thing that climbs out of your bed every morning and thinks it’s the same being that fell into bed the previous night.
Unless there’s some nonphysical spark that is not part of our bodies or the processes performed by our bodies, then all we have linking us to the past versions of ourselves is the memories, habits, etc. that exist right now - we’re not the same beings we were yesterday, because yesterday doesn’t exist today.
We’re beings that remember being us yesterday - and a good enough copy would feel the same.
When I used to go to Woolworth’s as a kid, I loved looking at the cages full of green parakeets. I could not tell them apart. That did not mean they were all the same parakeet.
This thing about going to bed and waking up each day as a different person who only thinks he remembers being yesterday’s person is cute and I probably would have thought it was really deep when I was 19 years old and sucking on a bong. However, it has no place in this discussion as proof of any assertions regarding the hypothetical transporter. That is just using one wild speculation to justify another as true. My personal experience all points to me being the same person. You cleverly saying “yeah, dude, but you can’t prove you are” means nothing. You need to show me some evidence that I am not the same person before we can even discuss it as more than funny things you think about while high.
Forget about souls. Consciousness is not an understood phenomenon yet, and so the transporter situation is still debated intensely even taking magic out of the picture.
It’s wide open even among groups where everyone is happy to assume that consciousness is simply a property of the brain.
First-person subjective experience simply doesn’t fit right now into our understanding of the universe. And I’m saying that as someone with a neuroscience degree. We should be p-zombies (and indeed some philosophers bite the bullet and try to insist that we are).
But to address the OP more closely: if identity is based on having identical memories / brain state, what makes you think you are the same person who wrote the OP to this thread? Your memories and brain state are different to that person’s.
True, but there is a certain level of connectedness between them that when coupled with the physical attributes of any given individual that we call " a Person". I’ll grant that a significant interruption of this process could result in a different person than one that did not experience this phenomenon, but we have to work with known quantities. We know that there is a finite limit to the speed of perception and processing within the human brain. We also know that anything that moves beyond that speed is either not experienced or is otherwise dealt with in a manner that is beyond our direct perception of it. It basically has no effect on us as a “person” because it was simply to minute to be noticed by our biological machinery. Now anyone who has passed out, or been under general anesthesia can attest to the nature of an interruption of events. One minute you are at X doing A, and the next you are at Y doing B. Yet despite this rather lengthy and significant interruption of *directed *perception, the brain just picks up where it left off in any terms that are meaningful for you or other humans. The person is the same in terms of memories, interests, and all the other minutiae that comprise a distinct personality.
Now in the transporter scenario, the length of interruption is below the level of perception of the directed mind. True, there may be lost one or two tiny connections that would differ in the singular moment of transportation, but I fail to see how that would create a being that is different in any measurable way from one who did not undergo the process. Certainly it is faster and does far less work on the brain than being under anesthesia or passing out does.
That only leaves me with arguments that are either semantically precious, or one where the destruction of the physical body, no matter how fast the recreation is enough to create a “new” person distinct from the old one. If there is a distinction, then what comprises it? Consider this: Suppose one can save one’s brain once a day and be revived into a cloned body in case of terrible accident. I choose to save myself now. Later in the day we continue our conversation and I am tragically stampeded to death by a horde of zombies. Now I wake tomorrow having lost a day, but I am still me. I’m just myself as I was one day ago, having time traveled in a way one day into the future. Likewise assume that any posts I made during that time were erased by my computer assistant to ensure a smooth transition for my perception. I return to the thread an post exactly the same thoughts as I did the day before. How is this me any different in a measurable, significant way than the one that died?
That sounds like a more complex version of “if your goldfish dies and I replace him with another that looks and swims and shits just like him, how is that any different from you having your beloved Bubbles back?”
Well, one known quantity is that this is not a question where everyone agrees on the answer. There are philosophers and neuroscientists that tend towards the view that there is no continuity of the self from moment to moment.
So, it’s fine if you want to make certain assumptions. But perhaps “what you’re missing here” is that most of those assumptions are debatable.
Again: consciousness is not a solved phenomenon.
I don’t get the relevance of this at all. If the transporter took 10,000 years to do it’s thing, but recreated an identical brain at the other end, then that time difference would be imperceptible.
But that’s not the point; it’s about identity:
If I stick a pin in me, I feel pain. If I stick a pin in you, I do not feel pain (until you retaliate!)
Now, if we make you look identical to me, I can still stick a pin in you and not feel pain. If we make your memories identical to mine, I can still stick a pin in you and not feel pain.
But what the OP is implying is that if I were to now die, and you have identical memories to me, suddenly now my identity does jump across. And “you” are now “me”.