What is the difference?
No, they are both “you”. You ceased to exist in one location of space and now exist in another. There is no other “you” to compare against. It is the same as if I knocked you on the head and drove you across town where you woke up.
Can you have a consciousness that can experience being in two different places at once? So long as two consciousnesses experience the world differently, they cannot be the same individual.
Being knocked out or asleep doesn’t represent an interruption of your consciousness.
The original Bubbles isn’t experiencing anything any more. It’s just gone.
Could you expand on this? The idea that the man who wakes up isn’t the same man who went to bed the night before has been brought up in these threads repeatedly without being explained. To me it sounds like another bong-hit epiphany on a level with “Why do they call them fingers? They don’t fing.” Maybe if I knew the basis for the assertion it would sound less nonsensical.
No. It is an indistinguishable copy of Bubbles. While it may offer the bereaved some comfort, the real Bubbles is still dead and got flushed down the toilet.
The first thing to say is that the theory goes further than you’re implying here: it’s that there is no continuity from moment to moment – the “you” from 1 millisecond ago is not the same entity as “you” now.
And this is not an “angels on the head of a pin” exercise. Our intuitions about continuity of the self work in everyday life, but start to fall apart when we postulate scenarios where brains can be split or duplicated or replaced neuron by neuron – and there’s no reason to suppose any of that is impossible.
One way of dodging all this is just to say there is no continuity.
Imagine there is a ghost in the machine. We remove the ghost from your brain and put a fresh one in. Then we give it the same memories you had, and link it up with your body so it feels in control of this particular body. This is analogous to what the theory is saying happens at every instant, with the “ghost” being created by the brain itself.
It isn’t my personal view btw.
sure it does - there is even a name for the phenomenon; unconsciousness.
even if this is true, so what? Nobody has yet demonstrated why a process performed on one apparatus is fundamentally different - in any way that matters - to the exact same process performed in two halve on two identical sets of apparatus.
When I awoke this morning, all I was is a being with memories of being me the day before. The ‘me’ of yesterday is no more because yesterday does not exist today. The only links I have with my past self are those which exist as part of the current configuration.
It’s not a cosy idea, but it’s unavoidable, without invoking nonmaterial arguments. So yes, if someone murdered me tonight and left a perfect copy in my place, there is no sense in which the copy would not function as me tomorrow - and by 'function ask I mean in the same sense as I function as me now.
What happens in this transporter scenario is not the end of the.‘original’ story and the start of some counterfeit. What happens is that a special and unfamiliar situation occurs in which one original story can have two separate conclusions.
We call it “unconsciousness” as a result of linguistic accident. But your brain remains constantly active while you sleep. There’s no point at which your point-of-view/perspective/consciousness is actually interrupted.
If you kill one of a pair of identical twins, does the murdered one live on?
Whether you can call into question continuity of first-person awareness through sleep is one thing. But it’s not even analogous to destroying that identity and creating an identical. Whatever we might not know about identity in a philosophical sense, we know that killing ends it.
Just the same as if you were fired and your boss hired a replacement, it would “function as” you. But it wouldn’t be you.
Nonsense. You are conflating two very different meanings of consciousness.
Anyone who has passed out or been put under anesthesia can attest to reality of “lost time”. They have absolutely no memory of what occurred during the lapse. There is no point of view, perspective, or consciousness during that period because it is switched off. If it was not, we could access that time through the process of memory just like periods of true consciousness.
Sleep is something in between the two states, where there certainly is activity of a relevant sort going on. For example, last night I had a dream that involved my place of work, building a gas station by bringing in an entire completed store on a truck, aliens that resembled the ones form the John Carter trailers running on tv, and other less clear imagery. The fact that I can remember this indicates that during sleep, the brain is still conscious to some degree. This is vastly different to unconsciousness, a state I have experienced a few times both from anesthesia and being “knocked out”. In those instances I have no recall at all of the time. It is simply gone as if it never existed.
Haven’t read the whole thread- but yes.
Part of the miracle of the transporters would be that they would be able to either edit out bad bits- like cancers, etc, and edit in new bits, or even younger bits. So is your memory in a ‘saved’ version of you at twenty, or thirty, still you?
If you make a perfect copy of me, and keep me alive, is that still me, the new one, or am I still me? I would posit that I would, in fact, like to transport away and stay here, thank you very much!
And meet myself later to see if I would, in fact, be as much of a dick as I think I would be.
Surely it should matter if I’m conscious at the time? Certainly there are sleep states where we are not conscious.
If we’re going to define conscious as “remembering later on” then many people are apparently not conscious while drunk. And people with damage to their memory may never be conscious (yet can talk, respond to pain etc just like you or I).
ETA: In fact, much of what we do while asleep we forget also. We spend a lot of time in REM for example, yet many people struggle to remember one dream on waking.
Okay, I’ve done some preliminary reading on this page. The being asleep v. awake. v. unconscious discussion is only muddying the argument. What we are after is some idea of the persistence of self from one chronon to the next.
To borrow some vocabulary from that page, let’s begin with this: Are you saying that the hypothetical perfect copy and the original are qualitatively identical? That seems easy enough to accept. Unless I am misunderstanding you, you seem to also be saying that destroying the original makes the copy numerically identical as well, since we started with one “me” and end with one “me.” Before I go any farther, please correct me, if I misunderstand, and tell me again what you do mean.
That is correct as I see it.
Okay, then let’s address the idea floated in this and similar threads that “they are both me.” If one of them is not killed, they both cannot have the same numerical identity. Therefore, there must be one that is the “real” me and one that is the copy, your inability as an observer to tell them apart notwithstanding.
True, but only because the “you” at the new location will begin to diverge rapidly from the “you” that was not destroyed. For a brief period, he or she is “you”. That is to say that they are qualitatively identical to you in all respects. Since you were not disassembled at the original point, you continue to exist in the same position in space, and thus persist on leading an independent existence from the analog at the new location where you were supposed to go. The analog likewise diverges at the new location and will through their experiences become a being separate from the one at the entry location. The technology and continuance depends upon the concept of numerical identity and physical/mental qualitative identity to be valid.
However, this only makes logical sense if you do not believe in a non quantifiable attribute to identity that is necessary for validity as a “person”. Whether we call this aspect a soul or use some other non loaded term doesn’t matter at all to me. This seems to be the place where the divergence in views is generated from: “But He’s not Me!”
How is possible, for even the briefest of instants, for them both to be me? That would mean that, for however a short interval, two would be numerically identical to one.
Okay, now let’s dispense with transporters and copies for a moment and address the idea that the “me” of one second ago is not the same “me” of this instant. Or, if you prefer, the “me” that went to bed last night is not the “me” that got up this morning. How am I not numerically identical to the man who went to bed? In what sense are you arguing that I am not qualitatively the same man?
And it’s only possible if “you” are experiencing “not you” from both points of view simultaneously, in other words, one consciousness seeing through two sets of eyes.
They are; But only in the sense of the mental /psychological. Physically of course you are both qualitatively identical. For a brief period, no likely more than a few hours to my thinking, two of the psychological entity (Scumpup) exist in different parts of the universe. Because they interact with a physical world with different stimula and experiences they begin to diverge rapidly, neither being identical to the singular entity (Scumpup) who was present at the moment of transport. You now have (Scumpup) and (ScumpupB) The first maintaining the original line of continuance in original physical location, and a new person very much like the other one existing in a different location. One that will be maintaining a differing line of continuance and thus changing into a differing entity over time. However, this is at best a side problem, because those opposing me are arguing that the new (Scumpup) is not maintaining ANY line of continuance.
As to the second point, it is almost the reverse of the first. The numerical identity is only truly relevant to the psychological portion of personhood. We can have as many physical copies of anyone as we like. However when that physical form is *coupled *with a particular psychological profile and memories we assign it an identity. That identity changes over time and because it only exists bound to one physical form we call it “me” or “you”. These changes are usually tiny and imperceptible to us on a day to day basis. They take time to gather up and create large enough changes to call someone a different person. That’s why (ScumpupB) will persist in being “you” for a short while. He hasn’t had time to diverge yet. For a while he will think and act exactly as you would if you were there. Eventually though, reality intrudes and as you both move forward in time his unique experiences are building up and diverging him. He is a version of you that would have existed elsewhere. The you that asked out the head cheerleader instead of chickening out; or the you that chickened out instead of forging ahead.
Qualitatively speaking, the you that went to bed last night isn’t exactly the same as the you who is reading this. Between then you dreamed, ate things, posted on the message board, maybe stubbed your toe, lost hairs, watched the news, went to work, and interacted with other humans who all joined together in changing the “you” that awoke in minor ways. These changes largely don’t matter much individually, but their joint efforts slowly mold us, just as surely as large life changing ones can. If you believe as I do, that we are a slowly fluxing mental and physical identity; and that only large amounts of those low grade changes can have an effect on what we call a person, then it is logical to assume that a version destroyed and created simultaneously maintains a level of continuance that is valid.
I do not agree, but this is an explanation that I can follow. Thank you for making the effort.