Your life is only precious to you because as of our current understanding it is unrecoverable. Whether it be death by natural causes, suicide or murder, the act is final and irrevocable. That is why it is so serious. Should technology advance to the point where this is not the case you must re-evaluate that position. Your reasoning here is circular: “Life is precious to me because it is precious to me”. If we clone you and boot you back up from the last save point, then a Mijin is back amongst the living, none the worse for wear by your own admission. That brings us back to the original question: What makes this Mijin different or less valid than the one that died?
Additionally, the use of such a machine would be a closer analogue to suicide than murder. Using one is voluntary.
No, he’s basing a substantive philosophical claim on the premise “stepping into the transporter destroys my life, which is precious to me.” Yet presumably almost everyone’s life is precious to them–yet many people do not think that stepping into the transporter destroys their life. So there is a substantive disagreement, apparently, over just what exactly a “life” consists in. And, one way to figure out what a “life” is supposed to be is to figure out just why it is so precious.
To answer your questions: I eat when I’m hungry and take pains not to step out in front of moving cars so that the process of growth in thought that I embody will continue in the most productive and interesting way I know how to keep it going. Stepping into a transporter also is a way for me to keep that process going in the most productive and interesting way I know how. That, it seems to me, is what a “life” consists in–and the transporter preserves it, rather than destroying it.
No; I’m simply stating that my life is precious to me. It’s not, in itself, an argument. Unless you wish to accuse me of lying, you can’t really dispute it.
[quote]
If we clone you and boot you back up from the last save point, then a Mijin is back amongst the living, none the worse for wear by your own admission. That brings us back to the original question: What makes this Mijin different or less valid than the one that died? [/qupte]
Again we’ve switched to the third-person. As I said, this always happens: let’s ignore or forget the first-person because it’s inconvenient.
But in this hypothetical (and others like it), it’s the first-person perspective that is really at issue here.
What makes this Mijin different to the one that died? It isn’t me
(and remember I defined “me” as this consciousness)
Regarding the teleporter case, the end product does have the same consciousness as you. The consciousness of the endproduct, and the consciousness of you, have the same relation to each other as the consciousness of you has to the consciousness of you-in-the-past. Namely, the relation consists in a certain way that experiences flow according to the laws of human psychology.
Once you’re dead, it doesn’t matter to you whether someone else can measure the difference between you and your copy. All that matters is whether, when you stepped into the machine, you wanted to be killed.
I think it DOES matter to this discussion. Loosely speaking, a “consciousness” is made up of experiences in a continuity. A “person” is a consciousness bound to a particular biological form. That is how we identify one another. Identical twins are not the same person because they have different experiences. However, a person brought into being with solely the consciousness of one who previously died MUST be that person, if however briefly, because they have no differing consciousness. They cannot be someone else because they have never BEEN anyone else.
So either you are advocating for the existence of something special that we cannot quantify, or that any break in continuity creates a new person.
So why do you think that question is relevant here. It doesn’t matter where the consciousness goes. All that matters is that it’s gone.
They are not the same person because they exist in two separate bodies with conscious minds that cannot simultaneously perceive the experiences of both bodoes.
They have identical content in their memories and experiences, but they do not have the same consciousness.
It might never be perceivable from a third person point of view. The point is that if you are killed, do you think that your consciousness will come back when a copy is materialized. Will the consciousness that entered the teleporter have a continuity of experience? You must look at it from the point of view preceding the dematerialization. That is where the action happens. Asking the person that steps out of the teleporter at the other end is irrelevant.
You can quantify the break in physical existence. Your consciousness is tied to your body. If your body is dematerialized, that consciousness ends.
Let’s say you get into the transporter that has the bug. You appear at the destination but there’s still a you standing there at the original location.
The “you” that you find yourself present in is the one in the original location. To you, the “other you” at the destination is external: has your memories up until just a split-second ago but if Joe Schmoe slaps that “you”, YOU do not feel it. Your nerve endings are over here in the original.
Mind if we kill this accidentally left-behind you (the “you” that YOU are in)? The copy of you at the destination will carry on from here, OK?
The “copy” and the “original” are both “you” for a short while, then they diverge into different people due to external circumstances. Neither *needs *to be killed. Theoretically though, If I confirmed to myself that I was there and well, I’d probably have little issue with the original location “me” being terminated. We think the same. That would be surpassingly strange though.
that is all very well and good on paper, but i think the best way to test the strength of such conviction is to have the transporter on hand and remove all illusions of continuity by requiring the original to manually self terminate.
Would you.1 be as sanguine with you.2 getting to be the you that continues if the termination was agonizingly slow and painful as opposed to the instantaneous and painless termination these discussions generally presume?
You apparently missed the context: I had already defined persons A, B and C earlier in this thread, and I was continuing to use those definitions here, one of which is that B and C are not held in communication with one another by conventional means after the relevant event. Transmitting A’s reaction to C as part of the teleportation/copying process breaks the experiment, but then, so would a letter.
Only because you killed the one person who could tell the difference: the victim.
B and C do not share a consciousness; they both inherit the same consciousness from A. However they are not the same individual as each other- they are instead dividuals, divided and separate.
Assuming that the copying process is perfect there can be no other conclusion.
However in reality there is no such thing as a perfect copy. Any user of a teleport system would need to be aware of the degree of inaccuracy in any copy made using that system.
The original person experiences a natural amount of random change from second to second, simply because they occupy a warm physical body; this is entropy calling. If the copy deviates from the original by a similar amount to the natural change that the original experiences from instant to instant, then the teleportation process is no more damaging than simply sitting still.
If the difference is significantly greater than the naturally occurring change in the original, then it might not appeal to many users.
What if it was your child? (Again, I understand that neither needs to be killed necessarily, but assume for the sake of argument that the scan is destructive. Also, does it matter if the scan is instantly destructive or whether the person can survive for a second or two later? What about a few days?)
??? Why? That’s like PETA saying that anyone who wants a hamburger has to go out and actually kill a cow. What possible justification for such a rule could there be?
I don’t think anyone is under the impression that one’s child is not a separate individual. The comparison doesn’t make any sense.
As for the time lag, this would, without doubt, deter many from using the transporter. It would deter me! I wouldn’t feel good about vacationing in Paris, knowing that I was also sitting back home, awaiting death.
I’m willing to feel empathy for Joe Random Schlub on death row in Texas for murdering five teenagers; I damn well can feel sympathy for my exact identical duplicate on death row simply for being me!
No, because there is a legitimate ethical question involved in such a machine. We have now changed the parameters of the debate. If the scan is inherently terminal, and the dividual is left to painfully die, there is an issue of pointless cruelty. Such a device should immediately, and painlessly terminate the surplus, doomed dividual as a matter of function. Because until the duplication you are a sole individual, you alone are able to consent to this process. The surplus dividual who is now terminal has no rights since he or she only exists at your own request.
Trinopus, Acid Lamp. no, i’m not actually advocating cruelty. it is rather a hypothetical on a hypothetical. that is, if you were forced to face self-termination without the illusion of continuity, to watch your copy come to life and to have to end your own. i think it is safe to say most people would question their decision at that point.
the new you, the new individual, is not you. it is your offspring.