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Ah, the teleportation problem. Is there any more entertaining philosophical topic to argue about? Even though it's probably been discussed to death on the forums already, it always seems capable of drawing in new people. For those unfamiliar, the basic example asks that you imagine a machine. This machine works in much the same manner as the "teleporters" from Star Trek. To achieve rapid transit, it breaks you down atom by atom, and then reassembles you somewhere else in space. Ah, but this and it's many variants bring up some interesting considerations. Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent" posted:"And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?" Even if you're not worrying about immortal souls, people have similar concerns for consciousness and identity, and slight tweaks of the problem can make things interesting - what if the machine rebuilds you at the other end using local materials, and your details are only transmitted as data? What if the first part, where it breaks you down atom by atom, isn't actually required? What if it happens after you're re-assembled on the other side? Are you still you on the other end? Are there now two of you, or an original and a duplicate? It's a question many people have asked, including in some neat little cartoons! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc It's also been touched on in popular media like in the movie The Prestige. One of the most interesting things about this problem in philosophy is just how far back it goes, and I think some of the original questions asked are relevant to consideration of the most recent scenarios. The Ship of Theseus is relevant, for example, and also the following from 1775: Thomas Reid letter to Lord Kames posted:I would be glad to know your Lordship's opinion whether when my brain has lost its original structure, and when some hundred years after the same materials are fabricated so curiously as to become an intelligent being, whether, I say that being will be me; or, if, two or three such beings should be formed out of my brain; whether they will all be me, and consequently one and the same intelligent being. So we'll start with the normal introductory question to get things rolling: If you had the opportunity to use a teleportation device that worked through destroying you and then reassembling you elsewhere, would you do it? GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 15:20
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If it has been thoroughly tested and proved to create someone with my memories and so like the original that their loved ones cannot tell any difference, yes. What matters about my ceasing to be? The bereavement of my loved ones, the loss of such insight as I have gained over the course of my life, and the loss of opportunities for such a person in the future. None of those things apply if someone else so like me springs into being at the same time.
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Apr 5, 2016 16:24
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The clone will think it's you but you'll be dead. I'd rather walk to Mars. Also way to spoil the Prestige i was going to WATCH THAT MOVIE AND NOW YOU'VE RUINED MY LIFE On the other hand like Oh Dear Me said, what's the point of living if someone else could do it just as well in my stead, beam me up Scotty. On another hand also, why even use it for transport? Why not use it for immortality. Why have children when you can just summon forth yourself as you were at uour prime at 25, wait, oh no Killstick fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 16:33
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What happens when the system malfunctions, and you're not only created on the other side, but the original is not destroyed? Who's the real "you" then? The original? If so, what of the new "you?" Does it have any rights?
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Apr 5, 2016 18:45
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E: drat it, wrong tab. Sorry.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:47
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Talmonis posted:What happens when the system malfunctions, and you're not only created on the other side, but the original is not destroyed? Who's the real "you" then? The original? If so, what of the new "you?" Does it have any rights? Ah, the Thomas Riker conundrum. Personally, I would not go through the transporter, because I feel like "I" would die and then WampaLord 2.0 would go on to get to live my life, so that sucks for me. Oh dear me posted:What matters about my ceasing to be? The bereavement of my loved ones, the loss of such insight as I have gained over the course of my life, and the loss of opportunities for such a person in the future. None of those things apply if someone else so like me springs into being at the same time. What a goony loving answer. "What matters if I cease to be?" Uh, you're dead, idiot.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:49
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Talmonis posted:What happens when the system malfunctions, and you're not only created on the other side, but the original is not destroyed? Who's the real "you" then? The original? If so, what of the new "you?" Does it have any rights? The best possible outcome - I get to be two people. I would hope to hell I'd still get to have rights despite there being two of me, that would be pretty hosed up otherwise. WampaLord posted:What a goony loving answer. "What matters if I cease to be?" Uh, you're dead, idiot. Yeah, we all are sooner rather than later though, If you consider death to be a discontinuation in consciousness, hell, I arguably die every single night and am born anew every morning. That doesn't seem to be that big a deal. Deaths that we (or at least someone very much like us) get to live through really aren't so bad. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 18:54
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Talmonis posted:What happens when the system malfunctions, and you're not only created on the other side, but the original is not destroyed? Who's the real "you" then? The original? If so, what of the new "you?" Does it have any rights? Longer than you think! Long Jaunt!
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Apr 5, 2016 18:56
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GlyphGryph posted:If you consider death to be a discontinuation in consciousness, hell, I arguably die every single night and am born anew every morning. That doesn't seem to be that big a deal. Deaths that we (or at least someone very much like us) get to live through really aren't so bad. No, this is a really dumb argument because when you go to sleep you aren't broken apart molecule by molecule like you would be in the hypothetical transporter. And it's that "or at least someone very much like us" part that concerns me. If I can guarantee that my consciousness lives on through the transporter, then no worries, but from the way you've described it, I will die.
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Apr 5, 2016 18:59
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WampaLord posted:No, this is a really dumb argument because when you go to sleep you aren't broken apart molecule by molecule like you would be in the hypothetical transporter. So? Is this like when people want to be buried rather than cremated because of some weird attachment to their atoms? My consciousness is systemic, not atomic, which is a good things considering that many of those atoms end up getting replaced sooner or later. Braindead doesn't seem any better than atomized dead to me, assuming I recover completely from both of them. quote:And it's that "or at least someone very much like us" part that concerns me. If I can guarantee that my consciousness lives on through the transporter, then no worries, but from the way you've described it, I will die. The duplicate is me for every value of "me" that actually matters (to me). The you that's going to respond to this post is different from the you that originally posted in the thread in ways that do not, presumably, matter to you. If your important attribute here is "continuation of conscienceness", do you have a similar objection to the knockout gas you get at the hospital? Because in terms of consciousness continuity, it doesn't really leave you with any.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:11
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Oh dear me posted:If it has been thoroughly tested and proved to create someone with my memories and so like the original that their loved ones cannot tell any difference, yes. What matters about my ceasing to be? The bereavement of my loved ones, the loss of such insight as I have gained over the course of my life, and the loss of opportunities for such a person in the future. None of those things apply if someone else so like me springs into being at the same time. Actually I'm pretty attached to my subjective sense of experience (illusory or not), thanks. The other things don't matter so much to me without that. I still don't think this is that big of a problem, though. How perfect is the technology? Is it guaranteed to create a perfect copy of me at the destination end? Will my brain be in the exact state it was at the source end? As long as that's the case and there's no discontinuity before the source copy gets vaporized then I don't have an issue with it. The problem is that if the source "me" lives for even the tiniest fraction of a second after the copy is made, then I'd consider that "me" to be a unique individual that's about to get murdered.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:15
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WampaLord posted:What a goony loving answer. "What matters if I cease to be?" Uh, you're dead, idiot. I was saying that what matters about being dead is a) bereavement b) loss of experience c) loss of opportunity. So far you've not added anything to this but a different word. If you think there's something extra in my consciousness that would be lost, for example, or special about this material conglomeration that changes all the time, you need to argue for it, I think. Paradoxish posted:Actually I'm pretty attached to my subjective sense of experience (illusory or not), thanks. The new person would have such a thing, and how would I know I had not? How would they be different? Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 19:16
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Paradoxish posted:I still don't think this is that big of a problem, though. How perfect is the technology? Is it guaranteed to create a perfect copy of me at the destination end? Will my brain be in the exact state it was at the source end? As long as that's the case and there's no discontinuity before the source copy gets vaporized then I don't have an issue with it. The problem is that if the source "me" lives for even the tiniest fraction of a second after the copy is made, then I'd consider that "me" to be a unique individual that's about to get murdered. Interesting. Would you consider the MiB style "erase the last 10 minutes" mind wipers to effectively be murder, for killing the individual you were and replacing it with someone from the past?
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Apr 5, 2016 19:20
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I took the test and it's total bullshit. If souls exist and I go into the machine I'm going to have the worst loving case of jet lag until my original soul, or someone else's, flies into my mouth.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:23
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GlyphGryph posted:So? Is this like when people want to be buried rather than cremated because of some weird attachment to their atoms? My consciousness is systemic, not atomic, which is a good things considering that many of those atoms end up getting replaced sooner or later. Braindead doesn't seem any better than atomized dead to me, assuming I recover completely from both of them. So? That's a large difference. When I go to sleep, my last thoughts are "Well, time for bed." When I'm transported my last (and final) thoughts are "Oh my God, I'm being ripped apart atom by atom." You're missing the part where you're actively dying by being disassembled. GlyphGryph posted:The duplicate is me for every value of "me" that actually matters (to me). The you that's going to respond to this post is different from the you that originally posted in the thread in ways that do not, presumably, matter to you. No, of course I don't object to anesthesia because being knocked out by drugs isn't the same as being killed by dissolution of atoms. Oh dear me posted:I was saying that what matters about being dead is a) bereavement b) loss of experience c) loss of opportunity. So far you've not added anything to this but a different word. If you think there's something extra in my consciousness that would be lost, for example, or special about this material conglomeration that changes all the time, you need to argue for it, I think. Your consciousness would die and cease to be, there would just be a brand new clone of you with their own consciousness in your place. WampaLord fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 19:24
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WampaLord posted:You're consciousness would die and cease to be, there would just be a brand new clone of you with their own consciousness in your place. But how would their consciousness be different from mine? Other than being in a different location, which surely doesn't matter.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:25
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WampaLord posted:So? That a large difference. When I go to sleep, my last thoughts are "Well, time for bed." When I'm transported my last (and final) thoughts are "Oh my God, I'm being ripped apart atom by atom." quote:You're consciousness would die and cease to be, there would just be a brand new clone of you with their own consciousness in your place. Just like when you take knockout drugs, which you've already said you're fine with.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:27
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Oh dear me posted:But how would their consciousness be different from mine? Other than being in a different location, which surely doesn't matter. Their experiences are false. They're just a copy of the original that felt, touched, saw, heard and smelled their entire life. The events in the beings life didn't happen to that body, they happened to the original...which is dead.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:28
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Talmonis posted:Their experiences are false. They're just a copy of the original that felt, touched, saw, heard and smelled their entire life. The events in the beings life didn't happen to that body, they happened to the original...which is dead. My current body is materially utterly different from the body I had 20 years ago. (It has a similar structure, of course, but so would the clone.) Why does a loss of historical continuity of body matter at all?
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Apr 5, 2016 19:31
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Talmonis posted:Their experiences are false. They're just a copy of the original that felt, touched, saw, heard and smelled their entire life. The events in the beings life didn't happen to that body, they happened to the original...which is dead. If instead of a teleporter, I... uh... budded?... another me, froze it, and shipped it off, would that one count as me when it woke up? Not generally a concern for most humans, I admit, but it's the sort of thing that isn't exactly uncommon in nature.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:32
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GlyphGryph posted:Interesting. Would you consider the MiB style "erase the last 10 minutes" mind wipers to effectively be murder, for killing the individual you were and replacing it with someone from the past? Depends on how they work. It also depends on what consciousness is and what processes in the brain are responsible for it. The problem I have with this as a philosophical question is that I think it butts heads with some questions about the real, physical world and neuroscience in particular. If a mind wiper replaced my brain with a copy of itself from ten minutes ago I might be concerned, yeah. I can't categorically say that anything bad has happened to me, but I wouldn't be comfortable with the idea. If it just cut off some connections or otherwise altered my brain to prevent access to those memories then I probably wouldn't care. Of course, I guess I wouldn't remember to care in either case. To put this another way, if you split me in half right now I'd be fine with acknowledging that both halves have every right to be called "me." The problem is that I don't think that really means anything. The instant you split us, we're unique individuals with unique experiences. I wouldn't be any happier about someone deciding to arbitrarily kill Me #1 (even if I'm Me #2) than I would be about someone arbitrarily deciding to kill some other random guy on the street. Me #1 and Me #2 are both having their own subjective stream of experience and one of them is about to be cut off.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:42
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GlyphGryph posted:Interesting. Would you consider the MiB style "erase the last 10 minutes" mind wipers to effectively be murder, for killing the individual you were and replacing it with someone from the past? That's inaccurate, the MiB device doesn't replace you with an earlier you, it replaces you with earlier you + 10 minute hole. If it went back in time and pulled 10 minutes ago you forward as a replacement that might be considered murder, but mostly because both bodies would self-destruct when they touched each other.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:43
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If we have the technology to generate exact duplicates of ourselves on the atomic level and transfer the data necessary to create those duplicates over light-year-plus distances in reasonable amounts of time, then why would we even bother having bodies anymore? By the time the technology is there for that to be a real pertinent question, we'll have gone through so many other ethically troublesome technologies that it'll be surprising if there's anything left of modern ethics and philosophy at all.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:45
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Talmonis posted:What happens when the system malfunctions, and you're not only created on the other side, but the original is not destroyed? Who's the real "you" then? The original? If so, what of the new "you?" Does it have any rights? I like The Prestige too
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Apr 5, 2016 20:05
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Even if a version of you continues through eternity, you are still a boring loser and you won't do anything meaningful with that time. Even if a million million versions of you are walking around, none of them will ever find a way to matter.
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Apr 5, 2016 20:09
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So over the course of a lifetime you're constantly replacing your cells, right? So this is just a fast version of that, discarding them entirely for new atoms all at once. So I don't think there's anything especially important about the Carbon atom at a specific place in my brain at this moment because if it had a serial number there's every reason to expect it will be replaced with a new carbon atom in a year or ten. So I wouldn't place much value on the physical "me" of me. If I lose an arm and get a cybernetic replacement I'm still me although obvious also Robocop. Would I do it? I'd put the weight on that being the pain my old body was put through. If it was disassembled painlessly, it would be fine if it was proven safe. The issue with "killing" the old me? I, in current possession of the old body, sign a directive to have them disassemble me. Assuming it's matured enough for the lawyers to pick apart the legality of that, I don't think it's a particularly thorny issue. Ideally it would be an action I would do myself so that there isn't the psychological burden of being a "hangman" placed on someone else. Even if I don't think it's a big deal I wouldn't presume that would be shared with someone else and it's less thorny morally if I "kill" myself rather than ask someone else to do it for me. About the order of events, I'd much rather the old me still exist for some measurable period of time after the new me is created. If something went wrong, I'd like there to be an opportunity to recover either version of "me" they can. The soul issue? I think this more than anything would solve the question of the presence of a soul. You could do almost any test with placebo and control tests and run the gamut of personality tests. I'd worry about the lack of soul when there's some evidence it does not appear after teleportation. What would happen if there was an accident and the process of disassembling my old body didn't occur, leaving two of me? I would hope they'd put a framework in place to give the new me a proper identity and live out his accidental life in confusing peace. I mean, that seems like the obvious solution. He can keep the name but one of us will need a new social security number and place of employment but hopefully the teleportation company that made the mistake will provide support for that in an out of court settlement. It's going to be an awful situation for all involved but it's making the best of an industrial accident so patience and understanding will be needed. We'll diverge psychologically from the first moment so we're distinct individuals with common memories. You'd rather hope these types of accidents are rare but with this kind of teleportation I'd insist they create a legal framework for all of the potential results that show up when you're perfecting a Prestige machine. I had read a Robert J Sawyer novel called Mindscan which framed a lot of these issues and the big takeaway is "talk to a lawyer first". Anyway, I remember liking the book quite a lot so give it a read if you haven't. GlyphGryph posted:Interesting. Would you consider the MiB style "erase the last 10 minutes" mind wipers to effectively be murder, for killing the individual you were and replacing it with someone from the past? The MIB question is interesting but is actually back to a form of mind control because it isn't just the wiping away of memories but the fabrication of entirely new ones. And those can induce brand new behaviors outside of the norm so that is essentially a violent destruction of the old self. When you think about it, Edgar's wife's feelings for her husband are really buried under the jokey replacement feelings J creates for her. She'll never grieve for the loss of her husband and be driven by an artificial sense of purpose that isn't supported by her own internal drives. She's going to carve out a new life without knowing why or what she's looking for, just a vague sense that she's "moving on". I love the movie but it's one of those ones you can TV Tropes into horror really easily.
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Apr 5, 2016 21:01
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The teleportation problem generalizes. If the persistence of identity through time supervenes just on continuity of form, or of substance, or of their conjunction, then it turns out that identity simply does not persist. When Hobbes wrote about this problem in de corpore he was really worried that this would mean that it is impossible to punish a wrongdoer (and anyone being punished is innocent).GlyphGryph posted:Personally I think the conclusion most philosophers come to in their writings on the matter are dumb as gently caress, all of them ultimately boiling down to weak justifications for what they started out wanting to be true anyway (hardly surprising, since it is in keeping with classics like "Cogito Ergo Sum and therefore the god I want to be real is totally real"), but it's still usually good fun arguing about it. Cite even one.
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Apr 5, 2016 21:44
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I'm an all around nerd but my first loyalty is to history and the classics so I tend to prefer this thought exercise when it's about the Ship of Theseus 
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Apr 5, 2016 22:24
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I have a ship, which is the very same ship that Theseus sailed from Crete. I decide to renovate it by replacing each part, piece by piece, with an indistinguishable piece. As I'm doing this, a thief is stealing the discarded pieces and putting them back together into a ship indistinguishable from mine. Which ship is now the very same ship Theseus sailed from Crete? Considerations in favor of my ship being that one: -Sameness of form Considerations in favor of the thief's ship being the one: -Sameness of form -Sameness of matter Hobbes ends up saying it's my ship because it has the right kind of causal continuity: my ship was always a ship, but there was a period of time during which the thief's ship wasn't seaworthy, and therefore wasn't a ship. If it wasn't a ship, it certainly cannot be identical to anything that is a ship. (Hidden premise: diachronic existence can't be gappy; temporal parts have to be continuous)
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Apr 5, 2016 22:51
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MEDS CURE SCHIZOS posted:Longer than you think! Long Jaunt! Oh hey the only horror story I have ever read that actually frightened me
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Apr 5, 2016 23:02
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If the certain-set-of-interactions called consciousness can effectively be transmitted causally over your medium, then you'll be fine. Eg- wait for a neuron not to fire, produce a neuron at the other end, and 'wire' the new neuron to replace the old neuron, through whatever magic you're using to teleport. No duplicates, no deletion, no death.
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Apr 5, 2016 23:13
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This question, and similar ones concerning the transfer of consciousness to machines, always assumes a break in the continuity of consciousness between the initial state and the final state. What if you were able to experience the process of transitioning from one state to the other without a discernible break in consciousness? Since there is no break in consciousness wouldn't that mean you are the same person at the other end?
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Apr 5, 2016 23:19
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Svaha posted:This question, and similar ones concerning the transfer of consciousness to machines, always assumes a break in the continuity of consciousness between the initial state and the final state. I'm not sure how that would be possible. You would have to somehow facilitate a connection between cells at the destination and cells at the origin. If you could somehow have, for example, a neuron at the destination connected to a neuron at the origin through a tiny wormhole or some crazy poo poo then I guess it might be possible (assuming the downright magical technology that would require). Oh dear me posted:My current body is materially utterly different from the body I had 20 years ago. (It has a similar structure, of course, but so would the clone.) Why does a loss of historical continuity of body matter at all? The changes in your body (and in the case of this topic, specifically in the brain) are gradual and allow the brain as a whole to continue operating uninterrupted. Put another way, for any specific short interval of time, there will be many brain cells that live for that entire time interval, allowing the brain to function uninterrupted. It would only be equivalent to the teleportation described in the OP if every single cell in your brain was replaced at the same time, which would result in a time period, no matter how short, where the brain was not functioning (or existing, for that matter). So, the machine that is the brain continues operating as long as you're living, even if individual cells die and are replaced over time. But if you are copied and the original you is deleted, the original brain has ceased to function, even if the new brain is completely identical. So even if the new person/brain feels identical to the old person, it is just a new copy (in the same way as it would be if the original weren't deleted). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 23:21
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Juffo-Wup posted:I have a ship, which is the very same ship that Theseus sailed from Crete. I decide to renovate it by replacing each part, piece by piece, with an indistinguishable piece. As I'm doing this, a thief is stealing the discarded pieces and putting them back together into a ship indistinguishable from mine. Which ship is now the very same ship Theseus sailed from Crete? I am probably okay with iterative replacement of my brain with silicon or wbatever, because my consciousness is continuous. I am probably not okay with destructive teleportation, because my consciousness is probably not. I would rather that when I die I be replaced by an exact duplicate than not, but I would prefer not dying.
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Apr 5, 2016 23:21
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Sleeping, or being unconscious, is not the same as ceasing to exist. Your brain and body are still working and churning and functioning even if you're not totally aware of it.
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Apr 5, 2016 23:23
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GreyjoyBastard posted:I am probably okay with iterative replacement of my brain with silicon or wbatever, because my consciousness is continuous. I am probably not okay with destructive teleportation, because my consciousness is probably not. I generally agree with this, but it's worth pointing out that mere causal continuity is not enough. Lots of causal relations don't preserve identity. When I die, I'll be causally continuous with my corpse. What is needed is to identify the right kind of causal relation. Most people in this thread so far have implied they think it's something to do with the operation of neurons in the brain. Which is a reasonable answer. But it ends up looking something like the counterfactual: 'identity is preserved if the causal profile of the brain is as it would have been if it had been allowed to operate normally' but that looks like it might end up being circular if we think that the persistence of identity just is the normal operation of the brain. Edit: cf: 'identity is preserved if the brain continues to operate in an identity-preserving way' looks bad
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Apr 5, 2016 23:36
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That's only because we don't have a rigorous formulation of consciousness in terms of neural/information/whatever. If we had, then the definition would be 'if it preserves the X-constant/is able to Y continuously'. So long as you can assume it exists, that answer to this exercise still works.
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Apr 5, 2016 23:58
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The plot of SOMA (by Frictional Games, makes of Amnesia: The Dark Descent) is relevant to this, as it involves being able to digitally replicate/transmit consciousness. Example:quote:Catherine then suggests that they take an elevator down to the Abyss, but in order to survive the crushing depths, they need to find Simon a tougher suit. In Omicron, they are able to locate a Power Suit with the headless body of Ralleigh Herber inside, and Catherine proposes they scan Simon's consciousness into a new Cortex Chip to be placed with the body repeating the process that originated the current Simon. With no other clear path forward, Simon reluctantly agrees. They find another brain scan device and successfully "teleport" Simon's consciousness into the new Powered Suit. However, Simon is enraged to find his old body still alive and unconscious in the scanning chair. Catherine explains there is no way to move a scan from one body to another, you can only copy it. Simon is then given the choice of whether to kill his old self or leave him to wake up in a few hours.
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Apr 6, 2016 00:09
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Ytlaya posted:So, the machine that is the brain continues operating as long as you're living, even if individual cells die and are replaced over time. But if you are copied and the original you is deleted, the original brain has ceased to function, even if the new brain is completely identical. So even if the new person/brain feels identical to the old person, it is just a new copy (in the same way as it would be if the original weren't deleted). I think this is just a restatement of the premiss. I obviously know the original brain has ceased to function, because it has been disassembled. I'm arguing that if a new, completely identical copy has been created, nothing of any importance will have been lost. This is obviously not true if there is something immaterial, like a soul, which would not inhere in the second body. It's also not true if mere historical continuity of body/mental function is intrinsically wonderful in some way. I just have no idea what that way could be.
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Apr 6, 2016 00:12
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GlyphGryph posted:The best possible outcome - I get to be two people. I would hope to hell I'd still get to have rights despite there being two of me, that would be pretty hosed up otherwise. You wouldn't get to be two people, though, you'd still only ever be you. Its just that now there's a separate person who happens to share an identical set of memories up until the point of replication with you.
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Apr 6, 2016 00:14
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