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  • Locked thread
Cicero
Dec 17, 2003

Jumpjet, melta, jumpjet. Repeat for ten minutes or until victory is assured.

Oh dear me posted:

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.
This would make for a pretty interesting short story or novella, I think. Two factions at war: one who believes that some fundamental part of identity is lost when teleporting, one who doesn't, with the latter group having a huge tactical advantage since they can just move all over the place anytime, while the former group is stuck with conventional methods of transportation.

I mean you'd have to stretch the bounds of believability to have a society that has teleportation but not robots doing all the fighting, but could still be compelling.

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Doorknob Slobber
Sep 10, 2006

by Fluffdaddy
Even if the you on the other side was an exact copy molecule for molecule it wouldn't be exactly you because it would be made from different molecules. Unless it broke you down, then transported all your original matter to the new destination and re-made you. Both ways though "you" would die and the exact copy no matter how similar would actually be a different person.

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

Reason posted:

Even if the you on the other side was an exact copy molecule for molecule it wouldn't be exactly you because it would be made from different molecules. Unless it broke you down, then transported all your original matter to the new destination and re-made you. Both ways though "you" would die and the exact copy no matter how similar would actually be a different person.

I agree, but there is a practical level where I would call this different person a "continuation" of the previous one, though.

Doorknob Slobber
Sep 10, 2006

by Fluffdaddy

Who What Now posted:

I agree, but there is a practical level where I would call this different person a "continuation" of the previous one, though.

Besides philosophical issues what about moral issues with this kind of teleportation? If you teleported someone against their will could it be some kind of murder?

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

Reason posted:

Besides philosophical issues what about moral issues with this kind of teleportation? If you teleported someone against their will could it be some kind of murder?

Possibly! There are a lot of variables that would change this answer, like how this teleportation technology works, and are there more pressing issues to be worried about such as as whether we are talking about being in some dystopian techno-hellscape universe or are we in some sort of utopia where the only conceivable crime is teleportation-murder.

1secondpersecond
Nov 12, 2008


Who What Now posted:

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.

The question of how continuity of consciousness would operate under the circumstances of duplication is interesting though. Say that you were expecting to be instantaneously 'teleported' by scan and duplication followed by destruction of the original within a single room. You stand with a red wall behind you and a blue wall in front of you and close your eyes, expecting to open them to a blank red wall. The process malfunctions, creating a duplicate facing you but failing to destroy the original. Obviously, you can't have the experience of 'being' both copies, so does your continuity of experience have you facing a copy of yourself standing in front of a red wall or a blue wall?

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

1secondpersecond posted:

The question of how continuity of consciousness would operate under the circumstances of duplication is interesting though. Say that you were expecting to be instantaneously 'teleported' by scan and duplication followed by destruction of the original within a single room. You stand with a red wall behind you and a blue wall in front of you and close your eyes, expecting to open them to a blank red wall. The process malfunctions, creating a duplicate facing you but failing to destroy the original. Obviously, you can't have the experience of 'being' both copies, so does your continuity of experience have you facing a copy of yourself standing in front of a red wall or a blue wall?

Easy, you still see a blue wall. Because you didn't actually move. There was always a 0% chance of you being moved, because that is expressly not how this technology works.

Your clone, however, is having a much different experience. And that difference in experience has already made them a being unique from you. Maybe not very unique, but still not a perfect copy, either.

1secondpersecond
Nov 12, 2008


Who What Now posted:

Easy, you still see a blue wall. Because you didn't actually move. There was always a 0% chance of you being moved, because that is expressly not how this technology works.

Your clone, however, is having a much different experience. And that difference in experience has already made them a being unique from you. Maybe not very unique, but still not a perfect copy, either.

That would be my expectation, too. That leads me to believe that, had the teleportation process worked correctly, I'd be dead and there would be a physically identical person with the same set of memories facing the spot where I stood. My own subjective experience of those memories, however, would cease. The only difference in the scenarios is whether the original is destroyed. Since there's no causal connection between the original and the duplicate, preservation or destruction shouldn't matter.

Samog
Dec 13, 2006
At least I'm not an 07.

Cicero posted:

This would make for a pretty interesting short story or novella, I think. Two factions at war: one who believes that some fundamental part of identity is lost when teleporting, one who doesn't, with the latter group having a huge tactical advantage since they can just move all over the place anytime, while the former group is stuck with conventional methods of transportation.

I mean you'd have to stretch the bounds of believability to have a society that has teleportation but not robots doing all the fighting, but could still be compelling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6mZZiI4ShQ

Ape Agitator
Feb 19, 2004

Soylent Green is Monkeys
College Slice
Isn't the dynamic nature of consciousness messing with that reasoning? The "you" from 8am is different from the "you" of 8:30 because someone cut you off in traffic and made you hate humanity.

With that given, which you may well disagree with but bear with me, the you who stands still for a minute is similarly changed and unchanged. And the you that is disintegrated and reintegrated a foot away is also changed and unchanged.

And if the machine duplicates you both versions are "you", changed and unchanged. But unlike a self same object out person comparing themselves to their past selves, their diverging experiences make them "change" differently. But they both have continuity of consciousness and their unique experiences make them different people immediately.

CheesyDog
Jul 4, 2007

by FactsAreUseless
Consciousness is phenomenological, emerging from material structures under certain conditions. Consciousness has continuity only in the sense that the material structures continue to exist from moment to moment; the self arises from these material structures, and alteration of the material structures leads directly to alterations in the emergent consciousness. Consciousness exists on a continuum; there are times without consciousness that occur each day, and under some neurological conditions some people will have permanent diminishment of consciousness. As the accuracy of a physical copy increases, the phenomenological self that emergences increasingly resembles that of your "self", and under perfect conditions the copy's emergent self would be "you" until experiences diverge enough to alter the physical structures of the brains and bodies.

There, I saved you 600 pages of reading.

Paradoxish
Dec 19, 2003

Will you stop going crazy in there?

Reason posted:

Even if the you on the other side was an exact copy molecule for molecule it wouldn't be exactly you because it would be made from different molecules. Unless it broke you down, then transported all your original matter to the new destination and re-made you. Both ways though "you" would die and the exact copy no matter how similar would actually be a different person.

A molecule of water is a molecule of water. You don't need to transport anything (except data) so long as you can make an identical duplicate in composition and arrangement.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013
Probation
Can't post for 2 hours!

Who What Now posted:

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.

I think it's pretty inarguable that I (and all "I"s up to the point of divergence) would get to be two people, but maybe they would not get to be each other. I'd argue otherwise, though.

I honestly think I may have a weaker concept of self-identity than most people in this thread. For example, I think think there's some of me in my son, and some of him in me. But he's less me than not-me, and thus a different person. When he was in my wife's womb, not yet formed into a being with it's own experiences, he was more her than himself. In the other direction, the person I was at his age could hardly be said to be me since, much like my son, the things that make us different are greater than the things that we share seem to outnumber the things that we don't. You might argue that I am my younger self by virtue of continuity, but if so then my son, descended as he is from the same systems, must be that person as well. I don't think that argument holds together, so there must be more and continuity itself hardly seems required.

But to another extent, the person I consider "me" includes my son. I would give my life to preserve his, and I'd be hard pressed to consider the act one of selfless morality. Rather, I consider myself to be a component, an organ, of a greater whole, a larger me, which includes my younger self and my ancestors, and of which he (with his potential future laid out before him and how brightly it's possibilities shine compared to my own) is a far more valuable piece. If a blade was coming at my head and my hand reached out to stop it, would we commend my hand for it's sacrifice in catching the blade? Hardly, because we understand that while it may be "my hand", it's own thing, that identity is less important than it's identity as a piece of the greater me (for a whole bunch of reasons).

So we come to my more similar descendants, my clones. After that point of divergence, whichever copy was asked the question would consider themselves to be the same person. Two minds, two bodies, but one larger organism composed of two independent parts, the same way I am one organism composes of a great many individual parts. If one of them were to die, then half of me would die with them. So long as I continue in the other, I'd consider that fair. I'd be less for it, but no less than I am now.

By what right would you argue that either I would not be me? Would you argue the same of a split brain patient, since one half of their mind can think thoughts the other can not detect? I'd say there would be a better case for that lack of identity than my own in this hypothetical, for I can communicate more easily with my other half and we both have full access to quite a lot of shared history.

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?

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)

I am glad you pointed out his hidden premise, because it seems to be at the crux of the argument - what should we use to determine identity (esp. in this scenario), and why?

You're obviously well versed in philosophy, I'd love to hear your defense of his premises and argument.

So, why should we require that continuity (a lack of gappyness) be a necessary aspect of identity? It's clearly not a requirement for many common use cases - most people wouldn't say that a gun that's been disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled is suddenly a different gun.

It should be painfully obvious that the very concept of "identity" (Is this person me? Is this ship the same ship?) does not describe anything close to an innate property of an object (though it may rely on such properties). It is a categorical question, and like most categorical questions there are a great many suitable answers, the definitions we use will ultimately be artificial, and we will often adopt them based not on any great underlying consistency but rather on their utility of purpose or as an expression of our own underlying values. What conditions lead you to accept the premises of identity laid out by Hobbes (at least should you choose to accept them for the purposes of this argument), and why should we do the same?

(As far as your earlier question, I'll withdraw the comment, since as tangents go it's not going to be conducive to discussion)

GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Apr 6, 2016

Juffo-Wup
Jan 13, 2005

Pillbug

GlyphGryph posted:

I am glad you pointed out his hidden premise, because it seems to be at the crux of the argument - what should we use to determine identity (esp. in this scenario), and why?

You're obviously well versed in philosophy, I'd love to hear your defense of his premises and argument.

So, why should we require that continuity (a lack of gappyness) be a necessary aspect of identity? It's clearly not a requirement for many common use cases - most people wouldn't say that a gun that's been disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled is suddenly a different gun.

It should be painfully obvious that the very concept of "identity" (Is this person me? Is this ship the same ship?) does not describe anything close to an innate property of an object (though it may rely on such properties). It is a categorical question, and like most categorical questions there are a great many suitable answers, the definitions we use will ultimately be artificial, and we will often adopt them based not on any great underlying consistency but rather on their utility of purpose or as an expression of our own underlying values. What conditions lead you to accept the premises of identity laid out by Hobbes (at least should you choose to accept them for the purposes of this argument), and why should we do the same?

Hobbes rejects the notion that an object can have temporally discontinuous parts at least partly on the basis of an analogy to spatial discontinuity: that there is an object constituted by the Eiffel tower, my left thumb, and the Andromeda galaxy is something that we intuitively don't want to grant, plausibly because we think an object has to be spatially continuous.

I'm not sure what Hobbes would say about the reassembled gun, but he actually struggled with a much worse problem because the temporal continuity requirement seems to imply that a thing cannot cease to exist for a time and then come back into existence, but on some interpretations that's what the Resurrection was. The gun problem seems less fraught; he'd probably happily say that the reassembled gun was not identical to the original.

As for a definition of identity, the assumption I've been working under is that identity is the relation that holds between a thing and itself. Batman and Bruce Wayne, Hesperus and Phosphorus, etc. Edit: if you don't like this, Parfit and a few others (Lewis, I think?) redefine the problem as being about 'survival' rather than identity.

I don't necessarily endorse Hobbes' argument myself. I'm not personally convinced that there is anything in the world that answers to the name 'self,' in which case they're certainly not persisting through time. I think the closest we'll get is either something like what rudatron was saying, basically 'whatever cognitive science determines is the physical/functional correlate of consciousness' or something like Dan Dennett's 'center of narrative gravity.'

Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Apr 6, 2016

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy
The fact that you may be inclined to protect your son/family doesn't mean you're the same person, or part of the same 'self', or that you're part of an 'organism', or that being part of the same 'organism' necessitates a shared self.

If they were, you'd be able to experience what you son feels directly, which might be somewhat disconcerting.

rudatron
May 31, 2011

by Fluffdaddy

Cicero posted:

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:

http://soma.wikia.com/wiki/SOMA
SOMA was a bad game that used the exact same plot twist thrice. Honestly, the whole WAU vs. ARK conflict was more interesting, but not explored enough imo.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Apr 6, 2016

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013
Probation
Can't post for 2 hours!

Juffo-Wup posted:

Hobbes rejects the notion that an object can have temporally discontinuous parts at least partly on the basis of an analogy to spatial discontinuity: that there is an object constituted by the Eiffel tower, my left thumb, and the Andromeda galaxy is something that we intuitively don't want to grant, plausibly because we think an object has to be spatially continuous.
I suppose I can understand this argument, but we, in general terms, clearly do want to grant certain disparately spaced objects shared identity. Does he consider these to be a different class of object for identity purposes, or does he not consider them to be objects in their own right at all, or does he not talk much about them? (A knife set, a box of crayons, a fleet of ships, a computer network, an army, a company, a country, etc. and so on)

Juffo-Wup posted:

I'm not sure what Hobbes would say about the reassembled gun, but he actually struggled with a much worse problem because the temporal continuity requirement seems to imply that a thing cannot cease to exist for a time and then come back into existence, but on some interpretations that's what the Resurrection was. The gun problem seems less fraught; he'd probably happily say that the reassembled gun was not identical to the original.

Interesting.

quote:

As for a definition of identity, the assumption I've been working under is that identity is the relation that holds between a thing and itself. Batman and Bruce Wayne, Hesperus and Phosphorus, etc. Edit: if your don't like this, Parfit and a few others (Lewis, I think?) redefine the problem as being about 'survival' rather than identity.

I've added Parfit to my reading list, anyway. Any piece in particular?

quote:

I don't necessarily endorse Hobbes' argument myself. I'm not personally convinced that there is anything in the world that answers to the name 'self,' in which case they're certainly not persisting through time. I think the closest we'll get is either something like what rudatron was saying, basically 'whatever cognitive science determined is the physical/functional correlate of consciousness' or something like Dan Dennett's 'center of narrative gravity.' The paper describing the latter should be easy to find online if you search for that phrase.
I figured, it's why I tried to emphasize the "for the purpose argument" bit. Thanks again for the suggestion, I read that one a few years ago but I remember it being short and easy to read so it's probably worth another go.

rudatron posted:

The fact that you may be inclined to protect your son/family doesn't mean you're the same person, or part of the same 'self', or that you're part of an 'organism', or that being part of the same 'organism' necessitates a shared self.

If they were, you'd be able to experience what you son feels directly, which might be somewhat disconcerting.
Most of my individual cells cannot directly experience anything experienced by many of my other individual cells. Even my conscious self gets the signals from various parts of my body in an imprecise and often not all that reliable way. Hell, there's even nerve clusters that don't really communicate with each other directly. I would still consider all these to be parts of me.

The idea that I would need to be able to "experience something directly" in order for to have a shared self seems pretty at odds with what most people would normally consider parts of my self.

GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Apr 6, 2016

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

The majority of the first half of this post (which I assume is at least partially directed towards me) is largely just a difference in definition. And the short response to this is that I don't think the definition of "me" that you laid out is the least bit useful for this type of discussion. And, actually, calling it "me" or "I" or "you" is confusing, so let's just settle on "self" for a useful shorthand, yes?

For this discussion, I think the concept of "self" is most usefully described as* "the accumulation of memories and the current brain state possessed by your physical brain". This, to me, works because it is a two-part definition, and the two parts are vital to this discussion. First is "the accumulation of memories", which is basically the sum total of your lived experiences up until the current present. The second part, "the current brain state" is the "self" reacting to the external stimuli you're experiencing. Ergo, even if the former part, "the accumulation of memories", is literally identical for two individuals if the second part is not then they are considered to be unique and separate. And the only way to have identical "brain states" is to occupy identical points in space-time, otherwise even being a single nano-meter to the left would give you a fundamentally different "brain state", even if the difference would be normally considered negligible.

*I have used a lot of shorthand here, and we can hopefully suss this out later, but I hope this explanation at least gives some sort of groundwork we can work with. It makes sense to me, at least.

No, lemme address some more specific questions you posed.

GlyphGryph posted:

By what right would you argue that either I would not be me?

I don't think "right" is really valid here, but regardless, I'd argue that this is the case because you would not have direct access to the thoughts and experiences of your other self. If you were separated into different rooms, and if one "you" was shown a piece of paper with a complex message on it (say the first chapter of a randomly chosen book) then the other "you" would not know what was on that paper, just the same as if we had chosen to random people off the street. Assuming, of course, that the hypothetical teleportation technology did not also give you telepathy between all "yous" because it was made by Gandalf the White.

GlyphGryph posted:

Would you argue the same of a split brain patient, since one half of their mind can think thoughts the other can not detect?

Yes, actually. I'm fully willing to accept that there can be two distinct "selves" within one brain.

EDIT:

rudatron posted:

SOMA was a bad game that used the exact same plot twist thrice. Honestly, the whole WAU vs. ARK conflict was more interesting, but not explored enough imo.

Agreed. It was frustrating that the player character didn't pick up on the concept even after experiencing it multiple times.

Who What Now fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Apr 6, 2016

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013
Probation
Can't post for 2 hours!

Who What Now posted:

And the short response to this is that I don't think the definition of "me" that you laid out is the least bit useful for this type of discussion.

I'll respond to the rest tomorrow (especially since drawn to it's logical conclusion your arguments would lead me to assume that no "self" exists), but it's probably worth keeping in mind that I would probably think similar of whatever definition of "me" you'd lay out, based on what you've said so far, probably good to remember that pretty much every argument in this thread is going to come down to a difference of definition, of what people consider to the central, important, overriding components of their "self".

Kilroy
Oct 1, 2000
What if you're frozen in liquid nitrogen and resurrected 500 years later? Assume the freezing process went flawlessly and all your memories and behavior / personality were preserved. Are you 'you'? Is this equivalent to teleportation as described in the OP?

correct answers are 'Yes' and 'No', by the way

Juffo-Wup
Jan 13, 2005

Pillbug

GlyphGryph posted:

I suppose I can understand this argument, but we, in general terms, clearly do want to grant certain objects shared identity. Does he consider these to be a different class of object for identity purposes, or does he not consider them to be objects in their own right at all, or does he not talk much about them? (A knife set, a box of crayons, a fleet of ships, a computer network, an army, a company, a country, etc. and so on)

Yeah, could be. I don't know, I struggle to have opinions about mereology.

Edit: better answer, he doesn't really address it in anything of his I've read. But he's working with the tools of scholasticism, so probably he'd say whatever Aristotle says about it, probably in the Metaphysics. But Aristotle's never really been my zone so I couldn't tell you, sorry.

GlyphGryph posted:

I've added Parfit to my reading list, anyway. Any piece in particular?

Reasons and Persons, part 3.

Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Apr 6, 2016

Talmonis
Jun 24, 2012
The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

Fojar38 posted:

Oh hey the only horror story I have ever read that actually frightened me

So I just read this at the two of you mentioning it. Holy poo poo.

Who What Now
Sep 10, 2006

by Azathoth

Kilroy posted:

What if you're frozen in liquid nitrogen and resurrected 500 years later? Assume the freezing process went flawlessly and all your memories and behavior / personality were preserved. Are you 'you'? Is this equivalent to teleportation as described in the OP?

correct answers are 'Yes' and 'No', by the way

It depends on how you define "equivalent".
:goonsay:

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich

Talmonis posted:

So I just read this at the two of you mentioning it. Holy poo poo.

That`s one of my favourite short stories.

Anyways this whole discussion has always reeked of some kind of phony intellectual self-indulgence where certain types of people get together and jerk off over how smart they are that they figured out that nobody has a good definition of "self" or "conciousness" and that they would gladly step into a vaporizer if given the guarantee that an exact clone of themselves would step out somewhere else because :smug: whats the difference between that and going to bed every night am I right?? :smug: It's the same problem as the whole "download your brain into a robot and live forever" thing, people don't seem to acknowledge the fact that the original still exists and you haven't gone anywhere or done anything meaningful, you just made a copy of yourself.

I pretty highly doubt that many of them would actually do it. You may as well just kill yourself right now, if that's the position you're gonna take on it, it's not much different.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



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.

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?
This is actually how the process appears to work in Star Trek. There's an episode where you even get a POV shot of being beamed, albeit specifically with a note that the fellow in question is experiencing it peculiarly due to an overabundance of Star Trek in the area.

Now of course this doesn't mean that the question doesn't have validity, they just seemed to have addressed it in that particular circumstance.

Hammerstein
May 6, 2005

YOU DON'T KNOW A DAMN THING ABOUT RACING !

Nessus posted:

This is actually how the process appears to work in Star Trek. There's an episode where you even get a POV shot of being beamed, albeit specifically with a note that the fellow in question is experiencing it peculiarly due to an overabundance of Star Trek in the area.

Now of course this doesn't mean that the question doesn't have validity, they just seemed to have addressed it in that particular circumstance.

I like to think that the beaming apparatus was actually a clone machine, which scanned the original and then destroyed it, while instantly creating a perfect clone at the destination. It was the best kept secret in the Federation.

Same dilemma in John Scalzi's SF classic "Old Man's War", I was often wondering if the consciousness of the protagonist wasn't simply copied instead of transferred when he got his combat body.

double nine
Aug 8, 2013

When/if I ever come face to face with transportation technology, I shall always remember the old rhyme:

quote:

I teleported home one night
with Ron and Sid and Meg
Ron stole Sidney's heart away
and I got Megan's leg

roymorrison
Jul 26, 2005
I'm pretty sure consciousness doesn't work how we think it does. Id go through the teleporter.

roymorrison
Jul 26, 2005
I think consciousness is just an evolutionary trick our brain plays on itself so we don't realize we're just a computer stuck in a physics problem

Peta
Dec 26, 2011

Biology, physics, etc., resolve this problem, at least the version of it presented by Parfit, before philosophy of self can really even get its hand dirty. The organism on one end is numerically distinct from the organism on the other end. If you're OK with dying and being replaced by a new qualitatively identical organism, then go for it, but you're still dying. Claiming otherwise would be like cloning a rat and then smashing the original rat to pieces and acting like the original didn't mind because his self also exists in the new rat. It's ludicrous. The original organism is dead. "Self," "consciousness," whatever - even assuming these things aren't total illusions cultivated by evolution, they're all irrelevant.

Quantum teleportation and incremental digitization of the brain/mind are trickier.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013
Probation
Can't post for 2 hours!

ChairMaster posted:

people don't seem to acknowledge the fact that the original still exists and you haven't gone anywhere or done anything meaningful, you just made a copy of yourself.

I pretty highly doubt that many of them would actually do it. You may as well just kill yourself right now, if that's the position you're gonna take on it, it's not much different.

This is pretty a pretty stupid statement.


Peta posted:

Biology, physics, etc., resolve this problem, at least the version of it presented by Parfit, before philosophy of self can really even get its hand dirty. The organism on one end is numerically distinct from the organism on the other end. If you're OK with dying and being replaced by a new qualitatively identical organism, then go for it, but you're still dying.

Does anyone really argue you don't die? The question is whether the parts of you that you value live. That's why concepts like self and consciousness become relevant, because people find those bits or some particular arrangement of those bits important.

You claim that biology resolves this problem, but there are fuzzy boundaries.

For the biological end, if you split an animal that can survive being split, and the pieces grow back together, did the organism die? Is the organism dead right now, or did it return to life? This isn't as much of a hypothetical as you'd think, there are plenty of organisms who go through worse all the time.

What if you keep the halves seperated, and they replace their lost halves? Did the original organism die? When did it go from being alive to dead? If one of these new 'wholes' was killed, did the organism die at that point? It's pretty inarguable that an] organism died, but is the original organism dead?

Considering how biology works, organisms are emergent from collectives of individual cells, and there are a great many organisms that can "survive" spatial separation of those cells for some length of time.

Biologists just don't usually think about those unless they need to, because biological identity is driven almost solely by matters of convenience and practicality. They don't resolve this problem because they don't care about this problem. In physics this is especially true, since they have whole classes of identical objects.

GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Apr 6, 2016

Killstick
Jan 17, 2010
I think whatever Blindsight said about consciousness sounded really good. If you want to know what that is go read Blindsight cause i can't remember.

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Anyone who allows some dumb philosophers talk them into getting vaporized so some clone can live it up on Mars deserves to get blasted.

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013
Probation
Can't post for 2 hours!

Mantis42 posted:

Anyone who allows some dumb philosophers talk them into getting vaporized so some clone can live it up on Mars deserves to get blasted.

Actually the dumb philosophers are almost trying to talk people out of it, it's the practical folks and businessmen with our best interests in heart that would probably end up pushing the technology.

Oh dear me
Aug 14, 2012

I have burned numerous saucepans, sometimes right through the metal

Peta posted:

Biology, physics, etc., resolve this problem, at least the version of it presented by Parfit, before philosophy of self can really even get its hand dirty. The organism on one end is numerically distinct from the organism on the other end. If you're OK with dying and being replaced by a new qualitatively identical organism, then go for it, but you're still dying. Claiming otherwise would be like cloning a rat and then smashing the original rat to pieces and acting like the original didn't mind because his self also exists in the new rat. It's ludicrous. The original organism is dead. "Self," "consciousness," whatever - even assuming these things aren't total illusions cultivated by evolution, they're all irrelevant.

Quantum teleportation and incremental digitization of the brain/mind are trickier.

Isn't this also just a restatement of the premisses? We know very well the original organism is dead, because we disassembled it. I would go through a (painless) transporter because the world afterwards would have someone who was the same as me in all important respects, but more conveniently located. If you wouldn't, what is it about being 'the original organism' that matters to you?

Mantis42
Jul 26, 2010

Also, since I'm functionally identical to whoever comes out on the other side, and since there's already one of me around, I should legally be allowed to do whatever I want to the other me, right? Like, unless they're handing out birth certificates at the teleportation station, dude's got not citizenship and no human rights. Theoretically I should be able to program a teleporter to not destroy the original while creating many copies, then experimenting on them to see how I would react in given situations. Could I beat a gorilla in a fight? Probably not, but I would be morally justified in killing untold numbers of copies to find out.


Oh dear me posted:

Isn't this also just a restatement of the premisses? We know very well the original organism is dead, because we disassembled it. I would go through a (painless) transporter because the world afterwards would have someone who was the same as me in all important respects, but more conveniently located. If you wouldn't, what is it about being 'the original organism' that matters to you?


The part where your not dead? You can't care about the convenience of everyone else and your clone if you're no longer alive.

Control Volume
Dec 31, 2008

yo The Planck Dive by Greg Egan is a pretty baller short story that talks about this a bit and also it's really good.

Oh dear me
Aug 14, 2012

I have burned numerous saucepans, sometimes right through the metal

Mantis42 posted:

Also, since I'm functionally identical to whoever comes out on the other side, and since there's already one of me around, I should legally be allowed to do whatever I want to the other me, right?

That is a staggeringly weird argument. The moral badness of cruelty isn't determined by birth certificates.

And I can't care about anything whatever when I'm dead, least of all being dead. Meanwhile my duplicate will be feeling just as good as I would - only a little better, because of improved location. I will not care about this then. I can care about it now.

Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 15:19 on Apr 6, 2016

Control Volume
Dec 31, 2008

Anyways teleportation will be really scary to some people until they do it for the first time and then they'll have memories of walking into a teleporter then walking out of a teleporter and then they won't be so scared. Or we'll upload our brains to the internet first, who knows.

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vintagepurple
Jan 31, 2014

by Nyc_Tattoo

Oh dear me posted:

Isn't this also just a restatement of the premisses? We know very well the original organism is dead, because we disassembled it. I would go through a (painless) transporter because the world afterwards would have someone who was the same as me in all important respects, but more conveniently located. If you wouldn't, what is it about being 'the original organism' that matters to you?

The part where you aren't dead. There's another human walking around with your memories and feelings but it isn't you. You're dead. If you're okay with it then are you simply claiming you have no fear of death? You'd die for convenience?

I get that after you're dead you won't be able to care, but you're not dead yet. I assume everyone posting here has some sense of self-preservation and would rather keep living than not, all things considered.

Functionally it's just an instantaneous and convincing method of doing a horrible crime.

If I bash your head in, dispose of the corpse, and then replace you with a clone I've produced from postmortem DNA extraction, is it you? Why does a more convincing doppelganger change things?

vintagepurple fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Apr 6, 2016

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