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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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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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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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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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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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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. 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?
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Apr 6, 2016 15:00
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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 |
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Apr 6, 2016 15:16
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vintagepurple posted: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? No, but I've argued that the bad aspects of death-as-we-know-it - bereavement, loss of my memories, loss of future opportunity - would not apply to death-by-transporter. (Oh, and I've also specified painlessness.) It is the content of my thoughts that I want to continue, and it would (in my duplicate's head). I can't really see any intrinsic merit in this particular bodily organism continuing to function, when another body could have my thoughts better. But I think the question of whether my duplicate would be 'me' is just a verbal choice of what we shall apply pronouns to, it doesn't matter to me and would not affect my transportation decisions.
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Apr 6, 2016 15:44
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Piell posted:OK now it's a non-destructive scanning and at the end of it, after they've sent out the scanned information, you step out of the scanning booth and get shot in the face. Would you still step in? No, that sounds painful and risky.
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Apr 6, 2016 16:14
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Piell posted:It's exactly the same situation. You know it isn't: you yourself wrote the post changing the specs. What are you trying to argue? That methods of death don't matter?
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Apr 6, 2016 16:21
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vintagepurple posted:Your memories and opportunities are just as gone as if you'd been shot. A copy of them exists but it isn't you. As I said, I don't care about the question of whether it is 'me', that's just a matter of language. I know it is not the same bodily organism that has them, that is the premiss of the argument. But what I care about is the content of my memories and feelings. A duplicate of those is just as good as the original, just as an exact copy of a digital recording is as good as the original. If I can preserve the image of my late sister playing Agricola, accompanied by the emotional charge it has for me, I'm not going to whinge about it not being original DVD. I would be delighted if my memories of her could live on after me in any body at all, frankly. quote:Why should one method of quick painless death over another change your decision? You've already chosen to die, is a few seconds at most being put down by a reliable gunman somehow a game changer? Yes it drat well is; which was why the question was asked, of course. Any possibility of pain is a disincentive, and instantaneous disassembly by machine is a lot more appealing than relying on some pervy stranger (which I reckon a 'reliable gunman' would have to be), and disposes of the body neatly (which matters to loved ones). And saying seconds don't matter because 'you've already chosen to die' seems to be begging the question, when whether death-with-instant-clone is as bad as death-as-we-know-it is the very thing we're arguing about. And, of course, the timing matters. If I have to die in order for my clone to come into being at a better location, that is a choice I've said I could make. But if my clone is already alive and kicking in that location, why would I choose to die then?
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Apr 6, 2016 17:57
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Peta posted:If the scenario is such that the original you dies, and you know this, and you step into the teleporter anyway, then you've just committed suicide. The replica on Mars is not you. It does not share your numerical identity. You're dead now. As for myself, I selfishly don't want to die. There's also the matter of psychological ramifications for friends and loved ones who know that Peta1 died and Peta2, i.e., a clone of Peta1, is the one with whom they are now interacting. Imagine, for example, how this knowledge might make Peta1's wife feel. (I'm not trying to conflate metaphysics and moral philosophy here but I think this helps clarify the concept and importance of numerical identity. It really doesn't, it makes me wonder (again) how you can think numerical identity matters. I, too, selfishly do not want to die in the current way of dying, because I want my thoughts to go on. I would have no objection to dying in the transporter, because my thoughts would go on. Likewise if a clone of my late sister came into being, all my sadness would be turned to joy; I cannot think of anything more wonderful. So I suppose it depends how you react to this: David Hume posted:“For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception…. If any one, upon serious and unprejudic'd reflection thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular. He may, perhaps, perceive something simple and continu'd, which he calls himself; tho' I am certain there is no such principle in me.” Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 7, 2016 14:56
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Peta posted:Your thoughts do not persist. The thoughts of another individual who, for the most fleeting moment is qualitatively identical to you, but who becomes immediately distinguishable from you as his new and sudden existence immediately sets him on a path that is distinct from yours as your constituent particles sizzle out of existence in the teleportation chamber or whatever, are the ones that persist. Firstly that is a misunderstanding of the phrase 'my thoughts', which I have been over before. It is not the material substrate, or location, of my thoughts that I care about - it is their content, which would be identical in the clone at the moment of transfer, and then of course - I should hope - develop in the future, as would happen whoever has them. I do not find this process horrifying in this organism, and would not in another. What I'd want the transporter to ensure is that the development starts from my current mental position. As for the rest, I do not care that the clone would not be me, so saying it would be someone else is not going to alarm me. Honestly, most of the arguments on your side in this thread seem to me to be just repeating the original problem, but in a horrified tone.
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Apr 7, 2016 15:22
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Peta posted:I'd imagine that you would still mourn her. No, I would not, I would be overjoyed. I would not mourn the old organism any more than I mourned every time she cut her toenails. It was not her 'being the original organism' that I loved.
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Apr 7, 2016 15:26
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Oh dear me posted:Honestly, most of the arguments on your side in this thread seem to me to be just repeating the original problem, but in a horrified tone. And as evidence I cite: Peta posted:If you're fine with killing yourself as long as another individual who thinks and acts like you persists then by all means please jump in. wateroverfire posted:If you don't care that the clone would not be you, and are content that something exactly like you will continue in your place while you cease to exist, you should probably be in treatment for depression. =( So yes, I agree there is probably nothing more that can be said, and we have not progressed beyond Hume at all.
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Apr 7, 2016 15:35
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Peta posted:"I'd trade my sister for a stranger as long as I love the stranger's qualities more than my sister's." You lying shitstain, that is not what I said at all. Hint: I did not murder my sister.
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Apr 7, 2016 15:41
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Peta posted:You're devaluing numerical identity and interpersonal history and insisting that your sister is replaceable. I see no value in numerical identity. I see huge value in interpersonal history, which in my opinion is not tied to numerical identity - and in my sister, who in my opinion would not have been tied to numerical identity if we had a transporter machine (that being the whole point of the discussion).
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Apr 7, 2016 15:48
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wateroverfire posted:Do you think your sister would be indifferent between continuing to exist and dying, to be replaced by SisterPrime? I think my sister would probably have been ok with the transporter, but that is purely a guess based on our general agreement; and I would not want her or anyone to go through the transporter against their will. But my sister is already dead; the issue was whether I'd stop mourning her if her clone were brought to life, and the answer is yes of course, because everything that was important about her would then exist. I think everything that was important about her would then also be very happy to be alive again in her clone. I am bending over backwards here to use language that your side will not object to, but I think this would be more naturally expressed by saying that she would be alive again, but in a new body, and I would not expect either one of us to mourn her old body. (Please do not reply to this by saying it would not be 'her', I really think that I have made it clear that I know it would be a new organism, but that this is not to me an important aspect of personality.)
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Apr 7, 2016 16:00
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Peta posted:You did not share a history with the clone of your sister. You shared it with your sister. This is not up for debate; it's a fact that you have to acknowledge unless you want to redefine "interpersonal history" so radically that you risk stripping the term of its meaning/significance. The feeling that you have an interpersonal history with this clone, who is an individual whom you've just met, is an illusion. The clone is not your sister. The clone did not come your mother. Your sister is dead; the clone is effectively an organic simulation of her. I would say the clone would be the same person as my sister, though she would be a different organism from the original. You will no doubt object to my saying she is the same person, because it matters to you that a person should be the original organism. I think it a sensible way to speak, because it only matters to me that a person should have the same personality. Neither one of us can insist that our usage is not up for debate. But it is just a debate about words. Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 7, 2016 16:07
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Peta posted:So if we cloned your sister (suppose she's still alive) and presented to you Sisteroriginal and Sisterclone and told you to pick one then you'd be indifferent? Yes. How could I possibly tell them apart? How could they? Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 7, 2016 16:08
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Who What Now posted:They could tell each other apart because they would have different memories and experiences post-cloning. But they could not tell which was the original and which was the clone. vintagepurple posted:Your thoughts are gone. Your sister is still dead. There's just an uncanny valley clone walking about thinking it's the person you guys were. My thoughts would not be gone, they would be happening in another organism. My sister would not be dead, the body that used to be hers would be dead. Those clones you are describing so disparagingly would be us, in every respect that matters to me. Apparently there is something about your current body that really, really matters to you, but I could very happily accept a substitute for mine..
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Apr 7, 2016 16:25
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Who What Now posted:Sure they could. The clone is the one who came in to existence somewhere where the original did not. So the only difference between them would be utterly unimportant, both to them and to me. It's like suggesting I should love my sister less because she woke up in a different room.
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Apr 7, 2016 16:32
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Peta posted:I mean, I was trying to tease out the confession of a preference for authenticity, all other things being equal, were he forced to make a choice. Yes, we know, but the whole point is that I haven't got such a preference. You seem to find that either inconceivable or horrifying, but for me the horrifying thing would be rejecting my sister because she was composed of molecules I hadn't seen before. The argument would go better if we could quash our incredulous horror and accept that we do, genuinely, disagree. wateroverfire posted:Does that seem like a fair starting point? To be honest it seems like a terrible muddling of concepts: I could easily agree with half of each statement.
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Apr 7, 2016 19:39
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SHISHKABOB posted:But they aren't the same set of thoughts because their space-time world-lines diverge. As far as I am concerned 2+2=4 is the same thought, whenever and wherever it is had.
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Apr 7, 2016 20:04
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SHISHKABOB posted:If you have two states that are initially identical, but then expose them to different conditions, then they will not be the same anymore. Of course: no one disputes this. But what of it?
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Apr 7, 2016 20:09
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SHISHKABOB posted:It means they're not the same thoughts, so they aren't the same person. I will be having different thoughts in two minutes time. Yet I will be the same person.
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Apr 7, 2016 20:17
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Peta posted:Yes but not because you had those two thoughts. Of course not. Sorry, I don't understand what you are trying to say here.
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Apr 7, 2016 20:23
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SHISHKABOB posted:You can't have two of the same person. I'm not saying which is which because I don't know, but they are distinguishable. That's just an assertion about a word. I suspect we wouldn't want to call two different bodies the same person, because it would be inconvenient; we'd want some way to distinguish them, in order to interact. But if we decided to call them the same person but in two natures, or some such thing, that would be entirely legitimate - as it would in the transportation case if we chose to call the clone the same person as the original. These word choices obviously reflect our opinions on whether anything of importance would have been lost, but they cannot change them.
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Apr 7, 2016 20:30
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ianmacdo posted:No automatic suicide machines either, the facilities the aliens run don't have space and the aliens think that kind of thing is immoral. Without automatic suicide machines, the benefit that would be gained from my travelling would have to be rather large to overcome the disbenefit of me having to kill myself in some unpleasant way, and it seems unlikely that my location would ever matter that much. So I probably wouldn't use this system; but I'd be glad it existed, just in case. If I could do something really good somewhere else, I should (and hope I would), but that goes for suicide without replication as well. If I were going to martyr myself I'd be delighted to be replicated first, of course.
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May 1, 2016 10:29
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Kilroy posted:So, with that in mind, for the most of you who will still insist that classical teleportation is a perfectly great thing and not a theoretical holocaust, what I'm curious to know is, how imprecise can you be when make the copy, and still be "you"? Is it enough to just map out the neurons? What? It can't be a physical answer, we don't know enough about the physiological basis of our mental worlds. I would want my memories of things I value, my intelligence, and my moral and political attitudes, to survive. I'd want my remaining family not to notice any changes in memory and attitudes, nor any personality changes they found distressing. But if I could be improved, from my and their point of view, that would be cool.
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May 1, 2016 14:38
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Kilroy posted:On the other hand, if most of the pro-teleportation crowd has retreated to "yeah I'd die but who cares" then I think this argument is pretty much over, isn't it? No, it obviously remains exactly where it was, with you continually ignoring the fact that the death of an organism is granted by both sides, while the death of a person is not. Kilroy posted:Otherwise, if you can claim that the teleportation isn't a death, and that an imperfect cloning can still create two original "yous" somehow, then it seems you can describe at least in very broad detail at what point the copy would become too imperfect to actually constitute a second original. Yes, as I just did: something like a family Turing test.
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May 1, 2016 17:26
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Kit Walker posted:Hey buddy, only one side grants death of an organism and that's your side. What, you don't think people or animals are organisms? I think that is an unusual view, but have it your way: it's a choice of words, not a matter of substance. The OP specified that something, whatever you want to call it, is destroyed in the transporter.
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May 1, 2016 18:54
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Kilroy posted:What does this even mean? Are you suggesting the existence of a soul? No I am not. I have said what I mean quite often already and don't want to go over the same old ground yet again; use the little question mark under my name if you actually care. quote:the death of the organism is the death of the person. Creating a facsimile of the person somewhere else doesn't change that. Certainly at the moment the death of an organism is the death of the person, because we have no replicas. In teleporter world, it will not be. This is the point under dispute and using italics doesn't change that. If there were some process by which one person could transform their own mental world (memories, attitudes etc) into someone else's, I think it would be reasonable to say that they became that person, and ceased to be the person they were. But memorizing facts about memories is not the same as having those memories, so no, your impersonator is not me.
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May 1, 2016 22:32
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Kilroy posted:But, the impersonator would pass your family turing test. So, somewhere between this impersonator and the impossible-in-principle "perfect copy", there is a copy of you with enough fidelity that you consider it "you" and are not distressed anymore if you die and are replaced by it. Can you elaborate what additional tests this higher-fidelity version of you would need to pass, for you to consider it good enough to start using the teleporter? You are shifting from ontology to epistemology. I said I'd want my mental attitudes etc to survive, which they would not with your impersonator, and I'd want my family to be happy (the Turing test being to show that they were). Now you are essentially asking how we could prove we weren't being fooled by some deceptive demon, sorry, actor, and as with all such questions we cannot be certain, if the deceiver is supposed to have such extraordinary power. But at a certain point the deception becomes more incredible than the alternative. If a teleporter assembled an organism, giving it a structure almost identical to mine, and tada! that organism seemed just like me, the most plausible explanation would be that it is just like me - not that it's some fiendishly clever impersonator.
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May 2, 2016 00:52
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Phyzzle posted:Ok, the whole process is included in personhood, not just the observable effects. (Which means you don't agree with the other "teleportation acceptance" guy that a Turing test would be all that useful.) No, I agree with Owl fancier. I said I would want my mental world to survive. The question of how we know that it has survived is separate. If my behaviour was only being emulated by a creature with a vastly different mental world, I would not have been recreated, whether we knew it or not. But this does not mean that all my processes would have to be preserved identically. If I could have an illness cured or a missing limb restored while teleporting, that would be cool. If my mental world were truly recreated in a completely different physical substrate, that would be good too, but the problem of how we could tell would become pressing. Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 13:00 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 12:02
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Kilroy posted:So a static brain scan, followed by a table of subsequent inputs and outputs, and a diff of your brain state after each transaction. Good enough? Edit: Oops, I see you were addressing the 'test' part, rather than what I want to survive. I don't know whether such a test would be good enough, I'm not hugely interested in the epistemological side. Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 16:29 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 16:24
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Kilroy posted:Actually I wasn't. The original brain scan accompanied by the subsequent series of diffs seems to encapsulate your "mental world", doesn't it? No. My mental world doesn't contain a series of diffs. You might perhaps create it from the original scan and a series of diffs, but it wouldn't exist until you had. Just as you don't have soup, when you have a recipe for soup. Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 17:32 on May 2, 2016 |
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May 2, 2016 17:29
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Kilroy posted:But, why wouldn't the process of calculating the input and output, and creating the diff after each step, while you're doing it, capture your "mental world" just as well as anything else? Why would it? My mental world isn't a process of calculating the input and output, and creating the diff after each step. (And surely the whole point of a diff is that it's not the full thing.)
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May 3, 2016 08:03
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Boogaleeboo posted:That's something stupid people think because they never actually researched the issue. You are totally processing information while asleep. You are aware of the world around you. Your conscious self, what everyone is masturbating about as their 'you'ness here, may have hosed off from input into the process but the rest of you is still at work. You are never off. And that's not even getting into the issue of the consciousness and dreams. You are just in an altered state of consciousness while asleep, you aren't gone. How do you think people wake up when shaken or when a loud noise goes off as was said, magic? This is like pointing out that our blood is still circulating (by which I mean, it's egregiously unnecessary). You even acknowledge that what people are actually talking about is their conscious self, which has 'hosed off'. And we're talking about our conscious selves because it's the existence of those which we want to preserve. I would have absolutely no interest in staying alive if I had to be asleep the whole time.
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May 3, 2016 15:00
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Kilroy posted:Then what is your "mental world"? My conglomeration of beliefs, emotions, memories, and mental habits. Not a description of them, but the things themselves. In other words, an entity must believe what I believe - not merely know what I believe, or be able to calculate what I believe. The only things that we know have emotions and beliefs are brains. So show me something with a brain constructed like mine and expressing the emotions and beliefs I have, and I'll think it plausible that my mental world lives on. Show me a machine that says the same, and I'll be more inclined to think it's a mechanical version of your clever impersonator. quote:And, if the static scan along with the diff after each step isn't the full thing, then what is? I don't know why you would even think a scan of a thing would be the same as the thing; scans generally aren't.
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May 3, 2016 18:44
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