Liquidrage

I believe we die with every instance of time.

Which atom in you is you? Has it not been replaced at least once so far in your life?

tronvillain

Well, it's certainly not an original thought experiment, but it is an interesting one.

The second "me" is actually me because it is a perfect copy of me with all my memories. The only accurate description of what "I" would be stepping into one transporter and then out of the other because the experiences of the original end and continue with a double.

I fail to see how that question is supposed to be a problem for the "easy" answer. One of me will experience stepping into the transmitter and stepping out of the reciever, while the other will experience stepping into and out of the transmitter. Knowing a little about transporters, my untransported self will avoid stepping into the transmitter again until he knows whether or not he has already emerged from the other end, and will then start planning a lawsuit against the company for permitting divergence.

When you say, "the experiences of the first person" you actually mean the "the experience of stepping into the machine." What you fail to realize is that this would be true [ieven if the machine completely failed to anything whatsoever. Now, you may point out that in that case the same person will step out of the machine, but the same is true (by any measure) if the person is destructively transported.

Yes, I would use the transporter, as long as I was reasonably confident in the process being successful. As I have pointed out, even the experience of stepping through a door has the same experience as a suicide machine. Fortunately, unlike stepping into a suicide machine, stepping into a transporter or through a door results in you coming out the other side.

Deliberately destructive transportation isn't suicide - it simply avoids the annoying side effect of having equally valid alternative selves walking around.

Devilnaut

I disagree tron. I think that the first "you" would experience a loss of thought continuity, and death, and the second you would continue to exist, but the first you would never be aware of it.


What do you think would happen if you died right now, but were reconstructed with all memories intact in five hundred years? Sure we'd still call it you, but the you who died today's body would still be long dead and gone and would never know the difference, IMHO...

gerfinch

Well put Devil.Thats exactly what i meant to try and express.Would you allow an exact copy of you to be built and then allow yourself to be shot in the head ? Granted the memories of you and your copy would be slightly different but you would cease to exist.This is exactly what the teleporter does.It just does it over a large distance.

tronvillain

Devilnaut:
As the thought experience is set up, the first "me" would experience nothing of the sort. If you wish to introduce divergence before destruction it is a difference question entirely.

The "me" from the moment in time where the copies' memories begin would live on. You will have to specify whether or not there is divergence between the copy and original before death.

gerfinch:
"You" will cease to exist, because you are different from the copy. If you were identical, then you would not cease to exist.

Demosthenes

ok gerfinch, I see what you're trying to say. As tronvillian said, if you continued for some time after the copy was made adn then killed. That would indeed be a problem and tantamount to murder.

Let me post something, what if you were in serious trouble such as being on a crashing airplane. You already had a copy made five hours ago prior leaving on the plane, so there's five hours worth of experience differing you from the other copy, but not much. The copy isn't conscious, it'll only be awaken when you die.

Eventually the plane crash and you're gone. the copy wakes up, looks around, and goes, "damn! I don't remember the flight." Do you still consider the copy to be you? There are five hours missing, albeit just of the flight which isn't that interesting anyway. Will not you be glad that you're still alive in some form, though apparently with amnesia. It's equilvalent to boarding the plane and than having your memory of it wiped leaving you with five hours 'missing'.

excreationist

I think it mostly depends on how consciousness works and if there's an afterlife. If souls and the afterlife are real, then duplicating the original would probably just duplicate the physical matter - minus the consciousness - creating a "zombie". The duplicate would be soul-less. If they were cloned organically, perhaps the soul could be passed on though.
During teleportation/copying, if the original is destroyed, that *is* murder since that person's life would be over and their soul would go to the afterlife. They would appear to live on in the duplicate, but that duplicate would actually be a soul-less zombie and "killing" the copy would be comparable to destroying a complex computer or robot.

But I don't believe in souls or the afterlife - though I think those previous things were worth mentioning.

gerfinch:
Would there be any money involved? Maybe it could be a way of collecting my own life insurance... there would probably need to be some reason for me to agree to it other than to be a complete volunteer.

Clutch

I like Dennett's dictum here: Once you've explained everything that happens, you've explained everything.

"Identity", as applied to persons over time, is a slightly fuzzy notion even in many real-world situations. Our actual uses of the term gives it a meaning that may very well fail to determine any guidelines for application to such rarefied thought-experiment situations.

The important thing is to specify *what happens* in the situation. Specify the facts about physical constitution, memory possession, causal connectedness, etc. Then, whether you call it identity, near-identity, exact qualitative similarity short of numerical identity, or whatever, is of little consequence.

Adrian Selby

Wasn't this a problem Derek Parfit explored in his book Reasons and Persons?

He said something about a teleporter to Mars and as the person appears on Mars, they discover a malfunction, and the person has in fact also stayed here, with a copy going to Mars, but the person here will die.

"Never mind," says the Teleporter Controller, "You're still alive over there on Mars aren't you."

The problem might be that the 'me' that stayed here doesn't feel like he is going to survive, and is not comforted by the thought of another 'me' over there looking back in horror.

It's a great conundrum, I'm pleased to see it here as its' reminded me of a problem I never figured out.

Adrian

Clutch

Adrian, right. I think Parfit even quotes Quine, who is the origin of the "our words just weren't made for this stuff" line I suggested.