faustuz

Now for the long answer with lots of typing. As pretty much everyone here has pointed out it’s not energy/matter itself that constitutes the self, but the configuration of energy/matter. crocodile deathroll got it exactly right:

Now, lets for sake of argument say that in the distant future humans attain the technology to accurately duplicate matter down to the exact quantum state. Let’s say I use this technology on Bob. Bob must be asleep when I perform this and the duplicate will initially be asleep. Both awaken at the same moment. They immediately have an argument over who the real Bob is. I feel guilty about what I have done and so I point to the real Bob and say he is the original and the other is only a copy. What I don’t know is that the two Bob’s were switched by my assistant while I was in the restroom. So which one is the real Bob? They both have exactly the same memories, they both are absolutely certain that they are Bob. The only reasonable conclusion is that they are both Bob. If instead of immediately waking Bob #2 I had kept him in the exact quantum state as when I created him, and then woken him when Bob #1 died some time later, one might say that I had reincarnated Bob.

Now, things get tricky if the technology is imperfect. What if I get the quantum energy level in a few atoms wrong, so he isn’t in the same quantum state, but damn close? Is he still Bob? Can I still “reincarnate” Bob? What if my accuracy is only 99%? 90%? 60%? You get the picture. What if I recorded Bob’s quantum state when he was 3 years old, and then “revived” that state after Bob’s death? Finally, forgetting about quantum states, maybe all that matters is that I duplicate Bob’s personality and memories reasonably accurately. But that leads to the same question. How accurate do I need to be? I think few of us have exactly the same personality, and certainly we don’t have the same memories, as we had five years ago. Are we even the same person as we were then, or mere approximations of that person? My brother has a similar personality to me, and some of the same memories. Moreover our memories themselves are only approximations of the actual events and psychologists know that memories can change over time, becoming even less accurate. Are we then in a sense only an approximation of the person we were five years ago? The self then becomes only a relative principle, not an absolute. Identity is an ever shifting approximation and the solid, permanent self is an illusion.

I think that this may in a sense answer LupusSolaris’s original question, as a qualified yes. If I were to die today many who are alive share some of my memories and personality, and have themselves been affected by my words and deeds. I will live on in them as an approximation. I will in a sense have been reincarnated. Identity is relative. I am not the same person from moment to moment. In fact, all people are an approximation of each other. Merely being human makes us more alike than different, in my opinion, perhaps making everybody closer to the 99% version of me than the 60% version by default

Finally, I’d like to conclude with the following thought:

Accepting that identity is relative means two things: that immortality is impossible, and that immortality is inevitable.

[ December 21, 2002: Message edited by: faustuz ]</p>

faustuz

Why? As I stated in my post above, how are you going to convince Bob #2 that he is not Bob? How are you going to tell the difference? In any reasonable sense, how could you call them different entities, or therefore different consciousnesses (without resorting to mysticism)?

[ December 21, 2002: Message edited by: faustuz ]</p>

Shadowy Man

faustuz: It is true that they will both have the history of being Bob, but now they are two different entities who will experience different things. If you asked them which one was Bob, they would both say they are Bob, but if you asked them if they were each other (as in "Are you him?") they would both say no. They are distinct entities with the same history.

faustuz

No doubt they are distinct entities after awakening. Identity, or self, however, is usually considered a continuation. We generally believe that we are the same conscious entity as we were 5 minutes ago. In fact it was my exact point that one is not the same conscious entity, or self, that they were moments ago. Yet we believe that we are in some way the same self. Bob #1 and Bob #2 are the same entity 5 minutes after they awaken in the same sense that you are the same entity you were 5 minutes ago. Therefore identity as continuation is an illusion and true identity is only an approximation.

crocodile deathroll

In the course of your metabolism and protein synthesis you just happen to replace old new atoms new ones all the time. So what would of happen to all those atoms you owned when you were two years old?

crocodile deathroll

What if the original Bob was destroyed?

Shadowy Man

faustuz:

Yes, they would be very similar especially 5 minutes after the split, but they are truly distinct. If one looked out a window and the other looked at a wall, would the one looking at the wall be able to tell you what the other was seeing outside the window?

I don't see what the problem is? Of course they are different. They'd know it; we'd know it.

PotatoError

Both have a separate brains which are not directly linked. Both separate brains generate a separate conciousness.

After awaking you will not be able to tell the two apart, their beliefs and memories will be the same. But 20 years later they will be different.

crocodile deathroll

If the essence of the human was in the atoms themselves then you did they manage to accidently gather together on one little place one little planet and not be scattered billions of lightyears apart across the universe.
Either we are an extremely improbable collection of atoms or this is an extremely improbable assumption.

Shadowy Man

Atoms are scattered all over the universe. However, some are concentrated into clumps. These clumps of atoms then interact with each other in such a way as to create life. Given the right materials and the right conditions, life seems to arise through a natural chemical process.

It's no accident that we are primarily made out of the most common elements in the universe.