Dzhay posted:

This is always a fun argument, because everyone seems to think the answer is obvious, but then splits about 50-50 on what it is.

To me, this seems like it's mainly an argument over semantics: many people seem to be saying "this would/wouldn't cause you to die, because this is what 'die' means" or "the teleported person would/wouldn't be the same person as the pre-teleportation one, because I'm going to use this definition of 'the same person'."

To which my response is: okay, sure, use whatever definitions you want, as long as you're clear about them, but what you really need to do to convince people is explain why your notion of "dying" or "being the same" is the one they should care about.


The people who aren't doing this seem to fall into two(ish) camps:

1. People stating that "continuity of consciousness" (or something to that effect) is important.
Obvious questions: what's consciousness? why, exactly, is its continuity important?
Less obvious question: if time turns out to be fundamentally discrete on some small scale, does this present a problem?

2. People saying there actually is a meaningful difference between a teleported person and a person moved in the conventional sense.
Assume they were asleep during this process, so they don't know if they've been teleported or just physically carried somewhere. They wake up, how can they (or someone else) determine whether they were teleported or not?

Oh dear me posted:

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.

Dzhay posted:

Bolding mine.

The first bolded statement is interesting. Are you claiming that the pre-teleport "you" would actually experience something (the ending of consciousness, whatever that is) that the post-teleport "you" wouldn't recall?

Dzhay posted:

The second bolded statement reads like the sort of thing I was complaining about. Why should I care about this notion of "killed" where the person* is still there afterwards? What, exactly, has been lost?

*you're going to debate this, I guess. But if the post-teleport version is in every way indistinguishable ** from the pre-teleport one, I really don't understand how you're going to.

**other than location, I guess. Though the teleporter could be aimed back at the same place - would that make a difference?

Oh dear me posted:

And as evidence I cite:



So yes, I agree there is probably nothing more that can be said, and we have not progressed beyond Hume at all.

Oh dear me posted:

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).

Boing posted:

Normally you have your consciousness in one body. However, as soon as you've cloned yourself, you now have two consciousnesses in two bodies. Which one is 'your' consciousness? You could say that you are the original person, since of course you are, but the clone has the exact same memories as you. If you are the clone, you would remember making the decision to clone yourself, but would be surprised to find that you are the clone and not the original. Since there are two of you, and the same memories lead up to each case, I've interpreted that as a 50% chance of you being killed, rather than of you killing the clone.

This could be batshit, but I'm interesting in thinking it through.

Boing posted:

Yeah, but B thinks that he is A. Which means that, if you think you're A, there's a chance that you're actually B.

There are two people who think they're A. You are one of them. The probability is 50% that you are actually A!

Agents are GO! posted:

I don't get how folks in a post Phinneas Gage world can think any sort of essentialism here makes any sense. If damage to my brain can change my personality - who "I" am, then an utterly identical reconstruction of my brain is also me. "I" am a group of atoms arranged in a particular pattern, not a particular group of atoms arranged in a particular pattern.

If that pattern ceases to exist, and then begins existing in another group of atoms, then yes, "I" am still alive, for all intents and purposes.

Boing posted:

But ambiguity about the word 'you' is entirely the point of this thread.

GlyphGryph posted:

Why does numericality a matter here and not with split organisms

GlyphGryph posted:

you have been completely incapable of saying anything that isnt stupid and internally inconsistant while dismissing people for the things you are doing and they are not so this basically exactly the nonsense position i expected you to take despite it being contrary to the already stated position of the person i actually asked.

Boing posted:

This but unironically.

(it could actually be an R. Scott Bakker tweet)

Boing posted:

If you can't get on board with


you have no stream of consciousness

Agents are GO! posted:

Here's another scenario I'd put before the Numerical Identity folks: what would you do if, through no action of your own, you woke up in the "output" room of the teleporter, with the certain knowledge that the "original you" has been destroyed. Would you consider you, you? Would you consider yourself a soulless monster, as mantis42 put it?

What if you didn't find out for a while? A week, a month, ten years? What if its already happened?

Lt. Danger posted:

I don't think people are genuinely confused about which entity is which; everyone knows there is a distinction between the original and the copy, even if we can't necessarily perceive it. The division is over whether it's significant, i.e. important enough to say "that's not my sister, she's made out of different atoms". I think largely this depends on what exactly you want out of the replicated object.

Shbobdb posted:

What creates the illusion of the self? What connects the consciousness of one moment to the consciousness of the next?

GlyphGryph posted:

This is basically you describing your own contributions to this thread so far.

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

So, what if your brain wasn't destroyed wholesale in the process. A piece is scanned, destroyed, and built on the other side. Its then networked artifically with you back at the start. Then another piece is done till your fully transfered over. Does this change how people feel about continuity? How fast can this be done before it feels like destruction? Is it functionally different then your brains normal process of replacing neurons?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

My contention is that there is no continuity, and I see no evidence that there is. Nothing in how I live my life from day to day or even moment-to-moment requires continuity, because memory (and a similar physical context) is sufficient.

Peta posted:

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Nope. It's just evidence of short-term memory. I don't know whether I'm the same observer from one moment to the next -- I have memories that suggest that I am, but that's exactly the same thing the clone would think.

OwlFancier posted:

Well I assume I am because, well, what's the alternative? But how would I know if I wasn't?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

If instances of consciousness separated by space are different from each other, why should we consider instances of consciousness separated by time to be the same?

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

The purpose of changing the question is to figure out where the line lays for different people, and that is relevant to the philosophy at question.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

It would mean that it's silly to worry about the "destruction" of your consciousness because it's not something that persists, it's something that's continually replaced or renewed as long as certain physical conditions are met. I don't possess the same consciousness that I possessed a moment ago, so why should I be concerned that it's not the same consciousness when I go through the teleporter?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

e: Like, I honestly don't really understand what you're asking, if that doesn't answer it. If I had the same consciousness as myself in the past, I would be experiencing the past and the present simultaneously, and that's not how I experience things.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

If it walks like a Tuxedo Catfish, and it talks like a Tuxedo Catfish, and it gets in abstract internet arguments about identity like a Tuxedo Catfish, it's a Tuxedo Catfish. So basically, any member of a class of bodies that sufficiently resemble each other to the extent that they can be recognized as me, are all me.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

If this applies to me at different ages -- when I was a radically different person than I am now -- then I see no sensible definition that would exclude virtually identical clones or copies.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

I have no reason to assume they can.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

If you're saying that someone with the characteristics of Tuxedo Catfish has existed for years, then sure, that seems likely.

If you're saying "the consciousness that presently animates you has been there all along" then that's an extraordinary claim

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

That I'm the same consciousness as another consciousness despite there being no overlap of our experience.

Brainiac Five posted:

What is the essential component of consciousness that exists from birth or whenever you think it emerges and remains unchanged throughout one's life?

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Because you're saying that I'm the same consciousness as another consciousness despite there being no overlap of our experience. I would be in the best position to know, and I don't even know that!

Brainiac Five posted:

But then people are not the same consciousness through all of their lives.

Tuxedo Catfish posted:

Again, the clone could do this, and would come to the same conclusion. But for the clone, according to you, the doubt wouldn't be dumb at all.

Piell posted:

So let's say I kidnap you, clone you with all your memories, and let the clone live your life. Meanwhile, I torture the original for a hundred years, then shoot it in the head, killing it.. I am hoping you would not agree with this. What if I only torture you for 50 years? For 10? For 1? For one hour? For a single second? What if I just walk into your house, shoot the original you in the face, drag away the original's cooling corpse, and let your clone live your life?

Brainiac Five posted:

But if the only thing that matters is continuity of consciousness, and this is not interrupted by losing consciousness, then teleportation killing you is suddenly very sticky.

Brainiac Five posted:

Actually, I'm dying and being resurrected, because there's no difference in qualia between the two instances or any way for differences to emerge, unlike with the psychopathic hypotheticals.

Shbobdb posted:

Peta posted:

I think people who say they would use the teleporter - but really people on both sides of this debate - should take a good look at Eric T. Olson's case for animalism ("An Argument for Animalism", "Précis of The Human Animal"). It maybe crystallizes the concerns of a lot of people who wouldn't want to use the teleporter but who deny a mind-body distinction and doubt the explanatory value of psychological continuity.

The basic premise is that humans are animals, i.e., one human is numerically identical with one animal.

The entailment is that identity over time has nothing to do with psychological continuity, qualia, consciousness, the self as some sort of a bare particular, the self as a bundle of traits, etc.

Instead, the persistence of my identity hinges on my persistence as an animal. I am a human. Therefore, I am an animal. Psychological continuity is neither necessary nor sufficient for animals to persist (survive): When a human is conceived, even when it's born, it lacks the properties of a person, and there's a decent chance that in the twilight of its life it won't have those properties either. A human can enter a vegetative state and emerge intact. Olson:

"It also seems to follow from our being animals that we are only temporarily and contingently people. Or at least that is so if you have to have certain mental properties at a given time to count as a person at that time. If that's what it is to be a person, each human animal starts out as a nonperson and may end up as a nonperson." ("Précis of The Human Animal")

This is why it's perfectly coherent to say that (1) I am an animal/organism, (2) I am a person, and (3) persons are a category of animal.* I'm still baffled that the mutual compatibility of those claims needs to be explained at this level to some people in this thread, but there you have it.

* I said this badly. More precisely: Some animals are persons, or able to be persons, but being a person doesn't seem to depend on being an animal (think gods, angels, highly advanced AI).