Self, death, and teleportation devices

[Souron]

I don't think we're sidetracked at all.

A self aware entity has a model of a "thing" that it thinks of as itself. But that thing can't be pointed to. It only exists as a vague notion of identity in an individual. And when an individual is passed out, then there is nothing maintaining that self awareness. Before or after you go to sleep you may think of your sleeping body as containing you, but that idea is arbitrary. Why should it be considered you if it cannot think? It's just a recharge system.

So if we can accept that it's ok to go to sleep as long as you expect the same body to wake again, then a rational mind could decide that it's also ok to go to sleep as long as an identical body wakes again. To put it another way: If your identity is solely a product of your biology, then a person with identical biology has the same identity.

 

[Rashiminos]

I don't see why we can't make that assumption - there is no reason to believe that consciousness isn't a product of the atoms that make up your body. Those who argue otherwise have not been able to bring a piece of evidence to the discussion that supports that assertion. Until then we must assume that our consciousness is a product of what's in our bodies.

Or the evidence that is brought to the discussion cannot be accepted by everyone. We can make false assumptions about things we know nothing about. There are some topics, color for instance, which are nigh unintelligible for a blind person. In this case, we may have a "pink elephant" in the room that some of us really can't "see."

And either way, it doesn't really affect the discussion. If our consciousness was something mystical, on another plane, a soul, or whatever, teleportation would just not work. You would end up with bodies without souls on the other side - bodies without consciousness.. or whatever you want to call it.

Suppose bodies without "souls" could exist (perhaps some sort of anthropomorphic robot to stimulate discussion).

 

[duckstab]

There is no such thing as consciousness as you describe. There is no evidence for it. An individual perceives themselves as a "thing" that is separate from their environment, because it is evolutionarily advantageous. But this is just a mental model. It does not mean that there is some uncompilable part of the mind where the consciousness sits. Your consciousness does die when you go to sleep, and is revived when you dream or wake. Even in your dreams you can be a very different person. And it is effected by forgetfulness, brain damage, pheromones, and other subconscious influences. The only thing that stays the same is that a person remember their past, and thinks it is themselves. If two people remember the same past, whatever the cause, then neither is more right than the other.

You've expressed this in the terms of modern scientific materialism, but this is essentially the same insight that forms the basis for the core Buddhist teaching of anatta, or "not-self". The self, such as it is, is just a conventional label for a series of mental states that arise from causes and conditions (including previous mental states), and each of which passes away in turn. Grasping at the notion of a separate self is, in fact, regarded as the main cause of suffering.

Most Buddhists, of course, believe in reincarnation, but it's a very different concept from that found in, say, Hinduism. A Buddhist would hold that a person who dies in one life is related to the person who is reborn in the next in exactly the same way that a person who falls asleep is related to the person who wakes up in the morning: the relationship is causal, nothing more.

So from that standpoint, neither teleportation scenario presents a particular metaphysical problem. In the first case, it's just like going to sleep and instantly waking up elsewhere. In the second case, the original mental stream experiences death (and possibly reincarnates), while a new one comes into being and goes off its own merry way. In neither case has a "self" been destroyed, because none existed to begin with.

 

[MeteorPunch]

No one's mentioned The Prestige yet? Go see it.

 

[warpus]

So if we can accept that it's ok to go to sleep as long as you expect the same body to wake again, then a rational mind could decide that it's also ok to go to sleep as long as an identical body wakes again. To put it another way: If your identity is solely a product of your biology, then a person with identical biology has the same identity.

But it's NOT okay to go into a chamber that kills you and expect to wake up in another chamber somewhere else, just because there'll be an exact replica of you there. I mean, sure, if you want, but it just won't happen!

 

[Cutlass]

No one's mentioned The Prestige yet? Go see it.

Painfully dull movie

 

[Mise]

Interesting discussion guys.

Incidentally, if anyone feels that the assumptions I'm making are contentious and substantially change the answer, please do describe how changing the assumptions affects the answer. Similarly for the construction/details of the thought experiment itself: if you feel any information is lacking, tell me how knowing that information would affect the answer. I don't want the details of the scenario or assumptions I've used to affect stuff.

For example, how would a religious person view it? How would someone who believes in a soul view it? Is it actually contradictory to both believe in a soul and to believe in possibility of copying yourself perfectly?

 

[warpus]

The question of the soul has really nothing to do with it.

I ask again: If you get killed in a chamber, would you expect to wake up in another chamber, simply because that other chamber constructed an exact clone of you? No matter whether you believe that souls exist or they don't, the answer is no.

 

[Gustave5436]

I've come to the conclusion that it's one of those things which we have a tendency to overthink, like free will or the meaning/lack thereof of life. As far as we're concerned, the person who steps out of transporter B is one and the same as the person who stepped into transporter A. The details of how that happened are inconsequential for all practical purposes; a problem for the philosophers to ponder all day, and for everyone else to ignore as superfluous.

That said, most people have trouble comprehending the prospect of not existing, so it's understandable that they should feel some discomfort with the prospect of a destructive teleporter/mind uploader. However, this is an emotional response born of ignorance of the true nature of reality, not a logical one.

The question of the soul has really nothing to do with it.

I ask again: If you get killed in a chamber, would you expect to wake up in another chamber, simply because that other chamber constructed an exact clone of you? No matter whether you believe that souls exist or they don't, the answer is no.

An immaterial soul could detach itself from one body and migrate to the other. It sounds absurd, but that's only because the idea of an immaterial soul is absurd to begin with. If we assume that such a thing exists, then it is entirely possible that it could transfer itself from the body going in to transporter A to the body exiting from transporter B.

Not that it matters; to an impartial observer, the person exiting B is identical to the person entering A. So long as the person doesn't also exit from A, she has effectively been transported, rather than copied, and we needn't concern ourselves unnecessarily with the details. Not existing might be scary, but it is inevitable anyway, and I'm not even convinced that we even have such a thing as consciousness to begin with.

 

[Cheetah]

This is a topic I've been pondering many times before. And will probably be pondering many times in the future.

But for now, I'd just like to share an excerpt from Robert J. Sawyer's Mindscan.

The book does not deal with teleportation, but something very similar, at least in this discussion. The story tells of a company developing a way to make a complete copy of a human mind and store it in an artificial brain. Coupled with an artificial body, this process allows people to live longer and healthier lives, and is very popular amongst wealthy, older people (the process is expensive, so poorer people can't afford it - at least not at the time of the story).

During the process however, the original is never destroyed, resulting in two copies of the same person. The company solves this problem by making an extremely luxurious retirement home on the Moon, where the original may live a happy life until death. The judicial rights of the person is transfered to the new, "artificial" copy.

The actual story in the book is set around the philosophical, social and judicial questions when the main characters get copies of themselves, the originals move to the Moon, children sue over lost inheritance, etc., etc.

I think that the book contains a very good representation of how a process of mind uploading, duplication or teleportation might feel like. Here's how Sawyer portrays the moment of duplication:

[...]
"Good," she said. "Press the green button."
I did so, and the bed slid into the scanning tube. It was quiet in there - so quiet I could hear my pulse in my ears, the gurgling of my digestion. I wondered what internal sounds, if any, I'd be aware of in my new body?
Regardless, I was looking forward to my new existence. Quantity of life didn't matter that much to me - but quality! And to have time - not only years spreading out into the future, but time in each day. Uploads, after all, didn't have to sleep, so not only did we get all those extra years, we got one-third more productive time.
The future was at hand.
Creating another me.
Mindscan.

***​

"All right, Mr. Sullivan, you can come out now." It was Dr. Killian's voice, with its Jamaican lilt.
My heart sank. No...
"Mr. Sullivan? We've finished the scanning. If you'll press the red button..."
It hit me like a ton of bricks, like a tidal wave of blood. No! I should be somewhere else, but I wasn't.
Damn it all, I wasn't.
"If you need some help getting out..." offered Killian.
I reflexively brought up my hands, patting my chest, feeling the softness of it, feeling it rise and fall. Jesus Christ!
"Mr. Sullivan?"
"I'm coming, damn it. I'm coming."
I hit the button without looking at it, and the bed slid out of the scanning tube, emerging feet-first; a breech birth. Damn! Damn! Damn!
I hadn't exerted myself at all, but my breathing was rapid, shallow. If only-
I felt a hand cupping my elbow. "I've got you, Mr. Sullivan," said Killian. "Upsa-daisy..." My feet connected with the harsh tile floor. I had known intellectually that it had been a fifty-fifty shot, but I'd only thought about what it was going to be like to wake up in a new, artificial body. I hadn't really considered...
"Are you all right, Mr. Sullivan?" she asked. "You look-"
"I'm fine," I snapped. "Fine and dandy. Jesus Christ-"
"Is there something I can-"
[...]

***​

I was suddenly somewhere else.
It was an instantaneous transfer, like changing channels on TV. I instantly was somewhere else - in a different room.
At first I was overwhelmed by strange physical sensations. My limbs felt numb, as though I'd slept on them funny. But I hadn't been sleeping...
And then I was conscious of the things that I wasn't feeling: there was no pain in my left ankle. For the first time in two years, since I'd torn some ligaments falling down a staircase, I felt no pain at all.
But I remembered the pain, and-
I did remember!
I was still myself.
[...]

 

[Hakim]

Perhaps it's not philosophically correct but as far as I'm concerned, a copy is a copy and the concept of soul doesn't have anything to do with it. So I 'd never step into a teleportation device that worked like that.

If the teleporter was based on scaled up process of quantum entanglement I might get fooled though, 'cause I don't understand that well enough to judge whether it's copying or not.

I recall a Star Trek episode (TOS I think) where someone saved himself by either "looping" the teleportation or somehow storing himself in it (only doing the "first part" of teleportation) and then eventually was discovered and saved by the Enterprise team. Don't remember what happened next.

 

[Souron]

The question of the soul has really nothing to do with it.

I ask again: If you get killed in a chamber, would you expect to wake up in another chamber, simply because that other chamber constructed an exact clone of you? No matter whether you believe that souls exist or they don't, the answer is no.

You say a soul doesn't exist, but this "thing" or "you" your describing and ascribing with identity is exactly what Christians think of when they think of a soul. Your right to say that no such thing gets transphered, but only because no such thing exists. All that actually exists can be copied.

 

[BuckyRea]

If memories are stored as electric impulses in the brain's synapses, wouldn't the presumedly electron-beaming of the body's molecules, including synapses, necessarily reshuffle all the data of every single stored memory in your brain? The teleportee would almost certainly emerge from the arrival end of the process as a brain-dead jibbering idiot, no?

 

[warpus]

I've come to the conclusion that it's one of those things which we have a tendency to overthink, like free will or the meaning/lack thereof of life. As far as we're concerned, the person who steps out of transporter B is one and the same as the person who stepped into transporter A. The details of how that happened are inconsequential for all practical purposes; a problem for the philosophers to ponder all day, and for everyone else to ignore as superfluous.

Wait, so you are saying.. "Stop overthinking you guys, the answer is magic" ? How does that make any sense?

n immaterial soul could detach itself from one body and migrate to the other. It sounds absurd, but that's only because the idea of an immaterial soul is absurd to begin with. If we assume that such a thing exists, then it is entirely possible that it could transfer itself from the body going in to transporter A to the body exiting from transporter B.

No, let's not make any assumptions at all!

I mean, we could easily assume that human consciousness floats in invisible balloons over our bodies - and that those balloons would have to be teleported as well. Extraordinary assumptins are dumb.

Not that it matters; to an impartial observer, the person exiting B is identical to the person entering A. So long as the person doesn't also exit from A, she has effectively been transported, rather than copied, and we needn't concern ourselves unnecessarily with the details.

That is all and well but the details matter to the person who stepped into the chamber and got killed Death = death, no matter what happens outside of the death chamber.

You say a soul doesn't exist, but this "thing" or "you" your describing and ascribing with identity is exactly what Christians think of when they think of a soul. Your right to say that no such thing gets transphered, but only because no such thing exists. All that actually exists can be copied.

1. I never said souls don't exist. My stance is that there is no reason to believe that they do. They might!
2. When Christians say "soul" I think "magical thing that's beyond the 'physical' that science can't explain". NOT what I am thinking when I say consciousness.

It doesn't really matter though! Souls don't matter in this discussion.

 

[Rashiminos]

The question of the soul has really nothing to do with it.

I ask again: If you get killed in a chamber, would you expect to wake up in another chamber, simply because that other chamber constructed an exact clone of you? No matter whether you believe that souls exist or they don't, the answer is no.

What if the "soul" knew how to get from chamber A to chamber B (traversing the time and distance in the process) once the physical constraint of the attached body was temporarily removed?

 

[Elrohir]

Yeah, I think there's a difference. It's much easier to create a copy that thinks it's you. I think that such a technology could be available within the next 40 years, if there was any type of concerted push for it. This technology, creates a nightmare economic scenario. If it even becomes cheaper to copy a person than to raise a person, the whole world will change.

Which is why we ban this technology to begin with, and execute anyone found playing with this technology.

Interesting discussion guys.

Incidentally, if anyone feels that the assumptions I'm making are contentious and substantially change the answer, please do describe how changing the assumptions affects the answer. Similarly for the construction/details of the thought experiment itself: if you feel any information is lacking, tell me how knowing that information would affect the answer. I don't want the details of the scenario or assumptions I've used to affect stuff.

For example, how would a religious person view it? How would someone who believes in a soul view it? Is it actually contradictory to both believe in a soul and to believe in possibility of copying yourself perfectly?

I don't think it's inherently contradictory, depending on your exact idea of what a soul is.

It could be that a soul is an attachment to a particular brain/body at a particular time, and a teleportation machine like you've described would end up creating someone without a soul. (Whether the person would be brain dead or just a lawyer -- or both -- depends on your conception of what a soul adds to a person ) Or, it could simply cause the soul to split, with each new copy getting one. (Or if the old body was destroyed, the original soul splitting off to go...wherever souls go) Think of it as analogous to a fertilized embryo splitting into identical twins; which one is the original? Well, both. Sort of.

Alternatively, maybe souls are smart enough, or God-directed enough, that they can follow consciousness around. So wherever a particular consciousness is, that's where the soul is. Under this perspective, teleportation might actually be OK, since you'd just be destroying a body -- both consciousness and soul would end up on the other side, so whatever, I guess.

Similarly but more interestingly, it could be that souls, rather than following consciousnesses around, are the product of consciousness. The effect would largely be the same as merely following consciousnesses around, though.

Or, again, maybe souls aren't anything distinct from consciousness/life at all, and it's like how the Ancient Greeks thought of the soul -- when you die, the soul dies with you. (Or, yet again, maybe the soul isn't distinct from consciousness at all, but when you die, "leaves" your body and goes elsewhere. Souls would then not be a separate entity per se, but rather the mere existence of consciousness, either with or without a body. I'm not sure about what this view would mean -- it would go back to whether or not consciousness is being destroyed, or merely copied)

In short, there are lots of potential options depending on what sort of conception of a soul you have. (I'm sure I missed quite a few possible positions!) But yeah, I'm actually inclined to think it probably doesn't make a huge difference either way; you can probably replace "soul" with "consciousness" and it's mostly the same.


And Cheetah, interesting snippet! I plan on picking the book up at the library this evening!

 

[Souron]

If memories are stored as electric impulses in the brain's synapses, wouldn't the presumedly electron-beaming of the body's molecules, including synapses, necessarily reshuffle all the data of every single stored memory in your brain? The teleportee would almost certainly emerge from the arrival end of the process as a brain-dead jibbering idiot, no?

I remember learning that most neurons actually work though the motion of ions, not electorns. Only synapses sometimes involve electon effects like tunneling.

But neuroscience is not my chosen feild of study.

But generally, yeah, scanning the body with sufficent precision without desturbing the function of the unscanned portions of the body is bound to be a problem. Perhaps an insurmountable one.

 

[warpus]

What if the "soul" knew how to get from chamber A to chamber B (traversing the time and distance in the process) once the physical constraint of the attached body was temporarily removed?

What if bacon could fly from the fridge into the frying pan, crisp itself up, and then fly straight into my mouth?

 

[Rashiminos]

What if bacon could fly from the fridge into the frying pan, crisp itself up, and then fly straight into my mouth?

That would be awesome. What prompted you to come up with that idea, perchance?

 

[warpus]

That would be awesome. What prompted you to come up with that idea, perchance?

Your idea! Which would also be awesome, but I don't see why it would belong in this conversation, much like mine doesn't.