Y'know, the more I think about free will as a religous concept, the more I'm convinced it's supposed to be an allegory for how to treat others, like a more convoluted Golden Rule. The source was shifted to "God" simply to make the garbage people that don't normally care about others hesitate before they just ignore others' advice on how to treat people.
The reasoning is pretty simple: Nobody can actually do anything they want because others will interfere. Individuals restrict others' freedom all the time. If you're restricting others freedoms, you're doing an even worse version of judging others. The Bible pretty clearly says to leave such critical stuff that idiots can screw up in God's hands, because idiots can and will screw it up.
Same with free will. Peoples' freedom is, according to religous teachings, a gift from God. They describe such things as "from God" solely because idiots respect their flavor of Sky Daddy over other human beings.
If it's actually a gift from God, then it makes little sense that humans can simply remove a gift an all-powerful diety bestows. So... either historic humans are insanely stupid and bad at logic ... or it's actually an allegory for not trying to control others so much.
My concept of free will and determinism is that there are both in a way. What we see manifest at our level as free will is at its core determinism, driven by how the environment has evolved our personality to react and think about things. When asked to think of a color we quickly come up with a choice, made by either a preference for or a recent memory of, yet if asked when we actually chose that color at the thinking level we can't find a single point where there were others to pick from, we just "came up with it". Our free will is a conglomeration of things beyond our control.
That's pretty much exactly why I think it's more about a lesson on how to treat others. Humans fundamentally believe they're free to choose things, regardless of their religious affiliation. We always tell ourselves we want this and that, and decided x and y, etc. Regardless of the reality of free will, we all think we have it.
The only genuine purpose of saying Free Will is a gift from God I can think of is simply to make the dummies that want to force behavior on others hesitate about stepping on "God's domain".
Aren’t we largely ships of Theseus regardless? Are the carbon atoms I was born with still in me or have they been slowly cycled out? I guess your teeth and bones prob don’t change much. Welp, time to go do some reading
It really depends on how the teleportation works. If it's folding spacetime to make it so that I can step instantaneously through the gap, that's definitely still me. If it's just like a portal cutting temporarily through Hell ala WH40k or Event Horizon, it's probably still me, but I might be suffering from demonic posession. If I'm being completely atomized, converted to electricity, and transmitted to the other tube to be reconstituted as an exact copy, then I am a copy.
IMO, even the digitally sent person could be the original, depending on the philosophical concepts being applied (same ship of theseus style questions). If it's just the process of reading your atoms to that level of detail that makes you disappear, and the only information that is literally 'you' is being transferred over and reconstituted in a similarly one-way-by-function process, it's almost more of a phase shift to digital and back than a copy. Pretty much just side-stepping matter's inability to travel without acceleration.
If the machine is basically 'digesting' the person only to send over the results for reproduction, though... that's definitely a copy. Pretty sure Trek describes their transporters as the latter? They're definitely killing a bunch of people in that show. ha Though to answer it with any kind of conclusive result, I'd think we'd need a technical description for how it works, and it cannot exist, so... lol
the thing is though, everyone older than like a year is already a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy... Our bodies are the ship of theseus, it's only by pure statistical inevitability that some handfull of atoms inside us are the exact same ones we were born with.
Nonono, that's taking a step backwards toward the Ship of Theseus instead of the teleporter question. Everyone agrees there is a continued experience regardless of whether someone says, "yup that's still exactly your body".
The entire point of the teleporter question is... where is "your" mind and identity defined? If it's only a prescription for how a body looks and behaves, then it doesn't matter. If it's someone's own, personal, literal consciousness and continued sense of 'self' by that specific consciousness, it does matter if YOUR consciousness is coming out still attached to the body.
In philosopher Derek Parfit’s teletransporter thought experiment, he differentiates between two major concepts: personal identity and “relation R.”
Personal identity is an individual person as that specific individual. If the teletransporter copies a person to one place while destroying the original, then a new personal identity is created.
Relation R is the stream of consciousness that connects a person’s mind from one moment to another. Parfit compares this to a billiard ball rolling along a pool table, as you can track the path the ball travels without the path breaking. It’s the memories, hopes, values, and goals a person carries with them.
He argues that as long as this relation R is maintained, that is more important than maintaining a personal identity. So he would argue that it is not you pulling the lever, but it would be you in all the ways that matter.
No, you (the new you) wouldn't even know the difference.
It'd be like when you fall asleep on the couch and sleep for two minutes, but the dream seems like it lasted several days, because you dreamt of having memories of things. The brain simply doesn't know the difference between memories of a long dream or a short dream of long memories.
Preface: I'm talking about Star Trek's transporters specifically. Teleportation via destruction and reconstruction. Any kind of space folding wormhole nonsense obviously doesn't apply here.
There is no new me, there's someone else with my memories. Why would I care whether he knows the difference? This is equivocation. There is only one you, and that's the physical entity reading this comment right now. If a perfect copy of you were made over there, you could consider them a you, but they aren't you.
If you step onto a transporter pad to teleport to the Starship Enterprise, then you never live to see the inside of it. You can philosophize all you want about what "you" actually means, but at the end of the day, the you that you are dies. What that copy does or does not experience has no bearing on that fact.
I always get like 15 comments deep in these threads reiterating the same point over and over, so I'll just get ahead of that and reiterate it now: unless you believe you have a soul, your existence ends the moment your body is destroyed. A transporter kills you, and there is no way to philosophize your way around that. The fact that someone else who shares all of your memories doesn't remember any lapse in consciousness doesn't change the fact that the only you that meaningfully exists fucking dies.
I won't be responding to any replies that don't acknowledge my validity as an independent entity. Anyone who asserts that someone else who shares my memories has any claim over being me is getting blocked. I hate this argument and I hate that so many people are so frequently wrong about it.
Dead people don't care either, so neither would you if you chose to enter a teleporter.
The real question is where they put all the remains of the old versions.
I don't think the Star Trek transporter works like that though. They do pass the material through worn holey warp space or something. There are episodes about them getting stuck there and such.
I don’t think it’s the same excerpt I read years ago, and to be honest I only had time to skim it, but it seems like his arguments start on page 16 of the pdf, 28 of the book. I don’t expect it to convince you, but you likely won’t find more professional thoughts on the matter online. If you’re this passionate about it, you may as well read the actual philosophy.
Actually, that excerpt might give some insight, but to get a comprehensive explanation of various lines of thought, the Stanford Encyclopedia is where you should go: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-ethics/
Okay, but actually solving the thought experiment requires understanding of what it is to be conscious. It could appear continuous and identical to all outside observers and all external tests but it could still be a new conscious identity and you, the observer might no longer exist. It's not called "the hard problem" for nothing.
What you are saying sounds like two concepts/problems closely related but distinct to the teletransporter thought experiment, the hard problem of consciousness and the problem other minds.
In terms of the hard problem of consciousness, I think Parfit assumes a level of consciousness in his arguments or he wouldn’t be talking about it. It’s been too long since I read his works to say how he views that consciousness arising, but the setup of a person’s body being destroyed and recreated lends itself toward the constitution view, although I also think that would conflict with his point on personal identity. I think some level of dualistic/idealist separation of body and mind would be required for the continuation of consciousness across bodies.
Your actual argument of whether we as outside observers could know that the teletransported’s consciousness is continuous, we can’t. At least I don’t think there’s a foolproof way of knowing the minds of others. I think the best we could do is watch the person. If they step out of the teletransporter, stick their thumb pointing at the first and say “Boy, I’d hate to be that guy,” there was probably a break in consciousness. If they pull the lever, point at the first teletransporter station and say “I came from there to pull this lever,” I’ll believe the relation R is conserved. And if they do both, I’ll chuckle and buy them a beer.
Oh, I don't think the one experiencing it would know either. Gaps in consciousness and memory can be pretty concrete. Every moment of existence could be your only one and all your past experiences could be implanted or false memories and there would be no real way of knowing.
Yah, that’s always technically a factor, but if you have to doubt your own basic perceptions your ability to hold many (if not most) beliefs is severely damaged. It becomes difficult to invest yourself into the world you appear to exist in because it “might not be real.” And frankly that’s really boring, and I can’t live a good life leaning on that doubt.
The best one can do is trust their perceptions (unless something is obviously affecting it like substances) and assume their reality is real. If they later “wake up” in the “real” reality and learn the reality they knew was false, then mourn what wasn’t but seemed to be and start living in the “new” reality.
In this case, if the new identity perceives themself as a direct continuation I don’t see a compelling reason to doubt their perception.
it could also be that all of this is made up by us humans because we feel a need for things to have deep meaning, but in fact everything is just atoms doing stuff and so long as it's the same kind of atoms doing the same thing then for all intents and purposes it is the same thing.
That's not mutually exclusive at all. The question is what the experience of consciousness is. Why am "I" watching these atoms do their thing and experiencing that, rather than a similar set of atoms.
But what if it's just a copy of that relation R? Is it the same mind in a new body? Or a new body that's so utterly similar that it will merely continue on believing it's the same person?
I don't like that philosophy, because it pretends the mind exists outside of the brain.
Does the difference of the literally unobservable matter? Yes absolutely to the person stepping in to the machine! Sure, everyone else doesn't have to care, but the teleported person sure probably should care, so that philosophy does less than nothing for answering the question.
He's basically saying, 'I don't care if you die if I cannot tell if the new guy is different.". Saying, "I don't care" is not an answer.
Relation R by definition cannot be copied because it is a continuity of experience. Personal identity could be copied, at which point two separate identities would exist, one that was destroyed and one that was created at the new point, but from the new copy’s perspective they stepped into one side and out the other, and while the brain that thinks it may be a copy that continued perspective isn’t. It doesn’t matter to relation R if the mind itself moves or if there is a new mind that only thinks/feels that it did.
I get that materialist views on minds and bodies has become very popular over the last couple decades, but I think it’s good to understand that when he wrote this atheism and the materialist philosophy it lends itself to was not the norm. In some ways, holding a constitutional view, the notion that a person with a “first-person perspective” cannot exist without a body that can support and constitute that perspective, on personhood would better support a materialist view. The mind itself isn’t teleporting, but the copied body that the mind arises from mimics that through the new body. (Note: this paragraph feels very muddy, but I don’t know how to clarify it further)
I don’t think it’s fair to say that he doesn’t care. The question being asked is “what should be cared about most?” A physical body or the mind within it? The person’s brain or the thoughts, hopes, and dreams it creates? If it’s the body then why do we take brain dead patients off of life support? If it’s the body then why do people dream about uploading their “consciousness” to a computer, leaving their original body behind? If the new body/identity creates the same thoughts, hopes, and dreams in the same way, then the most important aspects are preserved.
Based on my understanding of Parfit’s reasoning, I think he would willingly use the teletransporter himself, so I don’t think you can say he only wants others to use it while snickering on the side.
Well the perspective still doesn't make sense. The entire point of the question is, "does it matter"? and since everyone agrees that the only person it could effect differently is the person who stepped in to the machine... it really is tentamount to saying, "I don't care", when your answer is simply side-stepping the entire point of the thought experiment.
If Relation R is literally YOUR experience, then saying, "if that's preserved it doesn't matter", is ... just restating the freaking question, not answering it.
Everyone agrees the specifics don't matter if it's YOUR consciousness handling both identical forms on both sides. The entire question is is it YOUR consciousness? The very premise says both entities are outwardly indistinguishable, even by behavior. By saying behavior and memories are the same, the premise itself is basically SAYING "Relation R" is preserved, as far as it being a specific set of thoughts and behaviors.
Sometimes "I don't care" is the correct answer. Is the world that you experience on a day to day basis reflective of reality? You cannot determine that with absolute certainty, so the answer is "I don't care" because caring too much will just lead to unhealthy solipsism and a worse state of existence.
If I walk through the teletransporter, is it still me walking out the other side? The answer to that will vary greatly depending on your ontological views. If you believe in pure idealism and that minds exist independently of the physical realm then sure, that's me! I'm simply shifting my awareness from one place to another! If you lean toward a dualist perspective where bodies and minds exist and interact, then maybe it is me? Can my consciousness teleport to the new body, maybe? I don't know. And if you're a materialist that believes only the physical exists and conscious minds are just a phantasm brought about by chemical reactions, which I get the impression you may be, then the answer is clearly no, I was vaporized and a copy came out the other end, my body, my personal identity, is ended! But those are just reflective of one lens to view the situation through, idealism vs materialism. There are others, and they all inform one another to such a degree that most people I can think of would be hard-pressed to fully justify why they would say "yes that is me," or "no it is not."
But in any given viewpoint, that relation R is preserved, because it makes no judgement on what a mind is or how it relates to the body, only that a continuous perspective is maintained. And that is the premise of the argument that "I don't care" about whether it is or is not me stepping out. I may care about my body and mind's continued existence, but I only care about those things as a means to continuing the memories, goals, and thoughts that they allow for. So as long as I know that those are preserved (relation R) then "I don't care" about the rest. Now you may disagree, and that would be fair. It really just boils down to value judgements.
I cared when I was learning philosophy in college. I wanted to establish a set of beliefs and an ability to alter them as new evidence arises. I learned a lot of possible perspectives and subscribed to the ones that made a cohesive worldview that fit with my experience and knowledge of the world.
I had beliefs about what consciousness is, but then my dad died in just the right way to shatter that idea for me, and throw everything else into question along with it. A year later and I still haven't bothered to build a new ontology.
The way I see it, I've studied and know a lot of different ways of thinking. That's good for problem solving and offering new viewpoints to others. I'm still open to new perspectives, as rare as they come these days. But if I understand all of these different options to believe and come to the conclusion that I don't know which is the best to believe, then I think I've come as close to knowing as I can. And at that point, why should I care to ruminate on it further?
I think this is just a rephrasing of the original question because it still boils down to whether that relation R would be maintained after such a teleportation. Or, for that matter, going to sleep and waking up. Can we be sure it's the same stream of consciousness that wakes up (whether on the other side of sleep or teleportation), or just one that thinks it's the same because those things listed are actually stored in the brain, not outside of it.
At this point in my journey, I believe it to be possible that this stream of consciousness is external to our bodies, but I think there's enough evidence that personality, memories, and all that are associated with the brain rather than anything else. Think about brain injuries and diseases and how much they can wreck the core of who someone is.
Though it's also possible that brain degradation is just hindering the connection between brain and consciousness, so changes in personality and memory loss might be more of an artifact of that than a sign that all of that information is stored exclusively in the brain. It's also possible that the brain's memory mechanisms are just easier to use than whatever the consciousness has going on (if anything), and it takes a while of not having a brain to be able to use them effectively again.
It's all speculation but interesting. Glad to have written this reply because that previous paragraph hadn't occurred to me before this.
I mean, does it really matter? For all intents and purposes, the person coming out of the teleporter is me. They'll have continuity of consciousness. You can argue about "oh it just kills you and makes a person exactly like you" like maybe so, but does it matter?
Now imagine it malfunctions and doesn't vaporize you before creating the copy, but just creates the copy at the end point leaving you still standing in the transporter. Still you? If not, what's changed?
then there's two mes which immediately start to diverge into different people due to their different experiences, and the one left behind eventually joins the Maquis.
For the question posed it doesn't really matter no. Assuming it works the way we expect it to in sci-fi and it's an exact copy, for all intents and purposes it is you. There is nothing ethereal about the human consciousness—if everything is exactly as it should be, then you have all the pieces of "you" that are needed.
The teleporter dilemma only matters to the being using the device initially. If you're vaporized, you die. You don't have continuity of consciousness with a different set of atoms perfectly arranged to be you, even if they perceive that to be the case on the other side. Still you, just not the you that gets to continue to exist.
As far as I can tell an emergent characteristic of the nervous system that evolved as an advantage over instinct/intuition/heuristics arrived at subconsciously
Sleep isn't the same as unconsciousness, at least as far as this dilemma goes. Sleep is a state of reduced consciousness, but there is continuity and awareness of your surroundings. If there weren't, you alarm clock wouldn't have woken you up this morning
I'm neither a sleep nor brain expert (or amateur even), still, I know that the "you" part of your brain occurs largely in the prefrontal cortex while more basic stuff occurs at the back, like the brainstem.
That's why lobotomies "worked" – no more "you", no more mental health issues!
For waking up, I don't think any "you" part is needed. Audio processing and some consciousness starter are probably all that's needed.
I don't consider myself to be the entirety of my brain. I am the abstraction of abstractions of ... that has emerged for some reason. Shutting those abstractions down for sleeping is, in my opinion, no different from this scenario. I wouldn't consider brainstem continuity to be a relevant factor.
Depends if it can keep the illusion of my perception continuous.
If yes (and the death is painless and instantaneous), then the clone will appreciate that (illusion of continuous perception) as much as I would, so the carcass that's left behind no longer matters as it's instantly rendered null to the world (has no conscious perceptions to weight up anything).
On an unrelated matter, I'm about to painlessly lose consciousness and consistent perception IRL (via sleep).
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I double down and transport over regardless of the dilemma, and don't pull the lever. Is that immoral of me? I don't know... it is me?
I transport back and presume that all these choices were done by two other people, not me.
Will you even have free will once you are ported over?
Well, you never had free will to begin with, so...
Y'know, the more I think about free will as a religous concept, the more I'm convinced it's supposed to be an allegory for how to treat others, like a more convoluted Golden Rule. The source was shifted to "God" simply to make the garbage people that don't normally care about others hesitate before they just ignore others' advice on how to treat people.
The reasoning is pretty simple: Nobody can actually do anything they want because others will interfere. Individuals restrict others' freedom all the time. If you're restricting others freedoms, you're doing an even worse version of judging others. The Bible pretty clearly says to leave such critical stuff that idiots can screw up in God's hands, because idiots can and will screw it up.
Same with free will. Peoples' freedom is, according to religous teachings, a gift from God. They describe such things as "from God" solely because idiots respect their flavor of Sky Daddy over other human beings.
If it's actually a gift from God, then it makes little sense that humans can simply remove a gift an all-powerful diety bestows. So... either historic humans are insanely stupid and bad at logic ... or it's actually an allegory for not trying to control others so much.
So Andy Weir's "The Egg". It's a good philosophy.
My concept of free will and determinism is that there are both in a way. What we see manifest at our level as free will is at its core determinism, driven by how the environment has evolved our personality to react and think about things. When asked to think of a color we quickly come up with a choice, made by either a preference for or a recent memory of, yet if asked when we actually chose that color at the thinking level we can't find a single point where there were others to pick from, we just "came up with it". Our free will is a conglomeration of things beyond our control.
That's pretty much exactly why I think it's more about a lesson on how to treat others. Humans fundamentally believe they're free to choose things, regardless of their religious affiliation. We always tell ourselves we want this and that, and decided x and y, etc. Regardless of the reality of free will, we all think we have it.
The only genuine purpose of saying Free Will is a gift from God I can think of is simply to make the dummies that want to force behavior on others hesitate about stepping on "God's domain".
If you are quick enough, you can even come back with five extra wallets. Guilt free credit cards.
Aren’t we largely ships of Theseus regardless? Are the carbon atoms I was born with still in me or have they been slowly cycled out? I guess your teeth and bones prob don’t change much. Welp, time to go do some reading
Well, you aren't born with teeth, and also you lose your baby teeth and get a new set, so those at least certainly aren't original.
Umm… you’re born with those in your skull.
Just rattling around loose like Skittles in a bucket
That's why the late showers are "wisdom" teeth. Your brain is finally getting big enough to shove 'em out of there.
Even though your teeth and bones don't change much, your skin is part of you, and that's constantly shedding and growing new cells.
It really depends on how the teleportation works. If it's folding spacetime to make it so that I can step instantaneously through the gap, that's definitely still me. If it's just like a portal cutting temporarily through Hell ala WH40k or Event Horizon, it's probably still me, but I might be suffering from demonic posession. If I'm being completely atomized, converted to electricity, and transmitted to the other tube to be reconstituted as an exact copy, then I am a copy.
IMO, even the digitally sent person could be the original, depending on the philosophical concepts being applied (same ship of theseus style questions). If it's just the process of reading your atoms to that level of detail that makes you disappear, and the only information that is literally 'you' is being transferred over and reconstituted in a similarly one-way-by-function process, it's almost more of a phase shift to digital and back than a copy. Pretty much just side-stepping matter's inability to travel without acceleration.
If the machine is basically 'digesting' the person only to send over the results for reproduction, though... that's definitely a copy. Pretty sure Trek describes their transporters as the latter? They're definitely killing a bunch of people in that show. ha Though to answer it with any kind of conclusive result, I'd think we'd need a technical description for how it works, and it cannot exist, so... lol
the thing is though, everyone older than like a year is already a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy... Our bodies are the ship of theseus, it's only by pure statistical inevitability that some handfull of atoms inside us are the exact same ones we were born with.
Nonono, that's taking a step backwards toward the Ship of Theseus instead of the teleporter question. Everyone agrees there is a continued experience regardless of whether someone says, "yup that's still exactly your body".
The entire point of the teleporter question is... where is "your" mind and identity defined? If it's only a prescription for how a body looks and behaves, then it doesn't matter. If it's someone's own, personal, literal consciousness and continued sense of 'self' by that specific consciousness, it does matter if YOUR consciousness is coming out still attached to the body.
Hokay, here we go again.
In philosopher Derek Parfit’s teletransporter thought experiment, he differentiates between two major concepts: personal identity and “relation R.”
Personal identity is an individual person as that specific individual. If the teletransporter copies a person to one place while destroying the original, then a new personal identity is created.
Relation R is the stream of consciousness that connects a person’s mind from one moment to another. Parfit compares this to a billiard ball rolling along a pool table, as you can track the path the ball travels without the path breaking. It’s the memories, hopes, values, and goals a person carries with them.
He argues that as long as this relation R is maintained, that is more important than maintaining a personal identity. So he would argue that it is not you pulling the lever, but it would be you in all the ways that matter.
Except for the only way that matters to me
No, you (the new you) wouldn't even know the difference.
It'd be like when you fall asleep on the couch and sleep for two minutes, but the dream seems like it lasted several days, because you dreamt of having memories of things. The brain simply doesn't know the difference between memories of a long dream or a short dream of long memories.
Preface: I'm talking about Star Trek's transporters specifically. Teleportation via destruction and reconstruction. Any kind of space folding wormhole nonsense obviously doesn't apply here.
There is no new me, there's someone else with my memories. Why would I care whether he knows the difference? This is equivocation. There is only one you, and that's the physical entity reading this comment right now. If a perfect copy of you were made over there, you could consider them a you, but they aren't you.
If you step onto a transporter pad to teleport to the Starship Enterprise, then you never live to see the inside of it. You can philosophize all you want about what "you" actually means, but at the end of the day, the you that you are dies. What that copy does or does not experience has no bearing on that fact.
I always get like 15 comments deep in these threads reiterating the same point over and over, so I'll just get ahead of that and reiterate it now: unless you believe you have a soul, your existence ends the moment your body is destroyed. A transporter kills you, and there is no way to philosophize your way around that. The fact that someone else who shares all of your memories doesn't remember any lapse in consciousness doesn't change the fact that the only you that meaningfully exists fucking dies.
I won't be responding to any replies that don't acknowledge my validity as an independent entity. Anyone who asserts that someone else who shares my memories has any claim over being me is getting blocked. I hate this argument and I hate that so many people are so frequently wrong about it.
Dead people don't care either, so neither would you if you chose to enter a teleporter. The real question is where they put all the remains of the old versions.
I don't think the Star Trek transporter works like that though. They do pass the material through worn holey warp space or something. There are episodes about them getting stuck there and such.
Well it seems pretty clear you value personal identity over psychological continuation. All I’ll offer is an excerpt from one of Parfit’s books: https://www.stafforini.com/docs/Parfit%20-%20The%20unimportance%20of%20identity.pdf
I don’t think it’s the same excerpt I read years ago, and to be honest I only had time to skim it, but it seems like his arguments start on page 16 of the pdf, 28 of the book. I don’t expect it to convince you, but you likely won’t find more professional thoughts on the matter online. If you’re this passionate about it, you may as well read the actual philosophy.
Actually, that excerpt might give some insight, but to get a comprehensive explanation of various lines of thought, the Stanford Encyclopedia is where you should go: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-ethics/
Okay, but actually solving the thought experiment requires understanding of what it is to be conscious. It could appear continuous and identical to all outside observers and all external tests but it could still be a new conscious identity and you, the observer might no longer exist. It's not called "the hard problem" for nothing.
What you are saying sounds like two concepts/problems closely related but distinct to the teletransporter thought experiment, the hard problem of consciousness and the problem other minds.
In terms of the hard problem of consciousness, I think Parfit assumes a level of consciousness in his arguments or he wouldn’t be talking about it. It’s been too long since I read his works to say how he views that consciousness arising, but the setup of a person’s body being destroyed and recreated lends itself toward the constitution view, although I also think that would conflict with his point on personal identity. I think some level of dualistic/idealist separation of body and mind would be required for the continuation of consciousness across bodies.
Your actual argument of whether we as outside observers could know that the teletransported’s consciousness is continuous, we can’t. At least I don’t think there’s a foolproof way of knowing the minds of others. I think the best we could do is watch the person. If they step out of the teletransporter, stick their thumb pointing at the first and say “Boy, I’d hate to be that guy,” there was probably a break in consciousness. If they pull the lever, point at the first teletransporter station and say “I came from there to pull this lever,” I’ll believe the relation R is conserved. And if they do both, I’ll chuckle and buy them a beer.
Oh, I don't think the one experiencing it would know either. Gaps in consciousness and memory can be pretty concrete. Every moment of existence could be your only one and all your past experiences could be implanted or false memories and there would be no real way of knowing.
Yah, that’s always technically a factor, but if you have to doubt your own basic perceptions your ability to hold many (if not most) beliefs is severely damaged. It becomes difficult to invest yourself into the world you appear to exist in because it “might not be real.” And frankly that’s really boring, and I can’t live a good life leaning on that doubt.
The best one can do is trust their perceptions (unless something is obviously affecting it like substances) and assume their reality is real. If they later “wake up” in the “real” reality and learn the reality they knew was false, then mourn what wasn’t but seemed to be and start living in the “new” reality.
In this case, if the new identity perceives themself as a direct continuation I don’t see a compelling reason to doubt their perception.
it could also be that all of this is made up by us humans because we feel a need for things to have deep meaning, but in fact everything is just atoms doing stuff and so long as it's the same kind of atoms doing the same thing then for all intents and purposes it is the same thing.
That's not mutually exclusive at all. The question is what the experience of consciousness is. Why am "I" watching these atoms do their thing and experiencing that, rather than a similar set of atoms.
But what if it's just a copy of that relation R? Is it the same mind in a new body? Or a new body that's so utterly similar that it will merely continue on believing it's the same person?
I don't like that philosophy, because it pretends the mind exists outside of the brain.
Does the difference of the literally unobservable matter? Yes absolutely to the person stepping in to the machine! Sure, everyone else doesn't have to care, but the teleported person sure probably should care, so that philosophy does less than nothing for answering the question.
He's basically saying, 'I don't care if you die if I cannot tell if the new guy is different.". Saying, "I don't care" is not an answer.
Relation R by definition cannot be copied because it is a continuity of experience. Personal identity could be copied, at which point two separate identities would exist, one that was destroyed and one that was created at the new point, but from the new copy’s perspective they stepped into one side and out the other, and while the brain that thinks it may be a copy that continued perspective isn’t. It doesn’t matter to relation R if the mind itself moves or if there is a new mind that only thinks/feels that it did.
I get that materialist views on minds and bodies has become very popular over the last couple decades, but I think it’s good to understand that when he wrote this atheism and the materialist philosophy it lends itself to was not the norm. In some ways, holding a constitutional view, the notion that a person with a “first-person perspective” cannot exist without a body that can support and constitute that perspective, on personhood would better support a materialist view. The mind itself isn’t teleporting, but the copied body that the mind arises from mimics that through the new body. (Note: this paragraph feels very muddy, but I don’t know how to clarify it further)
I don’t think it’s fair to say that he doesn’t care. The question being asked is “what should be cared about most?” A physical body or the mind within it? The person’s brain or the thoughts, hopes, and dreams it creates? If it’s the body then why do we take brain dead patients off of life support? If it’s the body then why do people dream about uploading their “consciousness” to a computer, leaving their original body behind? If the new body/identity creates the same thoughts, hopes, and dreams in the same way, then the most important aspects are preserved.
Based on my understanding of Parfit’s reasoning, I think he would willingly use the teletransporter himself, so I don’t think you can say he only wants others to use it while snickering on the side.
Well the perspective still doesn't make sense. The entire point of the question is, "does it matter"? and since everyone agrees that the only person it could effect differently is the person who stepped in to the machine... it really is tentamount to saying, "I don't care", when your answer is simply side-stepping the entire point of the thought experiment.
If Relation R is literally YOUR experience, then saying, "if that's preserved it doesn't matter", is ... just restating the freaking question, not answering it.
Everyone agrees the specifics don't matter if it's YOUR consciousness handling both identical forms on both sides. The entire question is is it YOUR consciousness? The very premise says both entities are outwardly indistinguishable, even by behavior. By saying behavior and memories are the same, the premise itself is basically SAYING "Relation R" is preserved, as far as it being a specific set of thoughts and behaviors.
Sometimes "I don't care" is the correct answer. Is the world that you experience on a day to day basis reflective of reality? You cannot determine that with absolute certainty, so the answer is "I don't care" because caring too much will just lead to unhealthy solipsism and a worse state of existence.
If I walk through the teletransporter, is it still me walking out the other side? The answer to that will vary greatly depending on your ontological views. If you believe in pure idealism and that minds exist independently of the physical realm then sure, that's me! I'm simply shifting my awareness from one place to another! If you lean toward a dualist perspective where bodies and minds exist and interact, then maybe it is me? Can my consciousness teleport to the new body, maybe? I don't know. And if you're a materialist that believes only the physical exists and conscious minds are just a phantasm brought about by chemical reactions, which I get the impression you may be, then the answer is clearly no, I was vaporized and a copy came out the other end, my body, my personal identity, is ended! But those are just reflective of one lens to view the situation through, idealism vs materialism. There are others, and they all inform one another to such a degree that most people I can think of would be hard-pressed to fully justify why they would say "yes that is me," or "no it is not."
But in any given viewpoint, that relation R is preserved, because it makes no judgement on what a mind is or how it relates to the body, only that a continuous perspective is maintained. And that is the premise of the argument that "I don't care" about whether it is or is not me stepping out. I may care about my body and mind's continued existence, but I only care about those things as a means to continuing the memories, goals, and thoughts that they allow for. So as long as I know that those are preserved (relation R) then "I don't care" about the rest. Now you may disagree, and that would be fair. It really just boils down to value judgements.
Is that a little more satisfying for you?
No, because it's still answering a question with, "I don't care". Don't get in to philosophy if you're going to accept, "I don't care".
I cared when I was learning philosophy in college. I wanted to establish a set of beliefs and an ability to alter them as new evidence arises. I learned a lot of possible perspectives and subscribed to the ones that made a cohesive worldview that fit with my experience and knowledge of the world.
I had beliefs about what consciousness is, but then my dad died in just the right way to shatter that idea for me, and throw everything else into question along with it. A year later and I still haven't bothered to build a new ontology.
The way I see it, I've studied and know a lot of different ways of thinking. That's good for problem solving and offering new viewpoints to others. I'm still open to new perspectives, as rare as they come these days. But if I understand all of these different options to believe and come to the conclusion that I don't know which is the best to believe, then I think I've come as close to knowing as I can. And at that point, why should I care to ruminate on it further?
It's not about your rumination, but about how your reply wasn't even answering the question posed.
I think this is just a rephrasing of the original question because it still boils down to whether that relation R would be maintained after such a teleportation. Or, for that matter, going to sleep and waking up. Can we be sure it's the same stream of consciousness that wakes up (whether on the other side of sleep or teleportation), or just one that thinks it's the same because those things listed are actually stored in the brain, not outside of it.
At this point in my journey, I believe it to be possible that this stream of consciousness is external to our bodies, but I think there's enough evidence that personality, memories, and all that are associated with the brain rather than anything else. Think about brain injuries and diseases and how much they can wreck the core of who someone is.
Though it's also possible that brain degradation is just hindering the connection between brain and consciousness, so changes in personality and memory loss might be more of an artifact of that than a sign that all of that information is stored exclusively in the brain. It's also possible that the brain's memory mechanisms are just easier to use than whatever the consciousness has going on (if anything), and it takes a while of not having a brain to be able to use them effectively again.
It's all speculation but interesting. Glad to have written this reply because that previous paragraph hadn't occurred to me before this.
It wouldnt matter since the person pulling the level would be an exact copy of me and there would be no remaining original... Unless.
:checks to see if side burns are real:
I get to die and save a bunch of people? I'm in!
I love this
I mean, does it really matter? For all intents and purposes, the person coming out of the teleporter is me. They'll have continuity of consciousness. You can argue about "oh it just kills you and makes a person exactly like you" like maybe so, but does it matter?
Now imagine it malfunctions and doesn't vaporize you before creating the copy, but just creates the copy at the end point leaving you still standing in the transporter. Still you? If not, what's changed?
then there's two mes which immediately start to diverge into different people due to their different experiences, and the one left behind eventually joins the Maquis.
I mean, I can just kill myself the normal way
For the question posed it doesn't really matter no. Assuming it works the way we expect it to in sci-fi and it's an exact copy, for all intents and purposes it is you. There is nothing ethereal about the human consciousness—if everything is exactly as it should be, then you have all the pieces of "you" that are needed.
The teleporter dilemma only matters to the being using the device initially. If you're vaporized, you die. You don't have continuity of consciousness with a different set of atoms perfectly arranged to be you, even if they perceive that to be the case on the other side. Still you, just not the you that gets to continue to exist.
rose tyler be like
SOMA be like
Is your continuity of consciousness broken by the teleporter?
what even is consciousness?
As far as I can tell an emergent characteristic of the nervous system that evolved as an advantage over instinct/intuition/heuristics arrived at subconsciously
My sense of self is inherent to the material it inhabits, but is able to transcend it for microseconds at a time.
It’ll be Brundle-Fly.
The answer to this is quite simple.
But first, we have to talk about parallel universes...
Plot twist: The lever was set for the train to move to the sidetrack. Who caused the train to squish the people, you or theseus' you? O.o
Eh, I also go to sleep occasionally (every day) and have no assurance my conscience transfers over to the next morning (or noon).
Sleep isn't the same as unconsciousness, at least as far as this dilemma goes. Sleep is a state of reduced consciousness, but there is continuity and awareness of your surroundings. If there weren't, you alarm clock wouldn't have woken you up this morning
I'm neither a sleep nor brain expert (or amateur even), still, I know that the "you" part of your brain occurs largely in the prefrontal cortex while more basic stuff occurs at the back, like the brainstem.
That's why lobotomies "worked" – no more "you", no more mental health issues!
For waking up, I don't think any "you" part is needed. Audio processing and some consciousness starter are probably all that's needed.
I don't consider myself to be the entirety of my brain. I am the abstraction of abstractions of ... that has emerged for some reason. Shutting those abstractions down for sleeping is, in my opinion, no different from this scenario. I wouldn't consider brainstem continuity to be a relevant factor.
Oh shit
No.
It will be your inni
Just set up Riker/Boimler situation so I stay here and my transporter clone pulls the lever. Easy-peasy.
Looking at the bigger picture, I will "maybe" die and 4 people will be saved regardless. Not even a dilemma.
If you have to take me apart to get there then I don't want to go
Depends if it can keep the illusion of my perception continuous.
If yes (and the death is painless and instantaneous), then the clone will appreciate that (illusion of continuous perception) as much as I would, so the carcass that's left behind no longer matters as it's instantly rendered null to the world (has no conscious perceptions to weight up anything).
On an unrelated matter, I'm about to painlessly lose consciousness and consistent perception IRL (via sleep).
If there's only one of me, does it matter?
Will your decision to pull the lever carry over. Is it worth it with no guarantee?