I’d go deeper and say that “continuous consciousness” isn’t a concept that makes sense. You only live in the moment, with access to part of your past selves’ memories.
So there’s no distinction for you between “you have been destroyed and an identical copy of you has been constructed an imperceptible amont of time later” and “an imperceptible amount of time had passed in which nothing has happened to you”
I’d go deeper and say that “continuous consciousness” isn’t a concept that makes sense. You only live in the moment, with access to part of your past selves’ memories.
I posit that consciousness is a chemical process occurring in your brain. This process is continuously ongoing, and when it stops, you die. If a transporter constructs a perfect copy of you, down to the chemical process that constitutes your consciousness, then there is no continuity between your original body and this new one, because it’s a wholly different brain.
When people talk about continuity of consciousness, they usually mean the ego, and believe that when teleporting “you die, but someone else completely indistinguishable from you but somehow not you” is born.
I say that this little piece of magic “you”-ness that doesn’t make the jump just doesn’t exist.
I already explained how the thing that makes the consciousness continuous doesn’t transfer over to the new body. It’s not magic.
Really, all of this philosophical posturing is pointless. When you step into the entrance of the transporter, the entity that experienced stepping into the entrance of the transporter does not experience stepping out of the exit. If that entity is successfully deconstructed, it dies.
Assuming we’re talking about Star Trek/The Prestige style transporter. Some kind of space-bending wormhole that physically transports a body doesn’t kill the user.
If you interrupt a chemical process and then let it continue, it’s indistinguishable (and therefore identical) to letting it continue in the first place.
If you’d e.g. freeze your body, it doesn’t matter if you call the frozen state “dead” or don’t: your life would continue if it’s possible to unfreeze you.
Death or no death of meaningless if an indistinguishable individual resumes life after.
My transporter clone and I may be indistinguishable to you, but I can distinguish between us pretty easily. A transporter is not interrupting a chemical process and then letting it continue, it is stopping a chemical process and then starting another one elsewhere. Death or no death is very meaningful to me, the person who is about to be disintegrated at the entrance of this transporter.
The person who shows up at the lever looks like me, acts like me, thinks they’re me, and they are not me. No matter how arbitrarily similar we are, they’re a different person. If the transporter fails to disintegrate me, I do not see through that person’s eyes. I do not hear through that person’s ears. Because they’re a different person.
So it stands to reason that if the transporter does disintegrate me, I still will not see through that person’s eyes nor hear through that person’s ears. And because my eyes and ears are gone, I will never see or hear anything again. There’s a word for this state of existence, in which you do not experience anything.
No you can’t. Only through the logic of knowing that the transported one must be the copy. Both will feel like you do. If you eliminate that location part (e.g. like in “The Prestige”), nobody will know or care who is “copy” or “original” (if concepts like that even apply in whatever fictional mechanism that movie uses)
I don’t know what you mean by the talk of “chemical process” and how it’s supposedly meaningful if one ends or not. I’m a brain believing it’s alive. If one recreates or simulates that brain’s functionality sufficiently well and puts it into roughly similar simulated or real body, that person is me.
I’m saying that you’re essentially believing in souls. That the ego in your head that believes it’s an entity because it has access to your memory and philosophy is just an illusion. No less real, but not in any form required to be continuous.
If you eliminate that location part (e.g. like in “The Prestige”), nobody will know or care who is “copy” or “original”
I will. Or rather, if my original body gets disintegrated, I won’t. Because I’m dead.
I’m saying that you’re essentially believing in souls.
Nope. I’m explicitly denying the existence of a soul. My experience is bound to my physical body, and nothing else. If my physical body is disintegrated, then my existence ends, even if someone constructs a perfect copy of my body somewhere else. That will not be my physical body.
A you died. A you remains. Nothing is lost, so calling it a “death” is like calling sleep “a small death”: purely philosophical and with no relevance to your ability to live your life after.
It’s a trick of perspective. If you acknowledge that “you” is just a electrochemical reaction, you’re just like a computer program: only defined by what’s happening, not which CPU is running it.
I’d go deeper and say that “continuous consciousness” isn’t a concept that makes sense. You only live in the moment, with access to part of your past selves’ memories.
So there’s no distinction for you between “you have been destroyed and an identical copy of you has been constructed an imperceptible amont of time later” and “an imperceptible amount of time had passed in which nothing has happened to you”
I posit that consciousness is a chemical process occurring in your brain. This process is continuously ongoing, and when it stops, you die. If a transporter constructs a perfect copy of you, down to the chemical process that constitutes your consciousness, then there is no continuity between your original body and this new one, because it’s a wholly different brain.
When people talk about continuity of consciousness, they usually mean the ego, and believe that when teleporting “you die, but someone else completely indistinguishable from you but somehow not you” is born.
I say that this little piece of magic “you”-ness that doesn’t make the jump just doesn’t exist.
I already explained how the thing that makes the consciousness continuous doesn’t transfer over to the new body. It’s not magic.
Really, all of this philosophical posturing is pointless. When you step into the entrance of the transporter, the entity that experienced stepping into the entrance of the transporter does not experience stepping out of the exit. If that entity is successfully deconstructed, it dies.
Assuming we’re talking about Star Trek/The Prestige style transporter. Some kind of space-bending wormhole that physically transports a body doesn’t kill the user.
You didn’t explain, you begged the question
If you interrupt a chemical process and then let it continue, it’s indistinguishable (and therefore identical) to letting it continue in the first place.
If you’d e.g. freeze your body, it doesn’t matter if you call the frozen state “dead” or don’t: your life would continue if it’s possible to unfreeze you.
Death or no death of meaningless if an indistinguishable individual resumes life after.
My transporter clone and I may be indistinguishable to you, but I can distinguish between us pretty easily. A transporter is not interrupting a chemical process and then letting it continue, it is stopping a chemical process and then starting another one elsewhere. Death or no death is very meaningful to me, the person who is about to be disintegrated at the entrance of this transporter.
The person who shows up at the lever looks like me, acts like me, thinks they’re me, and they are not me. No matter how arbitrarily similar we are, they’re a different person. If the transporter fails to disintegrate me, I do not see through that person’s eyes. I do not hear through that person’s ears. Because they’re a different person.
So it stands to reason that if the transporter does disintegrate me, I still will not see through that person’s eyes nor hear through that person’s ears. And because my eyes and ears are gone, I will never see or hear anything again. There’s a word for this state of existence, in which you do not experience anything.
No you can’t. Only through the logic of knowing that the transported one must be the copy. Both will feel like you do. If you eliminate that location part (e.g. like in “The Prestige”), nobody will know or care who is “copy” or “original” (if concepts like that even apply in whatever fictional mechanism that movie uses)
I don’t know what you mean by the talk of “chemical process” and how it’s supposedly meaningful if one ends or not. I’m a brain believing it’s alive. If one recreates or simulates that brain’s functionality sufficiently well and puts it into roughly similar simulated or real body, that person is me.
I’m saying that you’re essentially believing in souls. That the ego in your head that believes it’s an entity because it has access to your memory and philosophy is just an illusion. No less real, but not in any form required to be continuous.
I will. Or rather, if my original body gets disintegrated, I won’t. Because I’m dead.
Nope. I’m explicitly denying the existence of a soul. My experience is bound to my physical body, and nothing else. If my physical body is disintegrated, then my existence ends, even if someone constructs a perfect copy of my body somewhere else. That will not be my physical body.
A you died. A you remains. Nothing is lost, so calling it a “death” is like calling sleep “a small death”: purely philosophical and with no relevance to your ability to live your life after.
It’s a trick of perspective. If you acknowledge that “you” is just a electrochemical reaction, you’re just like a computer program: only defined by what’s happening, not which CPU is running it.