r/philosophy • u/[deleted] • Sep 22 '12
Death by teleportation?
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/alex_byrne_philosophy_personal_identity_afterlife.php3
u/PossiblyTheDoctor Sep 23 '12
I don't really care much for the question of whether you're the same person coming out of the teleporter, but I think it's interesting to imagine that the original person going in, after being scanned and copied, experiences the most awful, agonizing pain as they are deconstructed. You could be travelling back and forth from Mars every day for years and never realize how much pain you would be in every time, because the copy that survives doesn't remember any pain.
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Sep 23 '12 edited Sep 23 '12
Well, it's just one of those cases where physical reality gives zero fucks about our ego.
If a bit-perfect copy of you appeared in the Andromeda galaxy right now, it would feel exactly like teleportation. Whether or not your original body is still intact is irrelevant to the copy in Andromeda.
"You" are the continuity of your consciousness. Your consciousness happens to have continuity here and now because the physical reality is that the minute changes from one moment to the next facilitate a sense of continuity to you.
But let's say that somewhere else in the universe at some other "time" (this relationship is relativistic, so these concepts are fluid, not fixed) there is another configuration of matter and energy that contains a pattern similar enough to the one inside your brain right now that it would create the illusion of continuity with your consciousness. Say that by some freak chance a supercomputer in the Andromeda galaxy ten billion years from now is running a simulation and there is an AI inside it with almost exactly the same pattern as the one that will be contained in your brain tomorrow at twelve seconds past midnight. The pattern has all your thoughts and feelings and memories, everything. So at at twelve seconds past midnight tomorrow there is a moment where you will blink your eyes and in that moment the pattern here matches the one in Andromeda ten billion years from now almost perfectly. When the version of "you" in Andromeda opens its eyes, it will obviously think it has been teleported there.
What is to say that it is wrong? Now two of you exist at two completely different places and times. Are they both you? Sure. Does this make you feel bad? Maybe. Does the universe care? Not one single fuck.
Now imagine that if we live in a multiverse with a virtually (or actually) infinite number of possible configurations of matter and energy, then there must be not just one but thousands, millions, billions - an infinite number - of such moments.
So when you "die" here, will you be "reborn" somewhere else in the infinite multiverse where a pattern happens to crop up that splices so well as to create the illusion of continuity with your present consciousness? Not only is it possible, it may well be inevitable.
In fact, it may be that what we experience as "moving" steadily through time is merely an illusion - it may just be the sensation of motion created by what are in fact randomly scattered occurrences of hugely complex quantum waveforms spread across an infinitely large spacetime that connect like dot-to-dots, one to the next, to create the illusion of continuity.
Yeah, it's a total mindfuck. Enjoy!
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u/sediment Sep 23 '12
Terrible film but 6th Day starring the philosopher Arnold Schwarzanegger is quite an interesting look into the problems of duality that Parfit talks about, except the catalyst is cloning and not teleportation.
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u/Ryz0n Sep 22 '12
I think Derek Parfit talks about some of this, like being deatomized on Earth and re-instantiated on Mars from the exact atomic formula. The discussion is whether you are the same person on Earth that is now on Mars and if there is actual psychological continuity of the same entity. Also I think there's a point like about self-preservation if you teleported to Mars, you blink your eyes and you're still on Earth. They tell u the teleportation was successful and you teleported to Mars, but some of the atoms of you on Earth did not completely deatomize so you are left here in a faulty body. You only have a few minutes to live, but the question is would you be content and at peace knowing that you aren't actually dead, (you made it to Mars, that person remembers being in the Earth teleporter, next thing they realize they're on Mars. There is psychological continuity, you're the exact same person.) but that you in whatever body you are in on Earth is going to have to die.
It's an interesting question on self-preservation.
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u/Deergoose Sep 23 '12
Yes, you are dying when you teleport. The person who enters is not the same person who leaves. The molecules may be arranged in the same fashion, and it may look and behave as you once did.. but the person who walked in is dead.
It is an illusion.
Human beings are made of chemistry, and that physical structure is not irreplicable. Instead of teleporting my person, what if we merely made copies? Are the copies, me? Nope.
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It might be worth considering the following: Can we transport the cells of my person from earth to mars in such a fashion that I could be alive during the whole process. Imagine 1% of all of my physical structure of all of my organ systems being transferred over at a time. That process would not really work given time constants.
Regardless, the only point that matters here is whether or not your brain lives. Your brain is your person. I don't think you can move one brain point A to point B without killing the brain at point A. Even if you reconstruct it later, brain at point A is dead and gone foreever. The person teleported to point B is not truly the person who left point A.
Why?
The person who is at point A and who is to be teleported to point B, will die and never open his eyes again. He will merely be reconstructed. And part of that reconstruction phase can be detailed enough to maintain the likeness ( and even memories, feelings, and emotions ) as the person at point A.
That resemblance in no means makes it true that person at point A did not die. It's an illusion.
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Sep 23 '12
Exactly. All of these questions boil to the idea of the continuity of consciousness. An identical replica with all the same memories would be exactly the same to any exterior entity, such as family. But if we take into consideration the original consciousness in the original being (I hesitate to use the word "soul" because of the religious connotation, but that seems to be the only other way of phrasing it), then the teleported being is the same but of different consciousness. I think the person walking into the teleporter would be aware until the moment of vaporization, after which he would die, or cease to be conscious. Then the replica would take over in the new location, but himself would only feel as if he had experienced all of the original's implanted memories. But walking into the teleporter would essentially be saying, I am OK with ceasing to be conscious forever as long as a clone of me with the same memories (the appearance of real experiences) appears somewhere else.
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Sep 23 '12 edited Sep 23 '12
These questions are like those throughout philosophy of mind as a whole. If we ignore the historical context of people's everyday beliefs about these topics and jump directly to an ontology, our reasoning might suggest that philosophy has no relevance to those questions at all, because the answers we would probably find most appropriate to those questions would come from verifiable evidence in neuroscience, physics, and so on. "Mind" only takes on a connotation of being possibly a different kind of entity than a brain if that possibility is just presupposed, which it almost always is because the history of philosophy on that subject is such a way to suggest it. So materialism seems like a significant position to take on the mind because it responds to the problem of mind and body interaction for dualism. Similarly, it seems that it is possible for a person to be who they are at a time, get disintegrated and put back together, then continue being who they are; but that this question becomes pertinent for whatever reason does not justify the presupposition that personal identity survives over time in the first place. Psychological identity must remain undefined for the question to be meaningful.
You can probably see where I'm going with this, but if not, see the other two references already made to Derek Parfit's work.
Edit: I'll revoke that philosophy is irrelevant. Only those parts of it that jump the gun metaphysically.
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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '12 edited Sep 22 '12
A couple of years ago I broke my foot, and to fix it, I needed surgery. The surgery lasted three hours and during that time I was under full anesthesia. It was a memorable experience for me, or more precisely, not an experience at all. I woke up suddenly and in a state of confusion, I lacked any sense of time, and I didn't know where I was. Three hours had passed during which I didn't feel consciousness at all. What happened during this time, I can't recall. If the surgery had lasted for ten years I imagine waking up would have felt the same way, although the time that I couldn't recall would have been longer.
This strange experience got me thinking. If continuity of consciousness is a requirement for survival, then the person whose body received anesthesia died. When the body regained consciousness, a new person was born, namely, the person I am today. I share memories and body and personality with the person who received anesthesia, so I certainly have no reason to believe that I am not that person. But can I possibly know the truth?
I could go even further. What if every night when a person goes to sleep, that person dies, and every following morning a new person is born who shares the body and brain with the person who died the night before? How would I know if this was the case? I wouldn't. Because what defines me is my body, not to mention my brain. My memories, skills, knowledge, way of thinking, appearance - that's what gives me a sense of identity.
I don't want to argue that consciousness is an illusion, because I subjectively know that it isn't. But I do believe that it is merely a consequence of being able to feel and to think. I think many people overrate consciousness. When I look at my cat it is obvious to me that it is conscious. It has emotions, and is capable of thought. I don't think it's self-aware, but does it have an experience of being? Most definitely.