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So you deny, then, that your first person continuous dynamic point of view suddenly exists in some location other than that it currently exists in? Good. That's what I'm saying.
It's not much of a point as it relates to the thread.
Yes, the single instance, continuous and dynamic, of the process, is the self. A duplicate of the process is another self. And so forth. But they're not the same self.
The spreadsheet program running on my desktop and the copy on my laptop aren't the same. That's not the point though.
Actually, a dualist might be quite fine with the idea that this teletrans also duplicates the homonculus, or that the homonculus might well, once freed of one body, relocate into an identical body for which it is already 'tuned'.
This a meaningless statement. I'm not the guy I was a year ago. So what? You seem to think there is something significant as it realtes to clones but not to what is actually happeining. We are dynamic and constantly changing.
1) that a 'spirit' exists which, upon the death of the individual, somehow manages to cross over to the duplicate; or
2) the duplicate individual is a separate and distinct individual, because there's no way anything can 'cross' (i.e. no way the individual first person perspective can shift from old you to 'new you').
So, do the clones that exist today (identical twins) share a single spirit or does only one of them have a spirit and the other is a zombie? Does god make second spirt and why would he not do the same for a clone?
The simple way to prove point 2) is to demonstrate a 'what if' scenario in which the teletransporter fails in some way. In these failures, where the original still survives and the duplicate does appear, we see clearly that you do not become your duplicate; yet this example, which so seems to bug Blackmore, is often forcibly removed from the discussion. It is precisely this counterexample that shows that you cannot use this method of transport to get to any other world.
I've never read anything from Blackmore that indicated this was in anyway a problem for her. It's not a problem for me. There is no "you". That is like saying an identical twin doesn't become his or her twin. No one is saying otherwise. It's just that what I sense of as me would continue. If I were cloned and the clones met we wouldn't know who was the original. We would both think that we were the original. Which calls for a youtube video.
'Process' though is not a thing in itself. Without the physical substrate, the process is meaningless. And in this case, we have a unique class of process - a self-monitoring, self-regulating, self-observing process (yes, circular terms, but bear with me). In fact, our 'self' could be seen more as a collection of interrelated processes operating within a given material construct. Yes, we could create a duplicate material construct, and copy the process between A and B; but process B is not process A, and the duplicate material constructs are not the same construct, any more than we would consider two duplicate watches to be the same watch.
You are making my head spin. The MadTV video makes more sense. The "clone" would also be a collection interralated processes operating within a given material construct. And the two watches are in many ways the same but in a number of ways different. They don't process differently and.... You're not saying anything.
Honest question: if you have before you two absolutely identical watches, each set to absolutely identical times and running absolutely identical processes - are they, in fact, the same watch, in your consideration?
No, but then two twins are not the same either. An original and clone aren't the same. Both would, at the moment of consciousness following cloning believe that they were the origninal.
It has to do with the only available observation we have: experience exists. If experience ceases to exist, it ceases to exist.
Our education, reason, and deduction leads us to believe that our experiences exists within a single physical construct, continuous and dynamic in nature; our observation and reason leads us to believe that, upon the death of one of those constructs which is similar to us, that construct also loses the ability to experience at all; we see no evidence that could lead us to believe that experience can start up again in some other location at some other time; and the first step of this process is the death of a similar physical construct.
Now you've gone off the deep end. You are saying that if I save a copy of my spreadsheet from one computer it won't work in another computer? That's just not true.
I'd bring up programs, but I have a creepy feeling that you see all instances of the same program as BEING the same program. If I have one computer - say, my desktop - on which I create a simple dice-rolling program; and I have another computer - my laptop - onto which I copy the program; I see those as two programs, identical but distinct. One may fail while another may succeed. Both may share identical experiences, but then again, both may not. At some point, one copy might cease altogether; the duplicate, while useful to me, is not the original program, and vice versa. And in most cases, the only copy that could actually be considered the 'original', to my mind, ceases to exist after the first time it is run; because once the program is 'saved', that is its first copy, and the original - the one living in the RAM - ceases to exist. This actually used to worry me, because I was concerned wtih copy degradation; which is why all my earlier programs actually existed in a hard-copy form which I could then use to create new duplicates of the programs, and, therefore, could make sure I had fresh copies from time to time.
I wonder why it is that no one who argues for the teletrans ever wants to discuss the 'if the original survives the process' case in depth - with the exception of the rare lunatic who claims that BOTH are the same self. Why is that?
I don't understand. I'm happy to discuss it and I can't imagine anyone not wanting to discuss it. Like identical twins they wouldn't be the same self. The would start as the same self and both percieve themselves as the original.
This D2 construct is the homonculus in the argument.
I'll let my uncle know. He has identical twins. Boy, will he ever be surprised.
But, you know, believe what you will. As far as I'm concerned, when the first poor sucker steps into that teletrans, he's a dead man. Two dead men, in fact, since what steps out at the other end would be a lifeless corpse.
Is that why identical twins are always born dead... oh, wait.
And what happens when one twin absorbes another. A real phenomenon that is the subject of ridiculous thriller at the moment. What happens to the twins soul? Due two souls inhabit the same body or does one soul die or go to heaven or limbo?
...which are each unique physical constructs. And, apparently, not even constructs which change significantly over the course of time, as most of your brain cells are the same ones you were born with.
It would be a merging of you with another. Personality-wise, since this is determined largely by the brain, it would still be you; but the body produces many of the chemicals that influence the brain, so over time, as you adapt to the new body, a new you would emerge - one that consisted of your self/brain processes, changed to accept a new chassis.
I don't appreciate hypocrisy. Accusing me of sophistry while you engage in ad hominem is extremely poor form.
I don't mean to be so rude, but it never fails to amaze me how someone who can accept computer intelligence, the non-existence of the divine, lack of spirits, failure of psi powers, and non-presence of Nessie and B-foot, can claim that they'd jump at the chance to be vaporized so their identical twin brother can be brainwashed into thinking they're you.
I honestly would love to be cloned and meet my clone ala Multiplicity.
I'm really curious why you thing this is significant? Aside from the novelty I don't see anything at all significant in it. It happens in the womb all of the time.
Nearly every cell of your body has identical DNA, yes? Exception of haploid reproductive cells and some anomalous people and cells, and of course not counting the hitchhiking bacteria, etc.. Of course, this same DNA is only one part of what determines how that cell will develop. The cell's immediate environment and its environmental developmental history (where "environment" includes other cells, hormonal environment, etc.) ensures that cell differentiation occurs and continues, and that you typically will not grow graymatter in your kidneys, or pancreatic tissue in your eyes, or whatever. The whole point of stem cells is that their destiny will be determined by their environment. Same information, different environment, leads to different development.
People are not static objects, they are living, behaving organisms. It makes no sense to talk about a person as having stored their identity, their history, inside them at any given point--any more than we should expect to see an entire film's history in one or two frames from somewhere past the midpoint. Let us assume, as the OP states, that the self (whatever that is) is information processing. Why on earth would anyone assume that all the relevant information is a) within the body of the person and not in the environment as well, and b) stored in a meaningful fashion independent of that environment? People here (not all) are assuming that characteristic X, Y, and Z are stored within a person, but those characteristics are reactions to things going on in that person's ongoing life. We speak of stored memories, but the research shows more re-processing and re-experiencing than retrieval of some stored information. There is no more reason to suspect that the information about stimulus perception, processing, and response is stored in the brain, any more than we should be able to cut open your legs to see where you have walked.
I have written 3 or 4 replies over the last 2 days, only to see them eaten by connection errors, so I will try to very briefly restate one or two things I wrote in more length but were lost. First... I love all the "how do you know you haven't died already?" or "brain surgery" or "sleep" examples; in those examples, we are naturally inferring a continuity, as we do more commonly in more common situations, by the continuity in physical perspective. Our experience appears to be continuous; it appears that we do inhabit the same body, with the same aches and pains, when we wake than when we went to sleep. Those who are dismissing the time-space continuity are playing silly philosophy games and electing to not count what may well be the most important determinant of "self".
Oh, and could we please stop with the "afraid to look", "afraid to contemplate" crap? I can think of a dozen motivations for someone to hold a materialist view or a dualist or an idealist, and choose to go or not to go. I've looked at this problem since before Interesting Ian; until somebody wins Randi's million, please do us all the favor of not pretending to read our minds and find fear. It just ends up sounding like posturing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, I am not one to claim mindreading.
But what does this have to do with ascribing meaning to "I"? Why do you say there is no "I"? Do you mean there is no "I" of the dualistic, subject-of-experience sort?
Nick is saying there is no "what Nick thinks most people think of as I."
If you try to convince him that what you think of as "I" is different, he will say you are deluding yourself and that you really mean what everyone else means.
It is best to just nod and say "uh huh" and get on to more important issues.
It makes no sense to talk about a person as having stored their identity, their history, inside them at any given point--any more than we should expect to see an entire film's history in one or two frames from somewhere past the midpoint.
Why on earth would anyone assume that all the relevant information is a) within the body of the person and not in the environment as well, and b) stored in a meaningful fashion independent of that environment?
Probably because most people retain their identity and history regardless of environmental changes. Ask Neil Armstrong, he will tell you. His entire childhood didn't get magically whisked away for the duration of his stay on the moon. Did it?
There is no more reason to suspect that the information about stimulus perception, processing, and response is stored in the brain, any more than we should be able to cut open your legs to see where you have walked.
People are getting hung up on personal identity. The problem of teleportation can be illustrated with inanimate objects as well:
Suppose you're the curator of the museum housing the Mona Lisa. It needs to be teleported to Mars for a special viewing. The teleporter on the Martian end works, but there's a malfunction on the Earth end- the first Mona Lisa was not destroyed in the process. The teleporter operator tells you there are now two paintings, and if you would kindly throw the original Mona Lisa in the nearest incinerator...
I think most of us would be loathe to do so and that's at the heart of the problem: a duplicate, no matter how exact, is still a duplicate. Under materialism, you don't magically have two POV's if a duplicate is made. You don't see through two sets of eyes. There is you and there is the duplicate, each with unique future life-paths.
The thought-experiment of the teleporter malfunctioning and not destroying the original is devastating to teleportation. None of us would voluntarily step into the incinerator, even with the knowledge that a duplicate of us will live on.
At least you seem to understand it. I can respect your wording and attitudes on the subject, though, frankly, it seems strange to me. I don't particulary see my children as a path to immortality for me, either; I'd just as soon not die. I'm not an altruist - I prefer not dying, especially if there's nothing afterwards.
What if it's all just a scam? There could be nothing at the other end, and you'll never know - you'll be dead. (...snip...) And you'll never be able to find out the truth about it, because you're willing to die for the illusion that you've continued elsewhere. That's why it's silly.
Headdesk, though. The whole premise of the thought experiment is that it's *not* a scam. I wouldn't even get on a jet if there wasn't a decent amount of transparency as far as what would go on once I was at 20k feet. I did say that if it was commonplace, understood, and people did it a lot and were happy with it, that's when I'd want to try it. Of *course* I wouldn't want to be an early tester. Of anything, much less a matter transporter.
First... I love all the "how do you know you haven't died already?" or "brain surgery" or "sleep" examples; in those examples, we are naturally inferring a continuity, as we do more commonly in more common situations, by the continuity in physical perspective. Our experience appears to be continuous; it appears that we do inhabit the same body, with the same aches and pains, when we wake than when we went to sleep. Those who are dismissing the time-space continuity are playing silly philosophy games and electing to not count what may well be the most important determinant of "self".
You've lost me. What reason is there for the clone not to exhibit aches and pains and continuity? I can only think that by clone you mean a blank slate clone. In my example the clone is an exact copy of all neurons and cells. In this case one would expect to have the same continuity. As for time-space continuity I honestly have no idea how that applies much less know whether it is the most important determinant of "self". It sounds like new age hokum to me but I know you are not one to give in to new age hokum so I've not a clue.
And why do you dismiss the brain transplant example. Do you think it is theoretically impossible? If not what would you expect from such procedure? Amnesia? A blank slate?
I think you are a bit too quick to dismiss the examples. I think if that is what you want to do then you ought not concern yourself with the transporter question. It's as much a sily game as anything else. But then perhaps you do.
In any event, I'm not wedded to any philosophical conclusion. I don't cling to the idea of "self" and if I remember correctly that is in part due to you.
The thought-experiment of the teleporter malfunctioning and not destroying the original is devastating to teleportation. None of us would voluntarily step into the incinerator, even with the knowledge that a duplicate of us will live on.
I don't at all understand this line of logic. No, I can't imagine that I would kill myself at that point but it's not "devastating". The perspectives simply are not the same. We didn't evolve to sense survival in that way. We view the time arrow as moving in a single direction and not divergent. Had we evolved to be aware of say, divergent universes then I could see the sense of self and survival being different than it is now. As it is now, I'm only concerned that the me I'm experiencing in the present will continue. The clone fits that model so I don't have a problem with it so long as I could simply go to sleep and wake up as the clone (and assuming that it is an exact replica of me).
If I woke up from sleeping and was informed that I was a clone and the original had died while sleeping it likely wouldn't have the same effect on me as being told that there was a clone and one of us had to die, me. At that point I don't care if I was a clone or the original. My sense of survival would kick and I wouldn't want to die.
Why on earth would anyone assume that all the relevant information is a) within the body of the person and not in the environment as well, and b) stored in a meaningful fashion independent of that environment? People here (not all) are assuming that characteristic X, Y, and Z are stored within a person, but those characteristics are reactions to things going on in that person's ongoing life. We speak of stored memories, but the research shows more re-processing and re-experiencing than retrieval of some stored information. There is no more reason to suspect that the information about stimulus perception, processing, and response is stored in the brain, any more than we should be able to cut open your legs to see where you have walked.
First off, I don't even for a second believe that "self" is simply stored information. It's more along the lines of a dynamic loop of processing and feedback, referencing stored information, creating new memories, making connections (bird > alactraz > freedom, phoneix > rebirth, crow > death, etc.) mapping our envioronment, processing of incoming data and stimuli and perhaps more important than we can understand, emotion. Emotion seems to tie together so many discrete modules in ways that likely couldn't be tied together without it. (this is a good place to recomend A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers by V. S. Ramachandran In his book Rama demonstrates the importance of emotion in tying together memory)
That said, when I was 18 I moved from Utah to California. I'm pretty sure I didn't have a whole lot of memory loss. I've not experienced memory loss from cutting down a tree or the burning down of my next door neighbors house. On the other hand we know that brain damage can cause memory loss. If you could whack the leg and cause significant memory loss I might buy into your thesis. If people who've had limb amputations reported losing the ability to sense or perceive the natural world that wasn't direclty related to that limb then I might be persuaded to agree with you. Absent that it seems a bit odd to suggest that the brain isn't the primary if not only factor as it relates to memory.
Given examples like Phineas Gage and the work of neuroscientist I would have to say that it is likely that our perceptions and mental processing is *almost entirely performed in the brain. As far as I know, Christopher Reeve didn't suffer mental or personality changes to any extent that Phineas Gage did. Given the utter lack of evidence that personality and sense of self comes from anything other than the brain then it's what I've got to go with.
*I think it was Ramachandran that pointed out that the notion that the sensation of touch is really only experienced in the brain and the sensation in our fingers is simply an illusion is an anachronistic idea because the entire nervous system functions as sensory processing however both the brain and nerve endings are critical. Remove the parts of the brain that light up during MRI when you touch something and you will lose the ability to experience touch.
It's perfectly clear to me. If I walk up to you with a gun, and offer to shoot you in the head, with the assurance that I've created a perfect identical copy of you that will come to life the second I shoot you... do you gladly accept getting shot?
The reactive dispositions of the body will be transfered just the same. Of course no one wants to be shot because our DNA is programmed to resist death but this does not mean the experiment kills anyone.
What is being challenged in this experiment is our beliefs about self. You have not yet produced any evidence that something tangible is lost in the Teletransporter.
Suppose you're the curator of the museum housing the Mona Lisa. It needs to be teleported to Mars for a special viewing. The teleporter on the Martian end works, but there's a malfunction on the Earth end- the first Mona Lisa was not destroyed in the process. The teleporter operator tells you there are now two paintings, and if you would kindly throw the original Mona Lisa in the nearest incinerator...
Because people have a sentimental attachment to the original Mona Lisa.
Why don't you use a .jpeg of the Mona Lisa in your example, instead?
Hmmm. The file is copied and sent to Mars. They tell you to delete the file on your end because they have a copy now. Do you throw fits about doing so, because the copy on your end is "special?" Furthermore, why would they, given that the files are identical? Who cares if there are multiple .jpegs of the Mona Lisa floating around?
If people have a sentimental attachment to their first bodies, then they shouldn't use a teletransporter. But that has nothing to do with what the teletransporter does or does not do to consciousness.
I think most of us would be loathe to do so and that's at the heart of the problem: a duplicate, no matter how exact, is still a duplicate. Under materialism, you don't magically have two POV's if a duplicate is made. You don't see through two sets of eyes. There is you and there is the duplicate, each with unique future life-paths.
The thought-experiment of the teleporter malfunctioning and not destroying the original is devastating to teleportation. None of us would voluntarily step into the incinerator, even with the knowledge that a duplicate of us will live on.
Thats because the "incinerator" version is a strawman. Nobody who treats this experiment seriously ever considers it with an "incinerator." Why would anybody willingly walk into an incinerator?
We are discussing a teletransporter that acts instantaneously -- the information is duplicated in the same instant that the original body is destroyed. Anything else is a strawman.
But what does this have to do with ascribing meaning to "I"? Why do you say there is no "I"? Do you mean there is no "I" of the dualistic, subject-of-experience sort?
Well, the subject matter was the notion, claimed I think by Darat, that one can "destroy I," which I contend.
So, we're wandering a little here but anyway...I say that the word "I" certainly exists but that there is no physical entity or process to which it refers. There is no actual subject of experience. If consciousness is analogous to data-processing, which as a monist materialist I think is so, then the notion that experience actually, physically exists is to my mind nonsensical. You cannot destroy an "I," though you can limit or nullify the capacity of the brain to think the word, because the word does not refer to anything.
Oh, and could we please stop with the "afraid to look", "afraid to contemplate" crap? I can think of a dozen motivations for someone to hold a materialist view or a dualist or an idealist, and choose to go or not to go. I've looked at this problem since before Interesting Ian; until somebody wins Randi's million, please do us all the favor of not pretending to read our minds and find fear. It just ends up sounding like posturing. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, I am not one to claim mindreading.
I wouldn't claim mindreading either but the fact is, in the last Teletransporter-related thread, that you repeatedly introduced emotive material until Cyborg silenced you by saying you could bring drowning kittens into the scenario if you wanted and it wouldn't make any difference to him.
Could you list the 12 reasons a materialist (assuming not a dualist materialist) might have for not wanting to travel? Then we can take a look.
It might be possible to recombine later into a single instance and conserve both 'selfs' while combining both sets of memories. It might not. It all depends on the underlying information.
The thought-experiment of the teleporter malfunctioning and not destroying the original is devastating to teleportation. None of us would voluntarily step into the incinerator, even with the knowledge that a duplicate of us will live on.
Yes, the thought experiment brings up feelings. This is clear. People are programmed by evolution to resist death. They think "Hang on a sec, I'm getting in this thing...and then I die!" There's fear and resistance and this is completely natural.
But here's the rub...there's actually no evidence for a persisting self. It's simply that the belief in a persisting self is so evolutionarily favoured it is rarely challenged even by otherwise rational, thinking individuals. So the Teletransporter thought experiment becomes a battle within the individual between reason and instinct. For most, as this and other threads on this subject show, instinct wins, and the individual struggles to logically justify their instinctual predisposition.
As far as the Mona Lisa thing: For me at least there's a serious difference in what's valuable about a historically significant object and what's valuable about a person. The significance of the object's history is what creates its sentimental value: the original is the one whose molecules were put there by the work of a great man long ago, and the duplicate is the one exactly like it that was assembled five minutes ago.
Whereas with a person, I don't place much value on what the actual thing actually did. I place the value on the memories and personality etc, which do not seem to require continuity. All I'd lose is the ability to say, for example 'these hands once touched the Pyramids' and have it be more or less literally true. Which does not bother me.
Also.. all this talk of the transporter malfunctioning and leaving the original? If the thing can do this, it can *intentionally* make copies without harming the original. Which would make the destruction of the original an *intentional and unnecessary* part of the process of transportation. At which point you have a whole new bucket of things to argue about.
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