A question for scientists: Primary and Secondary qualities

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If you make n copies of me, there will then be n+1 people with n+1 streams of consciousness that happen to be identical for a little while. None of the copies will feel as if their consciousness suddenly jumped to another person, whether they are killed or remain alive.

Perhaps you're having trouble with the idea that there could exist two separate, unrelated streams of consciousness that are otherwise identical (for a little while). Is it some kind of identity issue like that? Or are you still assuming that my consciousness has a separate existence from my brain?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:

The 2 meat brains are absolutely identical. You cannot distinguish 2 consciousnesses arising from each one.

...

My consciousness doesn't need to be attached to the original brain. It can be attached to another brain providing it is absolutely physically identical. Otherwise we wouldn't use the teletransporter!

Yes, Ian, you are still assuming that my consciousness is a separate entity from my brain function.

~~ Paul

 

[Interesting Ian]

If you make n copies of me, there will then be n+1 people with n+1 streams of consciousness that happen to be identical for a little while. None of the copies will feel as if their consciousness suddenly jumped to another person, whether they are killed or remain alive.

Huh?? Don't be absurd. Suppose the duplicate gets copied to another location. In the seconds after duplication he will distinctly remember being at one location then all of a sudden appearing at another location. Remember, memory is our identity should materialism be true. The jumping of consciousness will have taken place in every meaningful sense. Just like in star trek Kirk's consciousness jumps from the body in the transporter booth to the surface of the planet (I say Kirk cos I've only seen the original series. What's the other guy? Captain Pickard?).

Perhaps you're having trouble with the idea that there could exist two separate, unrelated streams of consciousness that are otherwise identical (for a little while). Is it some kind of identity issue like that? Or are you still assuming that my consciousness has a separate existence from my brain?

~~ Paul

Yes I am having trouble with it. And I'm having trouble with it because of the logical absurdity it entails.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:

Huh?? Don't be absurd. Suppose the duplicate gets copied to another location. In the seconds after duplication he will distinctly remember being at one location then all of a sudden appearing at another location. Remember, memory is our identity should materialism be true. The jumping of consciousness will have taken place in every meaningful sense. Just like in star trek Kirk's consciousness jumps from the body in the transporter booth to the surface of the planet (I say Kirk cos I've only seen the original series. What's the other guy? Captain Pickard?).

Oh, I thought we were still talking about the experimental setup where the room and movie are also duplicated. Yes, then my duplicate would experience a spacial jump.

Yes I am having trouble with it. And I'm having trouble with it because of the logical absurdity it entails.

I think you're still assuming that my consciousness is a separate thing that can hop between bodies.

You know, we should stick with the original thought experiement. Otherwise this is just going to spiral around a black hole, as usual.

~~ Paul

 

[Interesting Ian]

The 2 meat brains are absolutely identical. You cannot distinguish 2 consciousnesses arising from each one.

...

My consciousness doesn't need to be attached to the original brain. It can be attached to another brain providing it is absolutely physically identical. Otherwise we wouldn't use the teletransporter!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Yes, Ian, you are still assuming that my consciousness is a separate entity from my brain function.
[/B]

No this is precisely what I'm not doing. The function of each of the 2 Ian's brains is absolutely identical.

And incidentally, talking about the function of the brain, and assuming functionalism is true, imagine if the physical activity in my brain was precisely scanned now and saved somewhere. Then in a thousand years time when people have the technology to create androids, they could create an android with precisely my brain function.

Now imagine the situation. I am typing in front of my computer now, and suddenly I will jump 1000 years into the future and find myself in a strange environment. I'll think "WTF has happened here!" . Someone will explain to me that I am now "inhabiting" an androids body, and that I actually died 950 years ago, and out of interest they thought they would bring me back to life since they were curious about my posts in this forum (which also have been stored somewhere). They will describe my future life which my android self will now never experience. They will correctly state that after this message I had gone down to Stockton centre to go shopping. They will discuss my future posts on this board which my android self has never actually written.

Sorry just rambling and thinking how utterly weird materialism is!

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian, you are assuming that my consciousness is a separate thing from my brain:

My consciousness doesn't need to be attached to the original brain.

I am typing in front of my computer now, and suddenly I will jump 1000 years into the future and find myself in a strange environment.

... I am now "inhabiting" an androids body ...

All of the copies and all of the androids have their own consciousness. None of them has yours. You died, or went on your merry way. The only interesting thing is that the copies were booted with a copy of your memories.

As far as your android scenario goes, yes, the android will be surprised to experience this jump of 1000 years, but only assuming no one told you that you were being scanned for posterity.

In your metaphysic, what would the android experience?

~~ Paul

 

[BillyJoe]

Ian,

Looking at your second scenario.....
(Warning: I'm going to be very pedantic and repetitive here)

Now let's suppose that the copying will take place in a room with a TV set. The copying will take place sometime whilst I am watching my favorite film of all time Groundhog Day, although precisely when duplication will take place is not specified. It could take place anytime during the duration of the film. Imagine also that the duplicate will suddenly appear in an absolute identical room with the same film playing which is also precisely synchronized to the other film.

One of the scenarios I came up with in "Staying Alive" to show up the materialists was very similar to this. However, instead of watching "Groundhog Day", they were sitting at their computers posting to the JREF Forum.

It should be obvious that nothing untoward will happen at the precise moment of duplication. If I am the original obviously nothing will happen. I will be watching the film and will notice absolutely nothing at the precise moment of duplication. If I am the duplicate, again I will note nothing untoward. At the precise moment of duplication I will suddenly appear in the duplicate room, sitting exactly in the same relative position and posture, the film will be continuous with the film being shown in the other room, and my memories will be continuous with the original Ian just prior to duplication.

Okay, if we assume that the scanner and the duplicator can do their job invisibly and in complete silence then, yes, nothing untoward will happen from the pont of view of both Original Ian and Duplicate Ian

So ok, I'm sitting there watching the film, and I most probably will be thinking to myself "hmmmm, I wonder if I have been duplicated yet or not?". Because I have no way of knowing. Moreover, even if I have been duplicated, I have absolutely no way of telling whether I am the original or the duplicate. But now the end of the film arrives. I know that duplication must have taken place, but there is absolutely nothing about the character of my experiences which could enable me to determine whether I am the original or the duplicate. My consciousness has been continous. I might feel therefore that I must be the original Ian. But of course the duplicate will be thinking exactly the same thoughts. Bearing this in mind I cannot ascribe anymore probability than I am the original than the duplicate, and the same reasoning will be gone through by the other Ian. So I will conclude that there is a 50/50 chance I am the original.

Probabilities only apply to things that have not yet happened.
If you are about to flip a coin, there is a 50% chance of heads. But once you've flipped the coin and it comes up heads, it is 100% heads.
Original Ian is always 100% Original Ian and Duplicate Ian, once he is created by the duplicator, is always 100% Duplicate Ian.
It doesn't make sense to say "Ian" has a 50% chance of being Original Ian and 50% chance of being Duplicate Ian. If "Ian" is defined as the "self" produced by Original Ian's brain at the instant of duplication then the "self" produced by Duplicate Ian's brain at the instant of duplication is identical to "Ian" in every detail except position in space. In other words, the self produced by Duplicate Ian's brain will be identical to but not be the same as the self produced by Original Ian's brain.

Then the door to the room opens, and the person standing there says "I regret to inform you that you are the duplicate Ian, and therefore must be immediately executed"

The self produced by Duplicate Ian's brain has only ever been the self produced by Duplicate Ian's brain . Certainly this self is identical to - if not the same as - the self produced by Original Ian's brain and, until now, when confronted by the executioner, he felt as if he could have been the self produced by Original Ian's brain but he clearly never was .

So we reach our paradox. I had concluded that I was just being given £10,000,000 to watch my favorite film of all time. .

First of all, if "I" is the self produced by Original Ian's brain then, no, there is no danger to the "I" produced by Original Ian's brain because Original Ian is going to live. If by "I" you mean the self produced by Duplicate Ian's brain then that "I" is in mortal danger because Duplicate Ian is about to be executed.

There should have been no danger to myself at all. But yet there is. But this is clearly absurd! After all, how could it meaningfully differ from the situation where the same situation pertains yet no duplication takes place? Then, since no duplicate is created, there is absolute 100% certainty that I am the original Ian

There is no danger to the self produced by Original Ian's brain and the self produced by Duplicate Ian's brain is a goner.

Imagine a slightly different scenario where instead of Duplicate Ian being executed, Original Ian or Duplicate Ian is randomly chosen to die. What then?
No Problem for the Self referred to above. This Self is going to survive whatever happens. This Self will survive as that produced by Original Ian's brain or, in a slightly different location, as the self produced by Duplicate Ian's brain. It can even be set up so that nobody knows whether is was Original Ian who survived or Duplicate Ian who survived but, from the point of view of the survivor (and everyone else for that matter) it won't matter one bit. As you said yourself, Ian, in your scenario, Duplicate Ian feels in every way as if he is Original Ian - until the executioner arrives at his door.

regards,
BillyJoe.
(Okay, I've read this through and it really is difficult to write it so that someone who doesn't understand understands - if you know what I mean )

 

[ceptimus]

Ian, your mistake is in your original assumption that consciousness is a separate thing and not just a process carried out by the brain. Here is my slightly modified version of the thought experiment which I doubt will convince you, but here goes anyway.

We tell Fred that we are going to put him in a white room, and then duplicate him. The duplicate will appear in an otherwise identical room, except that the walls are slightly blueish.

But really, we intend to trick Fred. Actually, the duplicate will appear in an absolutely identical white room.

So we do the duplication and then separately ask the two Freds whether they are the original or the duplicate - they both tell us exactly the same thing, 'I am the original Fred - when the duplication occurred, I didn't notice any change in the colour of the room - I never felt a thing in fact!'

Now to stage two. This is the same as before, except that we have installed trick lighting in the duplication room. At the instant of duplication, a hidden light switch is flicked, making the walls of the room appear bluer. The other room, where the duplicate appears has no such lighting and remains white.

Now when we perform the post-duplication interview we get an interesting result...

Original Fred: I must be the duplicate Fred - I never felt anything strange, but at the moment of duplication, the walls suddenly appeared to change colour - other than that, I feel no different at all - this duplicator machine of yours is certainly a wonderful thing!

Duplicate Fred: I am the original Fred - when the duplication occurred, I didn't notice any change in the colour of the room - I never felt a thing in fact!

I'm sure you can see how the third scenario works out, where we dupe (sorry ) both Freds into believing that they are the copy.

Well? Does that help? (I'm not holding my breath...)

 

[Dancing David]

Ian,
This is very interesting, but our intelligence has nothing to do with your inability to explain your concepts. Maybe you should play Halo some more and think about the paradox.

Tenet one: if you have listened to previous posts on this thread, it has been explained that from the materialist perspective there are two sperate streams of consiousness. They start the same but instantly diverge. You asert :they are the same consiousness . This may be true from the idealist viewpoint, but from the material viewpoint they will vary from location and the chaotic differentiation of the mechanical systems involved. For example the two heart beats will begin to diverge, and therefore there will be two streams of awareness.

Tenet two: That somehow the two rooms are identical after the duplication in that from the moment of duplication they are still identical a minute later. from the material perspective this is not true. There is a frame of reference in the material perspective, and while the two subjects will not know the difference between them, the experimenter should know.

Tenet three: That because the two subjects can not distinguish themselves they are in fact the same this is true only for the subjects as lacking any frame of reference. the two subjects can not determine between themselves which is the dupe and which is the duppe. But that does not mean that they are the same in reality, that means they are the same only in reference to each other. But as noted above thier heartbeats and respiration will be different and they will most likely have divergent streams of thought as they watch the movie.


So while you have set up an interesting The Lady and the Tiger scenario. There is no paradox.

I can resolve the paradox by simply refusing to enter into the xperiment, which is what I would do. Because I know that in the future there will be two versions of me, one of which is going to be killed. And that is a moral choice I would not make

 

[Dancing David]

First of all imagine that your original body gets completely destroyed and 2 copies of your body are made. So there now is no original. You either suddenly experience a sudden shift of perspective so you find yourself experiencing out of copy1 of Paul, or you suddenly experience a sudden shift of perspective so you find yourself experiencing out of copy2 of Paul. But whichever you experience will be a unique continuous stream of consciousness from experiencing out of the destroyed body to experiencing out of one of the two copies. Now note that you do not experience both. Your stream of consciousness is unique and ongoing and uninterrupted. Basically it's an experiential thing. You only ever experience one stream of consciousness. In order for your original stream of consciousness to get to be split up so as for you to then both wholly experience out of copy1 and to wholly experience out of copy2 (not out of both simultaneously) the Universe literally has to split into 2. So we then have 2 Universes after copying rather than the original one.

This stuff is hard to explain

See that is true from the idealist perspective but not from the materialist perspective.
Thought experiment:Let us say that you have this mechanical toy (a gross simplification of the material brain) like a Spirograph and that it is in fact automatic, in that it can put paper in itself and chose the discs randomly and start to draw on it's own spitting out spirograph images until it runs out of paper.
And lets say that you put this mechanical toy into the experimental situation.(Perhaps you really want to kill the subject and not just make corpses and you assume this is a control test for the safety of the duplication process.)

The experimenter starts the machine and then runs the trial, in the duppee suite we have S(0) making a picture and in the dupe suite we have S(1) making a picture, and in fact they are both making the picture that they started when the duplication started.

The trial continues because the experimenter is laughing so hard at Groundhog Day that they forget what they are doing.

Lets us also postulate that this random generation process in really random, like there are jars containing air and that the jar can sample the brownian motion of the molecules in the jar to generate it's random selection. As the trial runs there is a very high chance at first that the two machines will chose the same disc and make the same pictues but as the molecules in the jars bounce around they will diverege and suddenly the machines are making different pictures.

And so when the experimenter gets to the end of the movie they go into the suites and get the machines and notice that the two machines have produced a different set of pictures, they are really pleased because now they have a Spiorograph for each of thier little kids.

Now Does this scenario require the splitting of the Universe? If so why? And how is it different from the above scenario you mentioned?


Also are you aware of the Many Worlds Solution to the quantum wierdness? It does postulate these stacked universes that hold all the different divergent quantum events.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Ian, your mistake is in your original assumption that consciousness is a separate thing and not just a process carried out by the brain. Here is my slightly modified version of the thought experiment which I doubt will convince you, but here goes anyway.

We tell Fred that we are going to put him in a white room, and then duplicate him. The duplicate will appear in an otherwise identical room, except that the walls are slightly blueish.

But really, we intend to trick Fred. Actually, the duplicate will appear in an absolutely identical white room.

So we do the duplication and then separately ask the two Freds whether they are the original or the duplicate - they both tell us exactly the same thing, 'I am the original Fred - when the duplication occurred, I didn't notice any change in the colour of the room - I never felt a thing in fact!'

Now to stage two. This is the same as before, except that we have installed trick lighting in the duplication room. At the instant of duplication, a hidden light switch is flicked, making the walls of the room appear bluer. The other room, where the duplicate appears has no such lighting and remains white.

Now when we perform the post-duplication interview we get an interesting result...

Original Fred: I must be the duplicate Fred - I never felt anything strange, but at the moment of duplication, the walls suddenly appeared to change colour - other than that, I feel no different at all - this duplicator machine of yours is certainly a wonderful thing!

Duplicate Fred: I am the original Fred - when the duplication occurred, I didn't notice any change in the colour of the room - I never felt a thing in fact!

I'm sure you can see how the third scenario works out, where we dupe (sorry ) both Freds into believing that they are the copy.

Well? Does that help? (I'm not holding my breath...)

Well no not at all. Why should it? I mean I know all this already. I don't see how it addresses the logical paradox at all I'm afraid.

 

[Interesting Ian]

See that is true from the idealist perspective but not from the materialist perspective.

No David. I'm presupposing materialism/epiphenomenalism throughout, and seeing where it leads us. I'm afraid it leads to a logical paradox. I'm quite certain I'm right.

Thought experiment:Let us say that you have this mechanical toy (a gross simplification of the material brain) like a Spirograph and that it is in fact automatic, in that it can put paper in itself and chose the discs randomly and start to draw on it's own spitting out spirograph images until it runs out of paper.
And lets say that you put this mechanical toy into the experimental situation.(Perhaps you really want to kill the subject and not just make corpses and you assume this is a control test for the safety of the duplication process.)

The experimenter starts the machine and then runs the trial, in the duppee suite we have S(0) making a picture and in the dupe suite we have S(1) making a picture, and in fact they are both making the picture that they started when the duplication started.

The trial continues because the experimenter is laughing so hard at Groundhog Day that they forget what they are doing.

Lets us also postulate that this random generation process in really random, like there are jars containing air and that the jar can sample the brownian motion of the molecules in the jar to generate it's random selection. As the trial runs there is a very high chance at first that the two machines will chose the same disc and make the same pictues but as the molecules in the jars bounce around they will diverege and suddenly the machines are making different pictures.

And so when the experimenter gets to the end of the movie they go into the suites and get the machines and notice that the two machines have produced a different set of pictures, they are really pleased because now they have a Spiorograph for each of thier little kids.

Now Does this scenario require the splitting of the Universe? If so why? And how is it different from the above scenario you mentioned?

[/B]

I don't understand. Are you saying only this toy gets duplicated?

 

[ceptimus]

Well no not at all. Why should it? I mean I know all this already. I don't see how it addresses the logical paradox at all I'm afraid.

Well, for me, the only paradox is that I can't see any paradox. At the moment, as far as I'm concerned, your paradox is like the Emperor's clothes. I'm trying my best to see it, but it just isn't there. Oh well, I expected to be disappointed. All that build up, and just this damp squib at the end.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Ian,
This is very interesting, but our intelligence has nothing to do with your inability to explain your concepts. Maybe you should play Halo some more and think about the paradox.

Tenet one: if you have listened to previous posts on this thread, it has been explained that from the materialist perspective there are two sperate streams of consiousness. They start the same but instantly diverge. You asert :they are the same consiousness . This may be true from the idealist viewpoint, but from the material viewpoint they will vary from location and the chaotic differentiation of the mechanical systems involved. For example the two heart beats will begin to diverge, and therefore there will be two streams of awareness.

Yes David, and if you understood my posts you'll realise this is utterly irrelevant.

Tenet two: That somehow the two rooms are identical after the duplication in that from the moment of duplication they are still identical a minute later. from the material perspective this is not true.

Maybe so but I'm only stipulating identical rooms to make Loki and Adam happy, otherwise the conversation is going to go off on a tangent past a road sign labelled "The Irrelevant".

Tenet three: That because the two subjects can not distinguish themselves they are in fact the same this is true only for the subjects as lacking any frame of reference. the two subjects can not determine between themselves which is the dupe and which is the duppe. But that does not mean that they are the same in reality,

They are an infinitesimal fraction of a second after duplication. That's all that matters.

that means they are the same only in reference to each other. But as noted above thier heartbeats and respiration will be different and they will most likely have divergent streams of thought as they watch the movie.

In practical terms yeah, but it is wholly irrelevant.

So while you have set up an interesting The Lady and the Tiger scenario. There is no paradox.

Even if there isn't, you certainly haven't addressed it.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Well, for me, the only paradox is that I can't see any paradox. At the moment, as far as I'm concerned, your paradox is like the Emperor's clothes. I'm trying my best to see it, but it just isn't there. Oh well, I expected to be disappointed. All that build up, and just this damp squib at the end.

Well it does exist allow me to assure you. I regret I'm unable to get you to see it. Oh well.

 

[ceptimus]

Well it does exist allow me to assure you. I regret I'm unable to get you to see it. Oh well.

This is interesting. Do you have any thoughts on why I, and others, can't see your paradox? I can see five possibilities; but feel free to add more - I may have missed some:

1. I am just too stupid to understand the paradox, and so are the others.

2. There isn't really a paradox, and Ian is mistaken in thinking there is one.

3. Ian’s opponents are trolls, and we are wilfully pretending not to understand Ian, just to annoy him.

4. Ian is a troll, and he just gets his kicks by stringing us along.

5. Ian and I are both sincere, but we're talking different languages, so we just don't understand each other properly.

Now I am provisionally prepared to rule out possibilities one through four - though, of course, I might be wrong in that. This leaves option five as my best explanation of our lack of a common understanding.

If I were speaking Turkish and Ian was speaking Japanese, neither knowing the other's language, then we wouldn't even expect to understand each other. Perhaps, although we both believe we speak English, it is a different form of English, so that when we both use the same word, we each attach a different meaning to it?

That's the best I can do - and if I'm right, maybe the situation is hopeless? We may be destined never to understand each other?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Tenet three: That because the two subjects can not distinguish themselves they are in fact the same this is true only for the subjects as lacking any frame of reference. the two subjects can not determine between themselves which is the dupe and which is the duppe. But that does not mean that they are the same in reality,

Ian's response:

They are an infinitesimal fraction of a second after duplication. That's all that matters.

No, they are not the same even then. As we say in the programming biz, they are equal but not eq (the same).

~~ Paul

 

[Mercutio]

I'm willing to go so far as to say that (assuming the machine works as it is supposed to) neither of the Mercs or Ians have any more right to claim to be the original than the other. (In one of the scenarios, the bits of matter that make up one remain the same, but in another of the scenarios, those bits are destroyed and two copies made--in terms of the stream of consciousness, both scenarios are the same.) Functionally speaking, we now have two originals, rather than a copy and an original.

In the first scenario, the experimenter knows which is the original, but arguably nobody else does. In the second scenario, nobody knows (or perhaps the experimenter is alone in the knowledge that the original has been destroyed). In both cases, it simply doesn't matter. We had one Merc, now we have two. Two sets of identical memories, feelings, hopes and dreams, diverging from the moment of split but identical before it. We have not split the universe, just one experiencer of the universe. We don't get 2 universes any more than Merc and Ian (who, it so happens, are noticeably not identical to one another) require 2 distinct universes to perceive (materialistically, that is--I cannot speak for antimaterialism here).

I was with Ian up to the point where he claimed a paradox. I don't see it. Is it just that we now have 2 original Ians?

 

[slimshady2357]

This is truly hopeless if you cannot even agree too something as obvious as this!

But of course the duplicate's consciousness only seems continuous, it's brain was just created a few minutes ago. Are you saying the duplpicate's consciousness existed before it's brain? I don't think materialism is going to agree with you there.

Are you under the mistaken inpression that the duplicate's consciousness somehow 'splits off' from the original's?

No that's not true. Otherwise if you used the teletransporter in Star Trek, everytime they beamed down to a planet one would have to say they only just sprung into being! They do not spring into being anymore than our normal second by second existence. Of course I maintain that people do in a sense cease to be and a duplicate replaces them on a second by second basis should materialism be true. But the point is, is that there is absolute no distinction between our second by second existence up to the point of duplication and after it, whether we turn out to be the original or duplicate.

You really are confused Ian.

Ian, the duplicate's brain comes into existence after duplication, thus so does the duplicate's consciousness. It has no experiences before it exists! It has no 'second by second existence up to the point of duplication' only memories of it!

The 2 meat brains are absolutely identical. You cannot distinguish 2 consciousnesses arising from each one

Sure I can, the same way I distinguish between the brains, by location.

I have explained your error here in the very post you're responding to I think. My consciousness doesn't need to be attached to the original brain. It can be attached to another brain providing it is absolutely physically identical.

This is only partly true and certainly points to the source of your confusion and why there is no paradox.

You seem to think that location of the brain and continuity of the brain producing the consciousness are not attributes of you.

Otherwise we wouldn't use the teletransporter!

Why not? I would. As Win said, as long as there is a member of the class Adam, I'm fine with that.

When you say "otherwise you wouldn't take the transporter", at best all you are pointing out is that some people's idea of the self is not consistent with Materialism. You have shown nothing about what Materialism actually says.

I start of with the assumption of 2 streams of consciousnesses, and by my thought experiment shows it leads to an absurdity.

Your only defence is to say the duplicate is not really literally the same person as the original, but this is simply not true.

Right, because under Materialism, two things that are in different locations are literally the same thing You feel right claiming that do you?

Otherwise you would never use a teletransporter and in effect you would be saying materialism is false. [/B]

Sure I would use the transporter! Why do you think I wouldn't??

It's not literally the same instantiation of the me as the original, but in every other way it is the same as me, and for me that's good enough to go through the transporter.

Still haven't seen any paradox, I can't see as anyone else has either..... anyone?

Adam

 

[slimshady2357]

Huh?? Don't be absurd. Suppose the duplicate gets copied to another location. In the seconds after duplication he will distinctly remember being at one location then all of a sudden appearing at another location. Remember, memory is our identity should materialism be true.

Memory is your sense of identity under materialism! Identity under materialism is the totality of physical facts!

The jumping of consciousness will have taken place in every meaningful sense.

From the perspective of the consciousness, yes, but so what? His brain was just created, so was his consciousness. There is a physical fact that his brain has only existed for a few minutes. Why do you ignore this, you seem to think it's irrelevant, yet for Materialism it is not irrelevant at all! It's a physical fact, one that can be used to distinguish him from the original.

Yes I am having trouble with it.

Definitely.

Adam