Worm’s brain mapped and replicated digitally to control obstacle-avoiding robot.
You’re coming at this from a slightly askew angle. Consciousness is holographic - that is, it’s complex behavior arising in the interaction of a more complex system. There’s nothing “more” to it than what we see. The transporters from startrek, which destroy then reproduce exactly, would change nothing about your experience. You’re just a complex arrangement of atoms, and it doesnt matter where that arrangement occurs so long as it’s unique. There is no “you”, there’s just “stuff” stuck together in a way that lets it think that it can think about itself. A perfect reproduction would result in the same entity, perfectly reproduced.
A perfect reproduction would result in the same entity, perfectly reproduced.
It would, but I remain convinced that the continuity of my experience would end, same as if I died, and the entity who came out the other side would believe itself to be me, and believe itself to be unscathed, but actually exist only until the next time it got into a transporter, when the cycle would happen again.
continuity of my experience would end
why? what property is altered that would ‘end continuity’? kinda just sounds like a personal delineation… a personal preference. like being annoyed at being ‘interrupted’.
I don’t think I can defend my position very cogently or I’d argue against other interpretations more vigorously - and as I’ve said I’d love to be wrong. It’s certainly at or beyond the depth of my understanding of consciousness, but that doesn’t mean I accept that yours is necessarily more valid. (no snark intended with that comment)
When I bring it up I get challenged to articulate why I feel that way and inevitably get presented with a question like yours that I can’t answer - but generally no one gives me a “here’s why you are wrong” argument, they just give me “you can’t differentiate between what you’ve posited and a nondestructive consciousness transfer and therefore you are wrong.” I maintain that my lack of ability to articulate that difference reflects poorly on me, but doesn’t actually prove I’m wrong.
For example, I don’t think my inability to articulate a ‘property that is altered’ represents a weakness in my position, and I’m not sure a property needs to be altered for my understanding to be true.
Using (very poorly and atypically) the ship of Theseus example, I think we’d agree that if I had two absolutely identical sets of shipbuilding materials, down to the atomic level, or further, down to the state of all observable properties of that matter and the particles that make it up, (I have no idea how one would achieve such a thing), and built a ship from one set of those materials, then vaporized that ship and built another that was 100% identical using the second set of those materials, those ships would be two identical but distnict entities. I don’t think I’ve seen an argument that convinces me that the same wouldn’t be true for pulling my consciousness (ephemeral and subjective as it may be) and body through a transporter or other such destructive process.
Your argument feels like you are telling me that if I use a replicator to make two different but identical cups of earl grey hot they are actually the same cup of tea, when plainly they are not. Considering (sticking with star trek) the stories of duplicates due to being stuck in the “pattern buffer” or similar handwavium, it seems clear that the ST transporter is capable of creating multiple entities. The only difference between a normal transporter experience and one of those freaky transporter accidents seems to be whether the two entities are both alive at the same time.
COULD there be (since we’re in the realm of scifi anyway) some method of transferring consciousness that wouldn’t seem like death to me? Yes I’m sure there could. But I don’t think I’ve seen one in any popular scifi, at least not that I can think of right now.
“what property is altered”
Ummm, the part where you are a continuous object that is suddenly disassembled.
Dont be intentionally obtuse. Yes, this is a ship of thesis type problem, but there’s a very clear point when you stop being “you” - when you’re a stream of atoms. Although many versions of a teleporter don’t transmit the atoms, only the data of how they’re arranged. In that case, you are very distinctly a photocopy, as no original atoms remain.
In the case of atom transfer, you stop being you during the time you are a bundle of atoms with no consciousness. Some people believe we’re like a forever stew and if you shut it down like that and reboot it, it’s not the “same” stew anymore because it wasn’t just the emergence of the consciousness, but the specific emergence itself. Essentially You v1 died in its sleep and You v2 seamlessly took it’s place without knowing. Tho that line of thought could applied to sleeping and loss of consciousness during surgery.
All of this is to say it’s not a cut and dry answer and people claiming there’s a diffinitive, clear cut answer are incorrect. It’s a complex question that touches on the very nature of our existence and is still hotly debated. Even academics who believe we are purely chemical machines debate exactly how that works.
Think of an alternative scenario, not transportation but rather duplication. The original stays where it was, but a copy gets created elsewhere. To the copy, it will seem as if it got transported there. To the original, nothing will have happened.
Now you kill the original.
The only difference is the timing of ending the original.
The physical world is the hologram.
Between saccades, fnords, and confabulation, I don’t trust a single thing my senses tell me. But the one thing I know for sure is that I’m conscious.
So, knowing that only consciousness is “real”, why would I assume it can be recreated through atoms (which are a mere hallucination)?
To quote Searle: Should I pinch myself and report the results in the Journal of Philosophy?
