In the television series Star Trek, humans use a teletransportation device called a “transporter” to conveniently and quickly travel from a spaceship to the planet’s surface or even to travel long distances across the surface of planets. The transporter works by mapping the atomic structure of a human and sending that information to a distant location. At the distant location the transporter reads the information and reconstructs the human atom by atom. The person at the new location has all the memories and psychological traits of the original human. The original human’s body, however, has been permanently disassembled.
Is the person who enter the transporter at the first location (let’s say Cleveland) the same as the person who exits the second location (let’s say San Franciso, the location of Star Fleet Academy)?
Rather than ascribing identity to a single view about one particular axes on which human behavior could be plot, for the purposes of this thought experiment, I will define personal identity as the state of being continuous over every single applicable axis over one’s life. By this definition, every aspect of a person must maintain continuity to be considered the same person. Given that the theoretical teleporter is perfect in both its functionality and replication, then the only aspect of a person that changes upon teleportation is their physical matter. Form and composition remain exactly the same, but the location of the components is different at the time of assembly as of the time of disassembly, meaning that they must be made of different atoms. And so the question is not “does matter determine personal identity?” but rather, “is origin of matter an axis on which personal identity could be plot?” Origin of matter is certainly something which changes over the course of our lives, for instance, our skin cells are completely replaced every seven years. But, of course, this is continuous; our skin doesn’t suddenly get replaced in an instant, it’s a slow and gradual process in which skin cells die and replicate. But what about instantaneous injury? If, for instance, someone loses a limb which gets replaced by a prosthetic, then (assuming that origin of matter is a valid axis for personal identity) that is a new person because the matter with which they replaced their limb is not the same matter that originated from their body, and was instead replaced within an instant, thus breaking continuity. Surely, this shows that we cannot use discontinuity of origin of matter to disprove one’s chances of maintaining identity. However, we may be able to use it to disprove survival. First, we must explain why it is possible to maintain identity but not survival. The fact that you exist does not mean that you are experiencing your existence first-hand. Let’s say that instead of being destroyed at the same moment that your replica was created, you were cloned before your original body died. Your original body does not see the world through the clone’s eyes and it does not feel the things that it feels. You are in essence, the same person, but the original person would not survive if they were killed. Consciousness is not something which seeks self and infiltrates. The fact that your matter arranges itself in such a way that it knows that it exists, does not mean that it is not the matter that is conscious. The death of the original person would not result in the death of that person’s identity (as it would live on in the clone) but it would result in their inability to experience the life that they would have lived if their clone had died instead of them. So what the question really boils down to is this, “does it matter more that I’m experiencing the world, or that I’m acting in it.” This is something I can’t answer.
ReplyDeleteNo, the person who entered the transporter isn't the same as the person who exited it in a different location. Sure, the person exiting the teleporter would be indistinguishable from the person who entered it - on the outside, at least. They would look the same, act the same, remember the same events - and believe they experienced them - and even think the same as the original person. The difference, however, is that the person wasn't reconstructed with the same exact atoms - so the teleported person would be exactly similar but not actually the same. Another point I'd like to make is consciousness - the original person would no longer be experiencing their own life although the person would continue living on in the world (as Nico said). Also, the memory view may say that the person is in fact the same, but the memory view can easily be proven wrong in this case. For example, the memory view can not be sustained because of the fact that this device could create multiple copies - which is the keyword here - of the same person. Surely all of the clones can be exactly similar, but only the person that the clones were being made from in this case could be considered the original person. So, in conclusion, the person who entered the teleporter and the person who exited the teleporter in the other location would be exactly similar, but not the same - the original person would die.
ReplyDeleteBecause the behavior identity is shared between the teleported and the teleporter, they are the same person (sort of). It is important to note that the arguments representing these extremes are held in a constant dialectical tension with each other; an argument can be made advocating both perspectives: why is there an argument to begin with? In fact, the notion that an argument needs to be constructed to begin with reflects a fundamental limitation in understanding the truth: the truth is only held in human eyes. Human nature, as a means of categorizing and perceiving mostly everything, has been designed to look at everything in a certain manner. It could be argued that a person isn’t real at all nor have they ever existed because particles are never destroyed or reborn – just reshapen. In fact, nothing is real at all because real is a construct only relevant for begins that categorize. So, if it is categorization that prevents truth is solitude – because some scenarios belong to multiple conceptual categories – then what are perceptual means by which people categorize. The neuroscience has clean mapping to the philosophical extremes. The two irreconcilable ways of identifying a person, philosophically speaking, are through objective characteristics, or behavior characteristics, held as the body view and the memory view respectively. Neuroscientifically speaking the two ways people tend to perceive (car vs boat vs plane) are through object categorization (they are meant to transport me) and behavioral categorization (I moved out their way because I knew they would dice me in two). Because these extremes are proper, as determined by evolution, then practicality is an infringement on understanding the truth. Then if practicality is important because it differentiates rocks from people, then it should also be used to differentiate people from other people.
ReplyDeleteI feel I can’t answer this question unless I survey people to see what they do in front of this person. Based on my own guess of my own behavior, I would treat them the same; therefore, they are the same.
Given the choice, I would not go through the teleporter. This is assuming that a teleporter works by completely atomically disassembling you and reassembling you in your desired location. So far, the theory that has convinced me the most regarding personal identity is the brain theory we discussed in class. This theory being that the brain is the sole part of the body that contains the identity of a person. Now that being said, the teleporter scenario prosses an issue to the brain theory. The teleporter would make an exact down to the atom copy of the person being teleported. The brain of the teleported person would not just be similar, but exactly the same. The reason this posses an issue to the brain theory is because I would argue that the person that comes out of the teleporter is not the same, but a clone. For the sake of argument, I will disregard the actual transportation aspect of this problem and focus solely on the assembly and disassembly. Let’s say the teleporter assembles the new you right beside original you, and the machine does not disassemble the original you. Then, the new you is handed a gun and shoots original you. would you survive? The answer is obviously no. You would die because the clone killed you. Then the same would be true when the teleporter disassembles you. You would die, and the clone would live on as someone else. But this contradicts the brain theory. The clone would have the exact same brain as you, but is different, so there has to be more to identity than solely the brain. To fix this I propose a further definition to the brain theory. I believe that identity is held solely in the structure and form of the brain but the individual atoms that the brain is constructed of. If that same brain is recreated with different atoms, then the person that results from the reconstruction is a different person. There for the person that comes out of the teleporter would be a different person, and the original would be dead. In conclusion I would never choose to go through the teleporter because it would result in my death no matter is reconstructed on the other side.
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