Not, these are large portions of the population. But even if it were fringe, it would already make the theory difficult.

Presumably, they are stil able to speak, so, form concepts, understand meanings and grammar - all of which require thought. — Wayfarer

Clearly they can speak, and clearly they can think. But it also seems clear that they think without using words.

If words are just one style of thinking, it seems difficult to claim that language arose mainly as a tool for thinking.

No. Thinking is:

cognitive behavior in which ideas, images, mental representations, or other hypothetical elements of thought are experienced or manipulated. In this sense, thinking includes imagining, remembering, problem solving, daydreaming, free association, concept formation, and many other processes.

You’re using non-standard definitions again. — T Clark

:up:

Much more reasonable than that made up junk in the OP.

"Experiencing" is probably not a thing with AI, but "manipulating" almost certainly is. The type of responses AI gives are simply not amenable to a computation style which aggregates input and spits out a statistically plausible output. This would quicky fall prey to the combinatorial explosion of possible inputs. Afaict, manipulation of "elements of thought" is the only way AI can function at all.

For example consider playing chess, a tiny sliver of AI functionality, and one which is generally not explicitly trained for in LLMs. Imagine an input like 1. E4 E5. 2. NF3 F4... How could ai reliably produce a rational output based only on inputs it has seen before, when every game is unique. Only thinking can do this.

In fact, a representation of the chess board can be observed when LLMs play chess. What else could this internal, emergent chess board be other than an "element of thought"?

They stress that language is not primarily a system of communication, but a system of thought. — Wayfarer

How can this be reconciled with the fact that many people don't think in words?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/inner-monologue-experience-science-1.5486969

Given such ability, it would seem prudent, if your hand hurts due to arthritis, to simply cut it off and print a new one without the problem. — noAxioms

Perhaps, but that is a different thought experiment.

Is the new thing you? Probably the same answer as asking if you're the same person you were 20 years ago. Different, but pragmatically the same person. — noAxioms

It is more than pragmatic. We defer immediate gratification for rewards in the future, sometimes 20 years or more. This would only make sense if we believed we were the same person. These actions are never altruistic, we don't save money to benefit some alien successor entity.

You're assuming physicalism here. Under dualism, the new body will have its own immaterial mind, not the original, or maybe it will be a p-zombie, not having a mind at all. It will not be able to tell the difference. — noAxioms

For the purposes of this thought experiment I am assuming physicalism.

Why do these stories always require being 'put under'. — noAxioms

I did this to stimulate the intuition that the original->clone one continuous individual, in the same way that teleporter TEs do. But then challenge that intuition when the original wakes up.

Correction: Tears of joy stream down the face of the copy. Your use of pronouns is inconsistent. — noAxioms

This was intentional, to emphasize that from the clone's perspective, the clone feels they are continuous with the original.

How do you know this? By what criteria is this assessment made, and by whom? By what criteria do you currently assert that you're the same person as 'you' last year? Without these answers, you're just being either undefined or at least unclear. — noAxioms

That which benefits the next year's 'me', benefits me (as far as I believe, and behave). But that which benefits the copy clearly does not benefit the original.

AFAIK, AI is not improving itself. Improvements still must come through human minds (though perhaps with some, and increasing, AI assistance).

Moreover, the shape of the curve of improvements feels more like a plateau than an exponential explosion. 2020 felt like runaway growth of the technology. Now it feels far more stable. Improvements happen, but they are increasingly incremental. A lot of "feels" here, but do you think otherwise?

The information exists in the relationship between the two devices, the interpreting reader and the USB device. But then we cannot say that the information was contained in the USB stick as a ghost in the device. — JuanZu

But then, what is the difference between the reader-usb where the reader reads your porn collection, and where the reader reads an empty USB? That difference would seem to lie solely on the USB, not the reader, or the reader-usb complex. But if the difference between the information and no information case depends only on the USB, it would seem the information "lives", or not, on the USB alone.

The victim had a mistaken belief about how it worked. The technician let the victim recover consciousness and see the copy. So the argument is based on things going wrong rather than things going to plan. And thus the “when” is indeed an issue already. We should be discussing the plan that was intended where the idiot victim would have got what he paid for and never woke up to realise he had been plainly idiotic. — apokrisis

Why on earth are you concerned about following a "plan" that exists only as a part of a fiction?

What is relevant to us is the implications of when the victim is killed. What are the relevant differences, if any, between the different versions?

And then if you consider your the successful version of the plan, there is a both a copying of the info and a “disassembly” which is not actually a disassembly in being a temporary division of a person into his form and his matter. It is a permanent destruction of the originally embodied person rather than a momentary deconstruction. — apokrisis

It depends on whether the original molecules are transmitted or not. If they are somehow transmitted, then there is a difference, but it is a difficult argument to explain why this difference matters. If instead, the teleporter operates by scanning the victim, disassembling the victim, sending the information, and reconstructring the victim with a separate set of molecules, I claim that this is logically equivalent to my version.

Again, you leave me unclear what it is you really want to argue here. But to the degree the teleporter operation is conceivable as something real, an embodied approach to the issue of conscious identity would make it seem OK to disassemble and reassemble a person as the combination of some quantity of completely general matter and its equally unique and specific organising pattern. — apokrisis

My argument is that, if my version doesn't work for you as an example of successful personal continuation, than neither does the teleporter. So I disagree with what you wrote here. If you think my version fails but the teleporter is ok, you are simply falling for a sleight of hand in the teleporter story, such as: that there is only ever one copy of the victim... that the victim's molecules may be recycled... that the process is instantaneous. I don't believe any of these are metaphysically relevant. They are only relevant to our intuitions.

But your victim seemed to be thinking that the mind was something more. It was not about a structure of material organisation but some kind of spirit that could hop across and wake up somewhere else.

The nature of this confusion in terms of its metaphysical commitments was unclear. But it sounded Cartesian. So as I say, the story is entertaining. But in what way is it enlightening? — apokrisis

He believed either that, or psychological continuity as @ChrisH maintains, or some muddle of the two, or was merely going with the flow. The point is, this example, to me, clearly fails as an instance of personal continuity. So the reader is forced to claim that even this example constitutes continuity (ChrisH), is forced to explain why the teleporter suceeeds while this fails (you), or is forced to reject the teleporter as well (me).

This is an argument against the wisdom of undertaking human cloning. — ChrisH

No that is not what I was going for, I'm not interested in that question. I'm trying to wrap my head around the notion of an individual splitting.

The core question here, for me: is it rational for the original to accept the treatment? According to bodily continuity, it is a hard no. According to psychological continuity... it is deeply unclear. Once or the other must be right, either it is rational or or isn't.

You believe in psychological continuity, so what do you think?

In my view, neither the original nor the clone will be aware of which they are. The only way they can deduce who they may be is from external information which may or may not be trustworthy. — ChrisH

I'm not sure if you understand. It is a very queer situation. In the intended sequence (original is killed before the clone wakes up), there is no doubt: the original will wake up as the clone (assuming he wakes up at all). But in the scenario I gave, original woke up, then was killed. So to the original, as he woke up, it might have seemed horribly unlucky. Why couldn't he have been the clone?

As if the universe rolled dice, and deposited him in one or the other body depending on the roll. Absurd. But if so, then was there any chance of the original washing up as the clone? If not, it must then be irrational to accept the treatment.

A teleporter scenario seems benign for that reason. — apokrisis

Teleporter:

A enters booth 1 -> disassemble A -> transmit info to booth 2 -> assemble B -> B exits booth 2

My version (what should have happened) :

A enters scanner -> transmit info to printer -> assemble B -> "disassemble" A -> B exits printer

My version (what actually happened) :

A enters scanner -> transmit info to printer -> assemble B -> B exits printer -> "disassemble" A

All three versions perform the same fundamental operations. The only difference is when the disassembly of A happens.

In the teleporter, the disassembly happens right after entering the booth. I'm my version, it was supposed to happen after B was assembled. But the orderly made a mistake, and A saw B walking around before "disassembly".

The later the disassembly happens, the worse the case seems for continuity. But isn't this "seeming" just intuition? Why should it matter, metaphysically speaking, when the disassembly happens?

You have a single world-line or identity at any moment in that a single embodied state gets broken down, then rebuilt, with no leakage of selfhood, just the kind of halt and reboot of going to bed everynight. — apokrisis

Is this sort of reasoning intuitive, or metaphysical? Does the universe really track such things, such that one scenario counts as embodied continuity, and the other does not? Or is it we who are tracking such things as we read these stories, merely thinking as we do that we are tracking the universe.

Or does "psychological continuity" mean something other than the embodied and enactive view of cognition and sense of self? — apokrisis

By that I mean the idea that it is not the the body that counts in personal persistence, but the mind. So long as the mind is faithfully reproduced, the original persists as the clone.

The teleporter is sciencey bullshit. But at least dematerialising a body to atoms in one location and instantly having them reassembled as the same form elsewhere preserves the continuity of an embodied state. — apokrisis

I think it is all smoke and mirrors, and that my op is logically equivalent. Is, for instance, the instantaneous reassemblage metaphysically critical? Or, does it just play into our intuition that the person moved quickly, rather than was destroyed and recreated.

The problem with cloning is that this is now a thought experiment based on actual real-world science. You have to grow your body. And for it to have a mind, it would have to grow with it in the usual fashion.

So as I said, things fall down where your victim is said to believe that there is only an empty body on the other side of the procedure. And somehow his own mind it going to hop over to inhabit it. — apokrisis

No real world science here, it is just as bullshit as the teleporter. I described the machine growing of the clone as a "organic 3d printer", and I implied that it only took a few hours. And so, equivalent to versions of the teleporter where the victim is reassembled at the destination (but not versions where the original molecules are actually transported somehow).

There is not even any bullshit reason to expect continuity at this level. Even if we grant some cloning procedure that creates fully formed bodies with identical mental experiences that can be grown in a vat in a couple of weeks, there is still no reason for your victim to make his invalid inferences. — apokrisis

Yet people here (i.e. @ChrisH) believe in the continuity.

If you said you were going to dissolve him in the vat and then regenerate him from the vat just as quickly – and somehow both the mental patterns and flesh and blood patterns would re-emerge together exactly as they were, just a bit gene edited for arthritis – then now you would be closer to the teleporter story. — apokrisis

Closer in metaphysical ways that matter? Or closer merely in the way it plays on our intuitions, "transformation of the same thing" in this case.

And then the real question here. How can plainly unrealistic technologies illustrate anything other than some of the weird beliefs we have about the separability of body and mind? Organisms are cognitive structures down to the level of enzymes and their other molecular machinery. We don't come apart like hardware and software, despite what might be commonly believed. — apokrisis

To me, the real lesson is that the concepts we use only present themselves as aspects of reality. But really they are tailored to reality as it happens to be for us, and break down when we try to apply them to scenarios that are foreign to them ( In this sense the scenarios are necessarily unrealistic, if they were realistic our concepts would have already been shaped to accommodate them).

So then, what do we do? Can we salvage our concepts by fixing a few flaws so they work in every situation? Or do we concede that they are fundamentally bespoke, and do not and can not match with "reality"? So much of philosophy, I think, reduces to this kind of question, of the relationship between concepts and reality.

My point is that, in my view, both successfully survive as continuations of the pre-cloned-original. Pointing out that from the perspective of one, the other is a different person doesn't seem to me to invalidate this. — ChrisH

There is still an epistemic asymmetry. You know, as the original, that you will be murdered. This is guaranteed. But you can only ever believe that you will also continue as the clone. Since there is no observable consequence of continuance or it's failure, this can never be verified. You can only try to reason it out, as we are. Are you confident enough in your reasoning to stake your life in this way?

But really, it is quite difficult to conceive of this splitting. Suppose the split happened, and the clone was a "valid descendent". To what does this benefit the original? The original, post split, is still the original, the copy is as "other" as any stranger. Somehow, the original also woke up as a clone. But as soon as the split happens, the clone has interests that are opposed to the original. Would you pay $1000 for another version of you to be a millionaire?

Is it somehow a matter of chance which path you take? Does the original wake up and think "damn I got unlucky! I wanted to wake up as a clone!"

Really this whole concept doesn't feel fully coherent.

But you have set this up so that the victim acted on a misunderstanding. And that over-complicates things. It seems the victim expected to have his mind moved to a vacant body, not that another body would appear imprinted with what would be his last living state of mind. — apokrisis

In the same way that someone entering a teleporter expects to come out the other side, the victim expected to wake up as the clone. There was no misunderstanding in the sense that the victim understood how it works. He just didn't understand what it implied.

But if the victim had some hazy notion about a soul stuff being lifted and moved across to some new matter vessel, then they are indeed the victim of a bad metaphysics. — apokrisis

He might equally have believed in psychological continuity.

The mind could be lifted as some kind of pattern of information and plonked down to run on some other bit of physical hardware. There is just the single pattern and two bits of hardware involved. So continuity tracks the porting of the pattern. — apokrisis

At times I have believed something like this. And I think a compelling case can be made. If there is no observable consequence of this "continuity", if the universe looks exactly the same whether the original "continued" on in their twin or did not, to everyone involved and to the twin themselves, and to us in our mundane acts of living, shouldn't we discard this notion of continuity altogether?

And thus, so long as the twin feels as if there is continuity, that is, so long as the information from the original was transferred intact, then there is continuity, there is no observable extra thing to it.

Except when the original remains alive. Then the lack of continuity with the .

Having created a pair of identities – made as identical as they could possibly be – there is no reason they can't both be allowed to live on. It is not necessary to add on the moral drama. — apokrisis

The inspiration of this thought experiment was to reframe the basic teleporter concept in such a way that it seems viscerally clear that the clone or teleported are not the original. That from the original's perspective, it is just suicide. Straightforward cloning wouldn't capture that.

Also, I like the drama.

What you haven't done is show that the clone and post-cloned-original cannot both be considered equally valid descendants of the pre-cloned-original — ChrisH

They may be. But why is that the question? The patient (or teleportee), isn't asking if the clone (or teleported) will be a "valid decedent", whatever that means. They ask if they will survive the procedure. It is not in my interest to create a 'valid descendent " who lives happily. It is my interest to live happily.

I agree the original and clone have different perspectives but (in my view) they both view the world from the perspective of someone who was the original prior to cloning. — ChrisH

These are both true.

The point of the story was to give a visceral sense that the clone is certainly not you.

There are two entities, Original and Copy. Original is unproblematically the same person after the procedure. Copy is manifestly NOT Original, from Originals perspective. To Original, Copy presents as an other who happens to look like him. What benefits Copy (pain free life) manifestly does NOT benefit Original, and what harms original (illness, murder) does NOT harm Copy. Original thought the procedure would be to Originals benefit; it was to Copies benefit.

If Original (after) is the same as Original (before), and Original(after) is not Copy, Original (before) is not Copy.

And from both points of view, one of the you's made the decision that life was better with the illness edited out. And that one of you had pre-consented the termination of that you's history line. You had wanted to be the other you.

So claiming that a life has been stolen is a bit strong. It was freely given at the time. — apokrisis

Not quite, I don't think the intent was to give anything. It was not an altruistic gesture. The decision was made in self interest, in the mistaken belief that the original would become the clone. But the reality is, a stranger acquired the originals life.

Not that this stranger doesn't possess interests and rights. But the original is the victim of this story.

Would be interesting to find a thought experiment to make me change my mind, but they all seem to result in the second subject of experience being in a different spatial location to the original subject of experience, and hence having different experience and memories, and ipso facto not being the same person. — Down The Rabbit Hole

So you maintain that the clone is not the original, not because the original can see the clone walking about, but because of the seconds of time in which their experiences differ??

I don't think it makes sense to talk about personal continuity between you and your twin. I'd have thought what is pertinent is the degree (or lack) of continuity you and your twin have with the the 'you' prior to cloning. I'd have thought both have equal psychological continuity - physical continuity, in my view, is not important. — ChrisH

Yes that is the more accurate wording, I will edit the op.

I think both sides have valid arguments. But to me this is a pretty convincing one for the bodily continuity side. Why not you?

The scenario is very boring. I will stay with arthritis. The clone is the clone and just someone else. Cryonics is definitely more interesting. — SolarWind

Yet many don't share this intuition. And moreover most find it to be analogous to the teleporter case , meaning that that one is boring too. Maybe so, but there are a whole lot of people who insist teleportation is not murder, like this scenario is.

↪hypericinWhy would I choose to die so that my replica can live? I don't understand that. You've not cured my illness. You've just created a new person just like me without my illness. Why can't we both live? Why do we need another of me without arthritis? Why not make a whole team of people like me, — Hanover

I set it up this way to match the teleporter thought experiment as closely as possible. If it seems absurd that anyone would choose it, and it does in fact map to the teleporter, then I did my job, and teleporting is equally absurd.

You seem to be interpreting "bodily continuity" as meaning something like "Let's only care about the body, and not the self". — Mijin

Nope.

It means that the self is inherently tied to the physical substrate and therefore is also the self. — Mijin

I interpret it to mean that bodily continuity is a prerequisite of physical continuity. So yes the self is in some sense tied to the physical substrate. But this does not entail a strict identification with the body that you seem to think. The body can still persist in cases where the self is extinguished. Death is the obvious limit case. Followed by brain death, then severe brain damage.

To be sure, the brain is part of the body. But (assuming bodily continuity) identity likely hinges mainly on the functioning of the brain, not the body as a whole.

For people that believe in bodily continuity, for example, any level of brain damage that doesn't kill them results in still the (numerically) same person, — Mijin

Numerically the same body, not the same person. You can suffer enough brain damage such that your personhood is extinguished, but your body survives. And certainly enough to radically alter your self, in the deepest way possible.

We aren't talking about qualitative identity, we are talking about numerical identity. — Mijin

We are talking about numerical identity of the self, which may indeed hinge on qualitative identity. If a teleporter is not a death machine, it must.

, it depends on what determines the difference between surviving in any form versus not surviving at all, and we have no idea what does, or could, determine that. — Mijin

If you had a stroke or a TBI, what determines whether you survive in any form, or whether your old self is gone? There is no hard line. Part of you is gone, that is all. Do you think some metaphysical argument can determine this?

Insisting that there must be a line between survival and extinction, either in the teleporter case or a mundane brain injury, is a mistake.

It implies that if the person walking out of the transporter has a single atom the same as the person at source, then the person at source has survived. — Mijin

It implies no such thing. you are the one insisting that survival is a binary.

There is no way ot argue for "partial survival" because one cannot be and not be. — AmadeusD

I have given you ample reasons why you can partially survive, in the psychological sense. You respond by blankly insisting that no, you can't. .

And it is very problematic for the position of psychological continuity for the reasons given; the line is arbitrary, yet important, and further yet: unknowable. — Mijin

Assuming psychological continuity is correct, it is up to you to draw the line. If you believe that any degree of survival counts as survival of the original, then if Napoleon came out of the teleporter, and he had the faintest, most fleeting and occasional memory of the teleportee, well then for you that is full survival. But that is just your personal judgement: you are treating a continuous property as a binary, and you are free to designate any line you wish. But however you draw the line, the reality is that in this case the teleportee survived only to an infinitesimal degree.

Again, I think I personally believe in bodily continuity at this point. But, the imperfect teleporter does not refute psychological continuity. That conclusion relies on treating something that is continuous, psychological survival, as a binary.

I think the key for my objection (its not really an objection proper) is that the concept of survival is a 1 or 0. — AmadeusD

You are thinking in terms of bodily survival. But the core of this question is which type of survival is relevant for personal continuity: bodily, or psychological?

Survival is only a 1 or 0 if we are talking about bodily survival. Either the heart is still beating, or it has stopped forever.

This is not how psychological survival works. Here the full range from 0 to 1 is possible. Think of someone in a complete vegetative coma. The body is still alive, it survives, this is a 1. But the mind is gone, a 0. Call the healthy state, before whatever illness or accident caused a coma, a 1. Between that there is a full spectrum between psychic wholeness and psychic death. If you have ever witnessed someone's descent into dementia this reality would be painfully apparent. As dementia progresses, bits and pieces are taken away from the victim, until there is nothing left.

Of course, in reality bodily integrity has the same continuity. The body undergoes degrees of degradation, it doesn't just stop working one day. But we are so attuned to the divide between life and death that we think of it as binary. The line between awareness of any kind, and vegetative unconsciousness, just isn't as salient for us, so we don't have an equivalent binary conception of psychological survival.

. If what you mean is that not all of you survives that's quite a different claim and might bear some clarification. — AmadeusD

Why is "not all of you survives" "quite a different claim" from "part of you survives"?

This is the line we're interested in in the imperfect transporter. Where is that line: how does the universe decide, and how can we know where it is? — Mijin

We both know there is no line.

You want to say, in the imperfect transporter, if survival is possible at all, there must be a line between survival and death, as death is surely possible given enough imperfection. There is no such line, any such line must be arbitrary. Therefore survival isn't possible.

But this is only true if survival is binary. If we think of survival in terms of a body living or dying, it is binary. If we think in terms of a soul transmigrating or not, it is binary. But if we think in terms of psychological survival (which is the only way anyone can survive a transporter) it is not. Survival in this case is a continuum between 0-1, not a binary on-off.

That is why I keep returning to injury, such as stroke. In a stroke, while your body might survive, in a psychological sense, your mind may only partially survive. You may lose aspects of your cognition, abilities, personality, memory, and feelings, and in a very visceral sense you may feel discontinuous with your prior self. But not necessarily fully discontinuous, the discontinuity lies on a spectrum. And so partial survival is not some abstract construct, it is already part of everyday reality.

In this context, "partial" could only be mapped to saying: yes, you survive, and that the nature of your consciousness depends on the nature of the damage. The problem is, this is implicitly saying that I am always transported. So, if Abraham Lincoln walks out at Destination, I'm surviving through his eyes, despite the only association between me and him being that some person claimed the transporter would send me. — Mijin

No. You are yet again talking from your implicit soul perspective, where "instance of consciousness" is your word for soul. Assuming psychological continuity is key, you survive only to the degree that the new person's psychology resembles the old. Abraham Lincolns would not resemble it at all, so you would be completely extinguished.

But your position seems to be that psychological continuity is key, right? So in your view, is that person still alive? — Mijin

I'm not so sure anymore, I'm moving away from that toward the bodily continuity camp. The kind of argument that is swaying me: suppose the original wasn't dematerialized, by accident. The original would have no clue what was going on with the teleported person. From the original's perspective, the copy is a completely separate person that just so happens to resemble them, like a supremely close identical twin. Then, the mistake is realized, and the original is subsequently killed. Why should killing the the original change that the copy is a separate person?

2. (The more correct description IMO) That "bodily" and "Psychological" are two different theories on instances of consciousness and you are just summarizing the two positions.
In which case saying "partial" for psychological is just a dodge: are you alive or not? — Mijin

Not theories of "instances of consciousness" but theories of personal continuity. What is relevant to personal continuity, bodily continuity, or psychological continuity?

"Partial" is not a dodge. I am saying that in the imperfect transporter case, the subject experiences zero bodily continuity and partial psychological continuity. Whether that constitutes (partial) survival depends on whether bodily or psychological is the relevant continuity.

Survival is not binary in the psychological sense. You can lose some of yourself, but not all of yourself, in a brain injury.

Given the two perspectives on continuity, Bodily and Psychological:

Aristotle
Bodily: dead
Psychological: dead

Stroke victim
Bodily: alive
Psychological: partial

Massive stroke victim
Bodily: alive
Psychological: dead

Perfect transporter
Bodily: dead
Psychological: alive

Imperfect transporter
Bodily: dead
Psychological: partial

Radically imperfect transporter
Bodily: dead
Psychological: dead

Aristotle is of the same status as a radically imperfect transport: dead. Both perspectives agree. But this doesn't preclude degrees of survival in the imperfect transporter, assuming that psychological continuity is what is relevant. This would not require the universe to set a hard line between what counts as survival or not. Psychological survival is continuous, not binary, and so there is no need for it to do so. Bodily survival is also continuous in the ship of Theseus sense, but binary in the familiar sense that bodies can endure only so much damage before they lose the ability to maintain homeostasis, which is what death is.

Now: the "imperfect transporter", that I have proposed, is an argument against Sent / Psychological continuity. — Mijin

I still don't think this works.

while "degree of difference" might be a continuous measure, whether you survive or not is binary (surviving in a imperfect state still counts as surviving). — Mijin

Is it really binary? If you have a major stroke, does all of you survive? If you have a stroke such that you completely assume the identity of Abraham Lincoln, does any of you survive?

We are accustomed to thinking of survival in bodily terms. And in bodily terms the answers would be "yes" in both cases. But this is just a habit, it might be the wrong metric here. If we thought of identity in psychological terms , the answers would be "no".

So I think this is only a problem if you assume bodily continuity from the outset.

It's like I have a theory of a new allotrope of carbon, but all the responses are questioning the existence of atoms. — Mijin

Perhaps your "new allotrope of carbon" isn't as interesting as you supposed.

No, I mean you conceded the words before that: that "I" refers to the individual subject of conscious experiences, in conflict with when you earlier claimed that both me and a duplicate would be two "I"s. — Mijin

I don't understand why you think these statements conflict.

A duplicate means two "I"s. Two people, each referring to themselves as "I", each individual subjects of conscious experience. Each with psychological continuity to the original. I haven't changed on this.

In terms of the "stick a pin" point, that is part of my answer to you when you asked "What exactly is the problem with multiple "I"s?" — Mijin

Ah, I see the confusion.

But this seems to be taking the position that I alluded to upthread as "Locke's conception"; that the critical thing is the pattern of memories, characteristics etc.
This also has issues; e.g. what if we don't delete the original, does it mean we have multiple "I"s? And how can that be, when the experiences of those I's is separate? — Mijin

If we don't delete the original, there will be multiple people with psychological continuity to the original. Each with distinct experiences. "I" only ever refers to the one that is speaking. What is wrong with this state of affairs? I still don't see the issue you were referring to originally.

The problem is firstly, you brought up the concept of multiple "I"s and now you're conceding that "I" refers to an individual because there is not a shared consciousness. — Mijin

I didn't realize I was conceding anything. When the hell did I say there was a shared consciousness?

The critical thing is if we have a model for understanding what happens to instances of consciousness. — Mijin

I gave a model. You said, but wait, there is a problem, what about two clones, and one sticks itself with a pin? I await a demonstration of any actual problem.

Because the pronoun "I" refers to this instance of consciousness. In the stick a pin example, I might say "I am in pain". What would two "I"s mean? — Mijin

"I" would mean the individual who was stuck. There are two numerically distinct individuals who claim continuity with the same individual in the past. I see nothing problematic.

n this case, a dead body is not identical to the body previously known to be the alive person (other than at the moment of death, but clearly this isn't relevant as the change occurs while alive to give us a different body at times t1, t2, t3 etc.. etc.. if we pick sufficient distal times (three-four month increments should do). — AmadeusD

I'm not following your logic here.

At the moment of death, you agree the body is identical to the body immediately before death.
Yet, personhood is extinguished at the moment of death.
This shows that personhood is not bodily identity.
Moreover, the moment of death is the relevant time. It is the time when personhood drops to zero, while bodily continuity is still intact. What happens months later is of no interest.

We would then discuss whether it actually takes seven years to disclaim identity, as hte skeleton takes longer to be replaced. Which change matters? At what point? To what degree? — AmadeusD

You might discuss this. I would find it as useless as any other discussion of Ship of Theseus criteria.

You believe personal identity can be 1:x. That's a big, big concession (not a negative one) in terms of reaching some conclusion. If you take this position, several outcomes of the transporter can be acceptable.

Most do not take this to be the situation. Most take personal identity to be, fundamentally, a 1:1 entity. I don't even think that obtains, but i digress. Whether or not personal identity requires identity is the open question. Once you have an intuition, the TE tests it. — AmadeusD

I believe this, and I have provided a notion of self which supports it, and which avoids the usual metaphysical quandaries of the TE. In real life, personal identity is indeed 1:1, it takes fantastic, futuristic scenarios for it not to be. Given that 1:1 is our actual, default experience, the fact that people also believe that personal identity is intrinsically 1:1, despite the quandaries in the TE this entails, carries vanishingly little weight.

They are not the same person. Obviously. I can't see how that's being missed?? If we're talking identity, you cannot have two people who are the same person. — AmadeusD

If we are talking numerical identity, then clearly not. But personal identity is obviously not numerical identity.

This is most clear in death. When someone dies, their body is the same body as (numerically identical with) the body that was alive. But there is no personal continuity between them. Numerical identity is not what we are talking about.

What is relevant is personal continuity, not numerical identity. And it is (logically) possible for two people to be both non-identical with each other and personally continuous with the same ancestor individual.

I thought I already said what the issue is: there might be two entities that could call themselves Mijin, but stick a pin in one, and the other doesn't feel pain. There are two instances of consciousness. — Mijin

And what is the problem with that?

And I don't know why you keep raising souls. As I say, within this topic it seems to only be invoked by people trying to express incredulence about the other position to their own.
I don't think anyone in this thread has taken the position that souls exist, certainly not me. — Mijin

Whether or not people explicitly believe in souls, my position is that there is an implicit presumption of souls in the abstract, that is, the mental model whereby we are non-physical entities that inhabit bodies. It is this mental model which gives rise to all the confusion of the teleporter thought experiment. Even the idea that continuity is an illusion, that we really live only in the instant, relies on this, as it fails to imagine continuity in the absence of something like a soul. If you abolish this intuition, I don't think there are any problems with teleportation. Continuity simply is the idea of self over time, over time. As long as this maintains, continuity maintains. Souls were always an illusion.

It does though. Going back to the OP, what if the transporter makes so many errors that (an alive) Abraham Lincoln walks out at the destination? He's alive, but nothing at all like the person that stepped on the source transporter pad. This illiustrates that the line for suriving or not is not the same as whether the original instance of consciousness is preserved or not, as the two are independent. — Mijin

So by "It does though", you are claiming that this illustrates that the universe does decree that "X=12,371 means surviving with brain damage, and X=12,372 means you effectively die from the injury"?

How is it decided what is confusion, and what is or is not a thing? — Patterner

Because for instance, nobody actually counts molecules or uses molecules as a criteria for identity (and as already established, nor does the universe). It is a made up criteria.

It's obviously unintuitive, but it is also unsatisfactory as it gives us no notion of self. It allows for 1:x without explanation. Isn't that an issue, to you? — AmadeusD

I have articulated a notion of self already. "Self" is a conceptual integration of sensory experience, mental experience, and memory into a unified idea. According to this notion, there is nothing contradictory about multiple individuals all having the idea of being you, and thus the experience of being you.

And this implies that, as unintuitive as it sounds, you "continue" after entering the teleporter, after being cloned, etc, because "continuance" is just the succession of these experiences of "self" over time.

Does this not seem unsatisfactory to you? — AmadeusD

It is unintuitive, but not "unsatisfactory". What is unsatisfactory is letting intuitions about persistent selves remain unchallenged.

If the universe isn't keeping track, meaning there is no objective answer, then it's up to each person to judge for themselves. — Patterner

Not necessarily. People can still be confused, and imagine criteria for "sameness" in certain scenarios that neither they nor anyone else actually apply. For instance, the criterion that "all the molecules have to be the same" is simply imaginary, its not actually a thing.

Yes. And?