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.

Why should it matter, metaphysically speaking, when the disassembly happens? — hypericin

You built your version of the thought experiment based on a series of confusions. 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.

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.

So we are comparing apples and oranges. The teleporter is being critiqued on the basis that things happen as they should. And it also speaks to an embodied story on consciousness and identity that goes back to Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory of substance.

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.

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?

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.

If only the clone were produced (with no operational shenanigans or mishaps), the clone would have the exact same identity as the person who stepped into the machine. They are subjectively the same (even if the clone is produced in a spatially separate location than where the original stepped into the machine), because they have the exact same physical structure that leads to the same mental patterns, memories and personalities. — finarfin

My argument was only that a difference in spatial location would cause the clone and the original to be different people. The difference in spatial location would cause their mental patterns and memories to be different, thus making them different people. I wasn't making a comment on which, if any of them, were "you".

I am sympathetic to the idea that through our life we are not the same person. As our mental patterns and memories change we change as a person. Otherwise you face the problem of having two of the same person walking around.

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? — hypericin

I'm not sure what you're asking. For me bodily continuity arguments simply don't work. As far as I can tell psychological continuity is what is important to most people.

I'm not sure if you understand. — hypericin

I'm pretty sure I do.

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? — hypericin

It doesn't matter what scenario you construct, neither the original nor the clone know which they are when they wake (and it's quite possible to construct a scenario where no one knows which is which).The point being that If the two are treated differently, it's because we choose to do so.

As far as I can see nothing you've said impacts in the slightest on whether or not personal identity is a matter of psychological continuity.

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).

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

I was confused by what you were directing an argument against. It seems that you were attacking misconceptions shown in some other thread. So sure, it all you want to do is highlight the fact that minds can't jump into different bodies, then go for it.

But I still don't follow how it is then that argument.

If the business model of the clone facility relies on the metaphysical belief that mind is the pattern that informs the structure of the body, that is one thing. One can kind of go along with that from the embodied perspective that I would take. And that would only leave what seems to be the queasy decision that one would have to make to think the procedure was worthwhile.

One has already accepted that there is no "psychological continuity" in the sense your mind would somehow jump across and occupy the clone with its already functionally ready to go neural machinery, prepared with a fully faithful copy of your embodied state.

But if the issue is that some poster needs to be convinced that the mind is then not something over and above its physical instantiation as some pattern of information that all the relevant neurology has, then maybe your tale of confusions might have some impact on that.

And indeed, it should be hard to find the clone procedure plausible and not then see it as support for the embodied physicalist view while still also treating the mind as something – as in some kind of Cartesian spirit stuff – that can flit off to inhabit the cloned self. There is an inconsistency if that is the misconception in play.

So sorry but I thought you were first asking as straight-out "would you still do it?" question. And then that you were wanting a general metaphysical conclusion. But now it seems to be just targeting the problem that the standard Cartesianist would have here.

My argument is that, if my version doesn't work for you as an example of successful personal continuation, than neither does the teleporter. — hypericin

Again, we are debating science fiction at this point. And my view of personal continuation is based on science fact. So I pointed out that we deal with some level of this issue for real just when we go to sleep, when we turnover our molecules, when we think back over our many years of growing up.

The teleporter and the cloner might be on some kind of continuum as to how they might then stretch that everyday acceptance that I am me, based on the fact that I wake up in the same bed with the same aches every morning and a "to do" list of intentions for the day ahead.

The teleporter promises to disassemble my information and my matter and then reassemble them. I would probably be OK with that whether or not my existing atoms were recycled or replaced like for like. If it worked as advertised, then psychologically I wouldn't have any clear reason to be more worried than when I go to sleep – and understand there will be some busy rewiring going on inside my head to do stuff like consolidate memories and do some molecular level house-cleaning.

But the clone procedure creates a lot of messiness about psychological continuity, even if it is just on the larger social side of that equation. An embodied mind exists not just in a body but in a society and a world that already has a "me" shaped hole for myself. There is my wife, kids, bank account, rights and responsibilities, a personal history that a lot of other people are connected to and would be affected by.

Society at large would have to accept the procedure as unproblematic for my clone to be treated as me after it replaced me. My wife would have to not mind that a copy of her husband returned home that night and maybe brought a little urn of ashes to sprinkle under her favourite rose bush.

So viewed from the embodied perspective, I would say that my death would have to be concealed from society for the cloning operation to be counted as a success. Would you treat a clone as actually the same person? Well I guess if the clone is a greatly improved one, perhaps you would. There are all sorts of things you might want gene edited or neurally tweaked.

Getting off the track but you can see why I would say the teleporter raises less confusions. The cloning process might be put on a similar footing if instead everyone knew I had climbed into some dissolving vat after having my information scanned, and then that information was used to regrow me rapidly until a few hours later, I suddenly stood up and started wiping off the slimy goo from my limbs, ready to shower and slot back into the society-shaped hole that is just as much part of any claims to a "psychological 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). — hypericin

Yes, I see now that what seemed like a general question was a targeted repost. Good luck with your efforts. :up: