Transportation/Identity. Complete Mind ****.

[Penumbra]

But if they retained there memories in reconfiguration of the exact same atoms, they would possess the same material and the same qualia. What other than that makes up a person?

Continuity of consciousness. If someone makes a clone of me, and inserts my memories into her, then I would observe an identical but separate human being. She would be her, and I would be me. If someone pokes her with a pin, I wouldn't feel it, because we're not the same person. We would be discrete units of consciousness.

Also. I am always changing. As a moment skips, I become physically and mentally different than my previous state, but I retain the same identity. I'm thinking those 7 copies would be me!

Why? They have separate central nervous systems.

The way to answer the hypothetical is to theorize what would happen if the original entering the machine was not destroyed. So, instead, the person enters, and a clone with memories appears on the other side. They're not the same person, even though to outside observers, they seem to be. Now, if you kill the original, it doesn't change the scenario. There's no reason to suppose that it is one continuous person.

 

[Frank Merton]

Continuity of consciousness. If someone makes a clone of me, and inserts my memories into her, then I would observe an identical but separate human being. She would be her, and I would be me. If someone pokes her with a pin, I wouldn't feel it, because we're not the same person. We would be discrete units of consciousness.

Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the vast majority of those God chooses to save will not go to Heaven but will live on a paradise Earth (sometime in the not-too-distant future). When I ask how they will get there, the answer is that God will resurrect them, but in a new, perfect body -- with all of their old memories. I naturally ask how this new being can be sure they are really the old one.

Since you point out that if the Star Trek Transporter would create two people -- and if the origin person is not destroyed you would have two people, it looks to me that you would come down on the side of saying the resurrectee would be a different person, but this doesn't seem quite right.

 

[Penumbra]

Jehovah's Witnesses teach that the vast majority of those God chooses to save will not go to Heaven but will live on a paradise Earth (sometime in the not-too-distant future). When I ask how they will get there, the answer is that God will resurrect them, but in a new, perfect body -- with all of their old memories. I naturally ask how this new being can be sure they are really the old one.

Since you point out that if the Star Trek Transporter would create two people -- and if the origin person is not destroyed you would have two people, it looks to me that you would come down on the side of saying the resurrectee would be a different person, but this doesn't seem quite right.

That's one reason why I don't think an afterlife is important.

The only wildcard in the mix is that unlike a transporter which transports physical material, those who have belief in an afterlife generally believe in some type of soul, which is basically a magical placeholder that allows their concept to work.

I made a thread specifically about continuity of consciousness before, and utilized an afterlife as one of the examples for discussion.
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/religious-debates/107604-continuity-consciousness.html

 

[Frank Merton]

That's one reason why I don't think an afterlife is important.

T those who have belief in an afterlife generally believe in some type of soul, which is basically a magical placeholder that allows their concept to work.

Jehovah's Witnesses are remarkably different on that point; armed with a bushel of Bible passages, they argue that the idea of "soul" is a pagan notion and that the Bible teaches no such thing. I have talked with my sister about this quite a bit (she is a JW), and she seems unable to appreciate the philosophical problem their teaching presents.

To Buddhists (generally), the "no self" teaching is important. We are not body and mind but just body, with "mind" not having physical existence but instead being more like a wave on the ocean or the flame of a candle.

 

[Frank Merton]

I made a thread specifically about continuity of consciousness before, and utilized an afterlife as one of the examples for discussion.
http://www.religiousforums.com/forum/religious-debates/107604-continuity-consciousness.html

OK, I posted a response
http://www.religiousforums.com/foru...4-continuity-consciousness-8.html#post2369568

 

[blackout]

Yes, you would be the same person,
assuming the process went through uninterrupted.
If you re'assembled in exact replica
retaining all experiental memories,
ALL things exactly replicated,
yes, you would be the same person.
The particular particles that make us up physically
are always moving and changing anyway.
so this would not make us a "different" person
than who we were before.
We always live as a shifting, changing mass of particles.

now, if you copied someone, replicated them,
killed them, and then made a second copy
of that first scan, when they were still alive,
they would NOT be the exact same person
who was initially "informationally copied",
with the exact same memories/history/past,
and current state of being.
YOU would have been a murdered person.
This NEW person, would be an 'alive person'.
(and a person who never experienced/underwent murder)

This is not the YOU who went into the replicator.
Put the murdered you into the replicator,
hit copy, deconstruct and re'assemble,
and it will still be the same you on the other end.

the dead you.

 

[Frank Merton]

Yes, you would be the same person,
assuming the process went through uninterrupted.
If you re'assembled in exact replica
retaining all experiental memories,
ALL things exactly replicated,
yes, you would be the same person.

You can say that if you are entirely physicalist in your perspective, but a lot of us aren't, and think there may be something about us that makes us "us" that doesn't get transported.

 

[blackout]

You can say that if you are entirely physicalist in your perspective, but a lot of us aren't, and think there may be something about us that makes us "us" that doesn't get transported.

I am not entirely physicalist in my perspective,
but still,
this makes perfect sense to me.

(I don't really think there are seperate 'consciousnesses',
but just differing experiences of consciousness)

Your experience of consciousness,
or... your conscious experience,
is "you".

That's how I see it tonight, anyhow.

 

[Frank Merton]

I am not entirely physicalist in my perspective,
but still,
this makes perfect sense to me.

(I don't really think there are seperate 'consciousnesses',
but just differing experiences of consciousness)

Your experience of consciousness,
or... your conscious experience,
is "you".

That's how I see it tonight, anyhow.

Of course I see it that way too, even though I also am not entirely physicalist. It is just that I also understand seeing it the other way.

 

[not yet now]

there is such a device kinda like that
it is the mind that does what god requires
by facing the sins of one's own past
involving past lifetimes in a human body and before
where in being convicted of one's guilt
one repents and accepts that offered by way of a divine salvaition plan
then one can transcend time and space by way of
being in the world but not of the world

 

[not yet now]

there is such a device kinda like that
it is the mind that does what god requires
by facing the sins of one's own past
involving past lifetimes in a human body and before
where in being convicted of one's guilt
one repents and accepts that offered by way of a divine salvation plan
then one can transcend time and space by way of
being in the world but not of the world