Is transportation death?

[Tyyr]

Bring religion into the equation though. If the transporter does kill you and replace you with a duplicate that thinks it's the real you, then what you have is a bunch of souless clones wandering about.

That's if each body only gets one soul though. Theoretically speaking there's no reason each new clone doesn't get their own soul.

[Mikey]

That's what I mean - at issue is the subjective viewpoint. If I believed strictly in numerical identity, and you told me that the transporter would destroy my current body but replace me with a double, I'd say "Go scratch." If I believed strictly in qualitative identity, I wouldn't care in the least.

Bring religion into the equation though. If the transporter does kill you and replace you with a duplicate that thinks it's the real you, then what you have is a bunch of souless clones wandering about.

Replace "consciousness" or "personality" with "soul" and it's the same thing. Does the "soul" depend on continued physical identity, or qualitative identity?

[Lighthawk]

I look at this way. Say we make a clone of you right now, without ripping your flesh apart into energy first. It's a perfect clone, you in every way, even memories. Is the clone you? Do you share consciousness? I'd say no, it may look, think, and act EXACTLY like me, but it's isn't me because my mind and it's are seperate. I wouldn't be willing to die just because another me is walking around, because it isn't me. The transporter is doing just that as far as I'm concerned, it's just killing me before it makes my clone.

[Captain Seafort]

Now there might be 10,000 copies of Riker standing at the Pearly Gates cursing the guy who invented the transporter but there's no way you can ever prove that objectively.

Yes we can. Riker in particular is easy to prove - the one we saw for most of TNG is a copy, who isn't even comprised of the same matter as the original - his original matter was reflected back to Nervala IV. This is not at all unusual - the same thing happened to Picard, Ro, Keiko and Guinan in Rascals. Moreover, if you consider life to be defined as electrical activity in the brain stem, and cessation of that activity to be death, then we have yet more evidence - with your body split into a trillion pieces, electrical activity becomes rather difficult. This might be passed on if there was continuity of consciousness, but there isn't - Scotty had no idea how much time had passed while he was in the Jenolan's transporter.

[Captain Seafort]

I look at this way. Say we make a clone of you right now, without ripping your flesh apart into energy first. It's a perfect clone, you in every way, even memories. Is the clone you? Do you share consciousness? I'd say no, it may look, think, and act EXACTLY like me, but it's isn't me because my mind and it's are seperate. I wouldn't be willing to die just because another me is walking around, because it isn't me. The transporter is doing just that as far as I'm concerned, it's just killing me before it makes my clone.

Precisely.

[Mikey]

All true, if and only if you accept continued physical identity of consciousness as the only indicator of personal identity.

I look at this way. Say we make a clone of you right now, without ripping your flesh apart into energy first. It's a perfect clone, you in every way, even memories. Is the clone you? Do you share consciousness? I'd say no, it may look, think, and act EXACTLY like me, but it's isn't me because my mind and it's are seperate. I wouldn't be willing to die just because another me is walking around, because it isn't me. The transporter is doing just that as far as I'm concerned, it's just killing me before it makes my clone.

Different scenario. If two people, A and A', exist concurrently and both have qualitative identity with the original individual, then another criterion must come into play - namely, physical (numerical) identity. In this case, the person with numerical identity with the individual wins. In the scenario we were talking about, there was no such decision to be made.

[Lazar]

I look at this way. Say we make a clone of you right now, without ripping your flesh apart into energy first. It's a perfect clone, you in every way, even memories. Is the clone you? Do you share consciousness? I'd say no, it may look, think, and act EXACTLY like me, but it's isn't me because my mind and it's are seperate. I wouldn't be willing to die just because another me is walking around, because it isn't me. The transporter is doing just that as far as I'm concerned, it's just killing me before it makes my clone.

I agree; I think from the perspective of the person being transported, it kills you. If you break someone's brain into atoms and then reassemble it into an exact copy, I think you've killed one person and made a new person - as if someone cloned me, implanted my memories into the clone, and then killed me. It wouldn't matter to external observers, but it would matter to me: I think this reflects the fact that the only consciousness we know is our own; to me, other people are just a series of sensory stimuli, and I presume that these reflect other consciousnesses, but I can't be 100% sure - so if you destroyed one and replaced it with a copy, I wouldn't know the difference.

But at the same time, I can't be sure how consciousness is created and sustained, and how the transporter deals with it. My criterion for death is continuity of consciousness; if the transporter can seamlessly transfer my consciousness into a computer for the trip, then maybe it is the same consciousness, merely occupying different vessels - and thus, no point where the consciousness ceases to be, or where a distinct duplicate is created. In this case, the Riker incident would become a question of whether one consciousness can be split into two.

All true, if and only if you accept continued physical identity of consciousness as the only indicator of personal identity.

I do. As I say above, we can never truly know any consciousness other than our own, so if A is secretly killed and replaced with an exact duplicate, then I will presume him to be the same person, and I'll have no evidence to the contrary; but I will be mistaken. If there's a conflict between one person's own knowledge of self, and an external person's observational knowledge of others, I think the self wins.

[Lighthawk]

All true, if and only if you accept continued physical identity of consciousness as the only indicator of personal identity.

Considering that my identity is directly related to my having a physical form (If my brain gets shredded, I'm pretty sure my indentity is destroyed as well, barring religious beliefs), then yeah, I'd call it true.

Different scenario. If two people, A and A', exist concurrently and both have qualitative identity with the original individual, then another criterion must come into play - namely, physical (numerical) identity. In this case, the person with numerical identity with the individual wins. In the scenario we were talking about, there was no such decision to be made.

I'll be honset, I didn't really follow half of that.

Edit: Oh and, I think we're going to need a mod split...but only if the mod can do so without killing the thread in the process.

[Captain Seafort]

In this case, the Riker incident would become a question of whether one consciousness can be split into two.

I would say not, since "conciousness" is simply a term for a given pattern of electrical activity in the brain. Since a transporter produces an exact copy of the original individual, that pattern would likewise be identical. In Riker's case the original activity ceased, and two identical patterns started up in two newly-created bodies a short time later. Neither of which has any continuity with the original.

[Captain Seafort]

Edit: Oh and, I think we're going to need a mod split...but only if the mod can do so without killing the thread in the process.

*Waves magic wand*

[Lazar]

I would say not, since "conciousness" is simply a term for a given pattern of electrical activity in the brain. Since a transporter produces an exact copy of the original individual, that pattern would likewise be identical. In Riker's case the original activity ceased, and two identical patterns started up in two newly-created bodies a short time later. Neither of which has any continuity with the original.

Well, I've always been of the "transporter kills you" opinion, but now that I think about it, it might be possible to imagine a kind of transporter that doesn't. The body is the vessel for the consciousness, and in transportation, the body is broken down and reassembled; but what if the consciousness can occupy a temporary vessel in between, with continuity? I.e. if you replace a person's neurons one by one with bits of data on a computer (and subsequently replace these bits of data with reassembled neurons), perhaps their consciousness (as a pattern of electrical activity) is preserved without interruption. I'm not sure if this is exactly how ST transporters work, but it might be theoretically possible.

[Lighthawk]

I would say not, since "conciousness" is simply a term for a given pattern of electrical activity in the brain. Since a transporter produces an exact copy of the original individual, that pattern would likewise be identical. In Riker's case the original activity ceased, and two identical patterns started up in two newly-created bodies a short time later. Neither of which has any continuity with the original.

Well, I've always been of the "transporter kills you" opinion, but now that I think about it, it might be possible to imagine a kind of transporter that doesn't. The body is the vessel for the consciousness, and in transportation, the body is broken down and reassembled; but what if the consciousness can occupy a temporary vessel in between, with continuity? I.e. if you replace a person's neurons one by one with bits of data on a computer (and subsequently replace these bits of data with reassembled neurons), perhaps their consciousness (as a pattern of electrical activity) is preserved without interruption. I'm not sure if this is exactly how ST transporters work, but it might be theoretically possible.

That works providing you believe that your consciousness is a matter of the energy/chemical transfer process taking place in your brain, and that such energy can be moved from an organic processor to an inorganic one. I look at that as thinking, if I can put my thoughts into a computer and it's still me, then that method works.

Problem with that is though, that the technology to transfer a person's thoughts to a computer wasn't invented until TNG. I forget the guy's name, but the person who invented it used it to take over Data's body when he died.

[Lazar]

Problem with that is though, that the technology to transfer a person's thoughts to a computer wasn't invented until TNG. I forget the guy's name, but the person who invented it used it to take over Data's body when he died.

Ira Graves? But yes, you have a point.

[Lighthawk]

Problem with that is though, that the technology to transfer a person's thoughts to a computer wasn't invented until TNG. I forget the guy's name, but the person who invented it used it to take over Data's body when he died.

Ira Graves? But yes, you have a point.

Yes, thank you.

[stitch626]

Bring religion into the equation though. If the transporter does kill you and replace you with a duplicate that thinks it's the real you, then what you have is a bunch of souless clones wandering about.

That's if each body only gets one soul though. Theoretically speaking there's no reason each new clone doesn't get their own soul.

Depends on which religion. For example, the Bible actually says that living things are souls. Doesn't really make much of a difference though. Someone is still getting torn apart, and someone is still getting put together.