PyramidHead
Contributor
From Sacramento State:
There are many other aspects to the problem, but I want to focus on just this one. If you were sure that the technology worked, would you press the button in both variations, or just one (or neither)?
I believe that pushing the button under either scenario would be irreversible suicide from the perspective of the person pushing the button. My argument goes something like this:
i.
The first scenario (simultaneous destruction and replication), is not different in any relevant way from the variation (slight delay between destruction and replication). That is, anything that is true about someone who presses the button in the first scenario is true in the variation as well. Thus, the variation can be used in place of the first scenario for the purposes of demonstrating a point, or revealing intuitions about personal continuity.
ii.
In the variation, after the duplicate is made but before the button-pusher is destroyed, there are two beings. This is evidenced by the fact that they can have a brief conversation with each other via satellite. At that moment, one being is experiencing the sensory data associated with sitting in front of a button in a cubicle on Earth, while the other being's sensory data is associated with sitting in a duplication chamber on Mars. By this, we can infer that it feels different to be the button-pusher versus being the duplicate. For instance, if a Martian mosquito buzzes by the duplicate's head, the button-pusher will not experience it, any more than the duplicate would experience the smell of Indian food in a room adjacent to the button-pusher's cubicle. Their first-person perspectives are completely restricted to the brains they currently occupy.
Note that it may still be true that both beings can legitimately claim to be the same person: they both have the same physical makeup as of minutes ago, so they share all the same memories, opinions, scars, personality traits, etc. But since it is obvious that, after the duplicate is created, being the button-pusher involves a vastly divergent set of first-person experiences compared to being the duplicate, they do not share a single consciousness. After the duplication event, even if the button-pusher is not destroyed, his first-person perspective will never represent what it is like to be the duplicate.
iii.
From all this, I infer that the button-pusher will not enjoy the benefits of having an extra $1 million USD. If he is unable to experience the Martian mosquito from his cubicle on Earth, he will certainly never experience spending the reward money. It is thus irrational for the button-pusher to weigh the pros and cons of pushing the button based on the expected financial reward, since from his perspective, he will not actually be the one enjoying the reward. Again, someone who can legitimately claim to be the same person as him may enjoy the reward, but that experience will not be continuous with the button-pusher's incoming flow of sense data. When his entire body is destroyed in a few minutes, the button-pusher's internal perspective will cease to exist based on uncontroversial assumptions about bodily integrity. Although the duplicate on Mars will have a nearly identical internal perspective, which contains the same sense experiences as the button-pusher's up until a few minutes ago, the fact that they were unable to access each other's direct experiences during the slight delay proves that being two identical instances of the same consciousness does not entail having the same subjective experiences.
iv.
I define death as the permanent cessation of an individual stream of subjective experience. It is what we say of a being for whom it is irreversibly no longer like anything to be, when at a prior time it was like something to be this being. Sleep is not death, as the cessation of the individual's subjective experience is only temporary, and resumes in the same body and brain upon awakening. Gradual replacement of cells and/or particles over time is not death, as the functional inter-relationships (between organs, tissues, neuronal junctions, etc.) that are necessary for bodily survival are not broken during gradual replacement. However, a being whose internal sensations progress from sitting in a cubicle, to pushing a button, to having a short conversation via satellite, and to being disintegrated on the spot, is a being that has died.
Moreover, whether an individual bundle of psychologically continuous experiences ceases or goes on living is a fact about that individual consciousness, unaffected by causally isolated events taking place elsewhere in the solar system. Police officers at the scene of a murder do not need to consult a telescope to check whether the victim is dead. She may have uploaded her physical composition to a scanner and shot it off to Venus minutes before being murdered, and the duplicate on Venus would make a great material witness in the court proceedings, because she has all the memories of the murder victim. But the unfortunate victim herself experienced being violently murdered followed by nothing at all forever. Her consciousness was interrupted by the physical trauma that caused her brain to irreparably shut down. Her brain did not check to see if there were any identical brains across the cosmos, into which her first-person vantage point could jump and proceed unabated. Like the button-pusher in Parfit's example, her life is over.
v.
Now that you've heard what I'm claiming, here is what I'm not claiming. I am not saying that the duplicate created by the teletransporter machine is any less the same person as the button-pusher, from the perspective of outside observers. The duplicate would be able to travel back to Earth and take his family and friends on a charming vacation with the reward money, and they would have no reason to treat him any differently than the person who stepped into the cubicle. He is not an impostor nor a fake. His wife is justified in loving him just as much as she has always loved her husband. But recall: all of those things would be true even if the button-pusher were not destroyed. Since their physiological makeups are organically and psychologically indistinguishable, the pair of beings could both enjoy the reward with their family and friends... which would probably be really awkward, but not because one of them was more authentic than the other. Yet, as their sensory input would remain restricted to spatially distinct brains and bodies, death would be permanent for either in the event of a fatal injury or debilitating disease.
For these reasons, I do not believe a teletransporter would be a beneficial technology for the people using it. For society at large, or indeed for the human race, it could turn out to be the key to spreading our species across the galaxy. But that would be at the expense of terminating the localized consciousness of anyone who pushes the button, in a manner no less real than dying in a plane crash or a hunting accident. If death is something we wish to avoid because we have preferences that can only be satisfied by continuing to live, the fact that our duplicates will be able to satisfy those preferences is little consolation in the face of my imminent oblivion. It would not be enough to say that the person who satisfies my preferences is the same person as me. It would also need to be the case that my internal, subjective, first-person conscious experiences would be continuous with the person who satisfies my preferences. Otherwise, I would never experience the satisfaction of my preferences, any more than I experience your satisfaction of your preferences. As far as we know, the only way to guarantee such continuity is to preserve its local substrate, i.e. my brain.*
*This does not rule out "uploading" consciousness to a new substrate, at least not in any way I can think of, as long as the process is slow enough that at any given time, the consciousness of the being undergoing the procedure is not fully broken down and then reconstructed.
Disclaimer:
There are many other aspects to the problem, but I want to focus on just this one. If you were sure that the technology worked, would you press the button in both variations, or just one (or neither)?
I believe that pushing the button under either scenario would be irreversible suicide from the perspective of the person pushing the button. My argument goes something like this:
i.
The first scenario (simultaneous destruction and replication), is not different in any relevant way from the variation (slight delay between destruction and replication). That is, anything that is true about someone who presses the button in the first scenario is true in the variation as well. Thus, the variation can be used in place of the first scenario for the purposes of demonstrating a point, or revealing intuitions about personal continuity.
ii.
In the variation, after the duplicate is made but before the button-pusher is destroyed, there are two beings. This is evidenced by the fact that they can have a brief conversation with each other via satellite. At that moment, one being is experiencing the sensory data associated with sitting in front of a button in a cubicle on Earth, while the other being's sensory data is associated with sitting in a duplication chamber on Mars. By this, we can infer that it feels different to be the button-pusher versus being the duplicate. For instance, if a Martian mosquito buzzes by the duplicate's head, the button-pusher will not experience it, any more than the duplicate would experience the smell of Indian food in a room adjacent to the button-pusher's cubicle. Their first-person perspectives are completely restricted to the brains they currently occupy.
Note that it may still be true that both beings can legitimately claim to be the same person: they both have the same physical makeup as of minutes ago, so they share all the same memories, opinions, scars, personality traits, etc. But since it is obvious that, after the duplicate is created, being the button-pusher involves a vastly divergent set of first-person experiences compared to being the duplicate, they do not share a single consciousness. After the duplication event, even if the button-pusher is not destroyed, his first-person perspective will never represent what it is like to be the duplicate.
iii.
From all this, I infer that the button-pusher will not enjoy the benefits of having an extra $1 million USD. If he is unable to experience the Martian mosquito from his cubicle on Earth, he will certainly never experience spending the reward money. It is thus irrational for the button-pusher to weigh the pros and cons of pushing the button based on the expected financial reward, since from his perspective, he will not actually be the one enjoying the reward. Again, someone who can legitimately claim to be the same person as him may enjoy the reward, but that experience will not be continuous with the button-pusher's incoming flow of sense data. When his entire body is destroyed in a few minutes, the button-pusher's internal perspective will cease to exist based on uncontroversial assumptions about bodily integrity. Although the duplicate on Mars will have a nearly identical internal perspective, which contains the same sense experiences as the button-pusher's up until a few minutes ago, the fact that they were unable to access each other's direct experiences during the slight delay proves that being two identical instances of the same consciousness does not entail having the same subjective experiences.
iv.
I define death as the permanent cessation of an individual stream of subjective experience. It is what we say of a being for whom it is irreversibly no longer like anything to be, when at a prior time it was like something to be this being. Sleep is not death, as the cessation of the individual's subjective experience is only temporary, and resumes in the same body and brain upon awakening. Gradual replacement of cells and/or particles over time is not death, as the functional inter-relationships (between organs, tissues, neuronal junctions, etc.) that are necessary for bodily survival are not broken during gradual replacement. However, a being whose internal sensations progress from sitting in a cubicle, to pushing a button, to having a short conversation via satellite, and to being disintegrated on the spot, is a being that has died.
Moreover, whether an individual bundle of psychologically continuous experiences ceases or goes on living is a fact about that individual consciousness, unaffected by causally isolated events taking place elsewhere in the solar system. Police officers at the scene of a murder do not need to consult a telescope to check whether the victim is dead. She may have uploaded her physical composition to a scanner and shot it off to Venus minutes before being murdered, and the duplicate on Venus would make a great material witness in the court proceedings, because she has all the memories of the murder victim. But the unfortunate victim herself experienced being violently murdered followed by nothing at all forever. Her consciousness was interrupted by the physical trauma that caused her brain to irreparably shut down. Her brain did not check to see if there were any identical brains across the cosmos, into which her first-person vantage point could jump and proceed unabated. Like the button-pusher in Parfit's example, her life is over.
v.
Now that you've heard what I'm claiming, here is what I'm not claiming. I am not saying that the duplicate created by the teletransporter machine is any less the same person as the button-pusher, from the perspective of outside observers. The duplicate would be able to travel back to Earth and take his family and friends on a charming vacation with the reward money, and they would have no reason to treat him any differently than the person who stepped into the cubicle. He is not an impostor nor a fake. His wife is justified in loving him just as much as she has always loved her husband. But recall: all of those things would be true even if the button-pusher were not destroyed. Since their physiological makeups are organically and psychologically indistinguishable, the pair of beings could both enjoy the reward with their family and friends... which would probably be really awkward, but not because one of them was more authentic than the other. Yet, as their sensory input would remain restricted to spatially distinct brains and bodies, death would be permanent for either in the event of a fatal injury or debilitating disease.
For these reasons, I do not believe a teletransporter would be a beneficial technology for the people using it. For society at large, or indeed for the human race, it could turn out to be the key to spreading our species across the galaxy. But that would be at the expense of terminating the localized consciousness of anyone who pushes the button, in a manner no less real than dying in a plane crash or a hunting accident. If death is something we wish to avoid because we have preferences that can only be satisfied by continuing to live, the fact that our duplicates will be able to satisfy those preferences is little consolation in the face of my imminent oblivion. It would not be enough to say that the person who satisfies my preferences is the same person as me. It would also need to be the case that my internal, subjective, first-person conscious experiences would be continuous with the person who satisfies my preferences. Otherwise, I would never experience the satisfaction of my preferences, any more than I experience your satisfaction of your preferences. As far as we know, the only way to guarantee such continuity is to preserve its local substrate, i.e. my brain.*
*This does not rule out "uploading" consciousness to a new substrate, at least not in any way I can think of, as long as the process is slow enough that at any given time, the consciousness of the being undergoing the procedure is not fully broken down and then reconstructed.
Disclaimer:
