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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Well consciousness is just chemical and electrical impulses. If you manage to re-create everything down to the molecule in the right area then you could completely rebuild the consciousness. Also means you'd be able to completely manipulate memories, experiences, basically anything held in the brain. Provided you had an intense enough neural mapping and deep enough understanding of the human brain to accomplish that. Luckily in the Trek universe, at least at the time of the 24th/25th century, that isn't possible.
Your current consciousness, the one you are thinking with right now, would end.
A clone of you would go on at the transport site, fully believing that it is you, and that everything was fine.
Reconstructive teleportation is just remote replicators with mind control.
Feel free to prove the discontinuation of consciousness scientifically while satisfying all philosophic schools of thought on the matter.
If you make a perfectly exact replica of yourself do you suddenly perceive the universe from two perspectives?
Is this the point where we start talking about Theseus and his ship?
I mean, is there a scientific consensus on what constitutes consciousness? I thought that was a stumbling point on trying to pin down the various parts of the study of it. I wouldn't say brain activity ceases while sleeping like that other comment but I'm in the camp that thinks the break in consciousness/awareness-of-being in a ST transporter is not really different than the break when sleeping.
Easy, build the clone without destroying the original, then test if they share perceptions and memories. Show one a playing card and ask the other what card it was or something. Proving that two people don't have the same consciousness is pretty trivial, and I don't know of any philosophical schools that would dispute that.
I think you're just talking about Thomas Riker
Yup, pretty much. It's a shame Star Trek recognizes and points out this problem but then chickens out of it actually having any consequences.
Same as sleeping. You could have been replaced by a clone every night while sleeping and never know it.
That sounds like a form of last Thursdayism. The entire universe could've been created last Thursday with everything made to seem older, including everyone's memories. These philosophies are usually shot down by occam's razor.
Agree for Occam's if someone is actually suggesting they are replaced nightly or your last Thursdayism, but as for conceiving of parallels to a made up teleportation technology and its philosophical implications, is the break in consciousness/self awareness for sleep not a reasonable comparison?
Occam's razor is choosing the simplest answer. There is no simple answer when it comes to teleportation. I'm not sure there is a full break in consciousness when we sleep. Consciousness may not even be the right word...
In this case I'm not defining consciousness as simply being awake, but instead defining it as the perspective from which each individual perceives the universe.
then we get to really specifically define individual, perspective, and perception (can you perceive while unconscious? I guess?), all sorts of fun knots to tie oneself into. I always thought the difference in sense vs. perception was the thinking about it, but if it's processed at all by the "unconscious" I guess it's still perception? I mean, I'm gettting twisted up thinking if my individual consciousness has a perspective from which it perceives the world
Occam's razor is just one tool though, not an end all be all answer. Complicated things happen.
Cloning isn't necessary. Every night your stream of consciousness could actually and permanently end and a new one is created upon dreaming/waking but you would never know it. This could be how it really works though we can't know that. You could continuously lose and create new consciousnesses every firing of a neuron.
True. This could be the first and only day of your life so far!
Same thing happens every time you go to sleep. If your consciousness exists you exist, right down to you worrying about continuity of consciousness.
Brain activity does not cease when you sleep.
Are you sure?
Yes.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-science-of-sleep-understanding-what-happens-when-you-sleep
Pretty sure we would know by now if people became braindead on a nightly basis.
I'd buy this argument if brain death happened every time you went to sleep. Being in maintenance mode doesn't count.
That's assuming you know which exact parts do exactly what. Kinda like an encrypted zip file versus an unencrypted one.
You edit whatever set of bits/bytes you want in both, but only in one of them will you actually know whats going on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon
It's just a more complicated example of the ship of Theseus, and honestly it comes down to if you believe in the concept of a soul.
To illustrate mechanically is a computer with the same model of hard drive with a copy of the data the same?
If you take the drive apart, ship its parts somewhere, and reassemble it, is it the same drive?
Yes. But that's not what's happening in teleportation. It doesn't use the same parts, but different ones arranged in the exact same way.
Depends on the teleportation system. In star trek you are comprised of the same physical material, just converted to energy and back. I could be wrong though, I'm no expert. I think a more interesting question is, would you be more ok being killed in one place, having your body be transported mundanely and being revived at your destination, or being cloned perfectly and then having the original killed? Theoretically the same to you either way
Not the same to you. As soon as the same tech can be used to clone, it feels fundamentally different.
You die in one place, and a consciousness that thinks it's you starts in another place. Does the order really matter?
Yes. Doing it in a different order means there's a version of me with different experiences. But even if you do it in the same order, that it can be used to clone means there is a me that dies and doesn't come back to life. Whereas if it can't be cloning, then it's just me.
I believe there have been numerous times where it’s confirmed that you are conscious and perceiving things while in the transport stream
Barclay got sweet tentacle hugs a few times during transport.
Play the game SOMA
Daniel Dennet: "Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events, could explain consciousness at all."
We don't understand just how this works just yet. But I'm confident that some day we will.