Will you still be the watcher?

[Story]

A few questions.... hypotheticals... you know useless stuff.

If they copied your body entirely, every molecule of you and created a copy of you. Which one would be you? You would obviously be the original, correct? Even though the new one had all your memories and thoughts. You wouldn't be able to control this new person, although they might do all the same things you do, you would not be the thinker for it, you would not be the watcher.

What if they took your very molecules and split them up individually sent them around the world and then brought them back and rearranged them to make your exact memories and features. Would the previous you be controlling this body or would it be just like a clone from before?

What if they took you apart by every individual molecule and put you back instantly, would this also be just a clone?

Just curious

 

[Aught3]

According to my definition of personhood, both the original and the clone would be 'me'. The clones then immediately start having different experiences and become different people. The disintegration, reintegration situation would be the same person.

 

[brewpanda]

A few questions.... hypotheticals... you know useless stuff.

If they copied your body entirely, every molecule of you and created a copy of you. Which one would be you? You would obviously be the original, correct? Even though the new one had all your memories and thoughts. You wouldn't be able to control this new person, although they might do all the same things you do, you would not be the thinker for it, you would not be the watcher.

What if they took your very molecules and split them up individually sent them around the world and then brought them back and rearranged them to make your exact memories and features. Would the previous you be controlling this body or would it be just like a clone from before?

What if they took you apart by every individual molecule and put you back instantly, would this also be just a clone?

Just curious

Wouldn't it depend on your defintion of, as Aught said, personhood?

If you believe in an intangible soul necessarily connected to the specific assembly of particles, it would be you.
If you believe in an intangible soul and are a substance dualist, that second copy is not you. It is simply a thing whose phenomena looks like you. It is, however, distinct from you.
If you are a materialist, and a person is defined by the matter alone, they both are you. But experience is subjective, so after the point of the copy's creation, experience becomes unique to it, thus making it, as Aught aptly proposed, separate from you.

In the second part of your post, are they rearranged differently that convey the same appearance and memories? Or are they arranged in the same manner as they were prior?

But it becomes a philosophical, ethical and even moral debate if/once teleportation becomes possible for substance of greater matter.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

For the hell of it I will say no, on the grounds that the thing that is 'me' is essentially nothing more than continuous brain metabolism and/or activity. I become truely 'dead' at that point when my brain's metabolism ceases to opperate (or perhaps looses the capasity to opperate, I'm not entirely clear on my cell biology), thus even reassembled molecules would not be 'me' as I am dead.

A copy likewise would not be 'me' on the grounds that it is a seperate - non continuous - metabolic process.


That said, I might still be willing to use a transporter or somesuch provided there were at least the illusion of continuity.

 

[Squawk]

Is time continuous? My answer to this question will be heavily influenced by the answer to that question.

 

[Noumenon]

I posed a similar question (possibly in the wrong place, it's attached to a Reincarnation thread in the Religion wing), I'd be interested to see what anyone thinks:

Imagine that a process is developed in which, upon death, your brain is removed and the biological materials are replaced with non-decaying alternatives, so every aspect of your brain's machinery remains intact but inoperative. Subsequently, a process is developed in which these preservative materials can be substituted for artificially alive matter, allowing the precise arrangement of reactive material that once was your brain to become active once more. Everything that formerly constituted mental activity - memory, imagination, whatever - picks up where it left off. Finally, now the question:

Is this still your consciousness?

And apologies for basically touting my sole contribution to the LoRforum around the place like a one trick pony.

 

[Giliell]

Well, it would kind of be like having an identical twin, wouldn't it?
Identical twins are totally identical copies at the time they seperate, only that time is very early in their development. So, since every twin is a me, and the other twin is you, that would be kind of the same.

 

[RichardMNixon]

I say no. To the rest of society nothing will have changed, but to me, the me who is typing this now, I will be dead. The new copy will remember having typed this, but that's not much consolation to me now. I will cease to be.

Edit: For some reason I assumed the question required my destruction to make the new one. If not, I still say the copy wouldn't be me. I am just a bag of meat, but I am THIS bag of meat, not THAT one and it is only through THIS bag of meat that I can perceive the universe.

 

[lrkun]

A few questions.... hypotheticals... you know useless stuff.

If they copied your body entirely, every molecule of you and created a copy of you. Which one would be you? You would obviously be the original, correct? Even though the new one had all your memories and thoughts. You wouldn't be able to control this new person, although they might do all the same things you do, you would not be the thinker for it, you would not be the watcher.

What if they took your very molecules and split them up individually sent them around the world and then brought them back and rearranged them to make your exact memories and features. Would the previous you be controlling this body or would it be just like a clone from before?

What if they took you apart by every individual molecule and put you back instantly, would this also be just a clone?

Just curious

It won't be me who's controlling this new person. Like me, he will have an original way of looking at things. He may act like me, do things like me, but if he meets me, he'll do something differently. Of course, this is only hypothetical, unless and until it happens in reality, I can only guess.

 

[Jotto999]

Identical copy: Not you.
Disassembled and rearranged: I'm not completely sure, but I think it would still be you.

 

[Memoryfull]

The rearranged version of you would be, in my opinion, you. While not a perfect example I thought about it this way. Say you cut your arm and it's later re-attached, it would still be your arm, even though you lost it for a while.

Identical copy its just that, a copy. While it might be exactly like you for a small period of time, it will end up being affected, at one point or another, by different phnomenons over a period of time, thus changing it, to something different than yourself.

 

[Jotto999]

The rearranged version of you would be, in my opinion, you. While not a perfect example I thought about it this way. Say you cut your arm and it's later re-attached, it would still be your arm, even though you lost it for a while.

Identical copy its just that, a copy. While it might be exactly like you for a small period of time, it will end up being affected, at one point or another, by different phnomenons over a period of time, thus changing it, to something different than yourself.

I had similar reasoning for the brain - that is, with sufficiently advanced technology, if you could take out each region of the brain and put it back together exactly how it was, no damage done or any alteration at all, would you notice the difference? Certainly not, and would it be still you? Yes it would. How about scaling it down to individual neurons? I don't think the answer would change, and I don't know of any mechanism that would change it if we went down to the atomic scale either.

 

[Noumenon]

I say no. To the rest of society nothing will have changed, but to me, the me who is typing this now, I will be dead. The new copy will remember having typed this, but that's not much consolation to me now. I will cease to be.

Edit: For some reason I assumed the question required my destruction to make the new one. If not, I still say the copy wouldn't be me. I am just a bag of meat, but I am THIS bag of meat, not THAT one and it is only through THIS bag of meat that I can perceive the universe.

Your pre-edit statement is more or less how I feel regarding my question, which does require destruction of the original; but I was talking death-replacement-revival, not copy-and-simultaneous-existance as in the original question, and regarding that I agree with your post-edit comment.

Identical copy: Not you.
Disassembled and rearranged: I'm not completely sure, but I think it would still be you.

It has been pointed out to me that, courtesy of anaesthetics (or other excessive substance consumption), conscious experience can be suspended and when the patient (or booze-hound) resurfaces s/he does so without questioning whether they are still themselves (although disorientation is common) (I hear). Thanks to modern medicine a person can (to some agreed degree) die and then be revived, and we do not necessarily question whether they are still "the same person" as before, though obviously the experience may strongly alter their personality.

However (and bearing in mind that I am no neurosurgeon, so corrections are welcomed) these scenarios do not include total termination of brain activity. A stopped heart is not a stopped brain, and (I think) when persons have been revived from total states of inactivity brain damage is common, and this is a condition in which many people may consider a personality to genuinely no longer be the same one as it was before. My intention with the replaced-reconstructed brain question was to avoid this specific issue by suggesting that the revived consciousness is in every way undamaged and operationally identical to the original.

The rearranged version of you would be, in my opinion, you. While not a perfect example I thought about it this way. Say you cut your arm and it's later re-attached, it would still be your arm, even though you lost it for a while.

I think this example falls short of my intention. I could remove and replace any part of the body in this way, with either the original or a copy, in the same sense I could replace any one tool from a tool box: the body is the kit a brain works with to interact with the world, and one hammer works as well as the next. I am concerned that I am perpetrating some dualistic falacy in making the distinction between (mind-)brain and "just" the body though.

I had similar reasoning for the brain - that is, with sufficiently advanced technology, if you could take out each region of the brain and put it back together exactly how it was, no damage or done or any alteration at all, would you notice the difference? Certainly not, and would it be still you? Yes it would. How about scaling it down to individual neurons? I don't think the answer would change, and I don't know of any mechanism that would change it if we went down to the atomic scale either.

My position is that, while "the" consciousness would retain the same content after reactivation, it would no longer be "my" consciousness. One of the problems I have comes down to the fact of total inactivity. I feel that an integral aspect of "me" is the uninterrupted continuity of my conscious existance (above medical-legal definitions notwithstanding). In Jotto999,´s example, I would concur: consciousness is never fully terminated, the operational materials are simply upgraded one by one.

My intuition is that, should my brain fully cease to function, and should it be perfectly but completely replaced prior to reactivation, the subsequent consciousness would not be mine. I am going to attempt a metaphor, so apologies for the torturing:

1) Imagine a dolphin swimming close to the surface of the ocean. Its fluke breaks the surface of the water, creating a distinctive pattern. The dolphin represents the brain, and the created pattern is that of my mind on the surface of consciousness.

2) The natural fluctuations of waves in the ocean cause the dolphin,´s fluke to be submerged at regular intervals, and at times the dolphin dives deeper, at which points any pattern on the surface disappears. When the fluke breaks the surface again the pattern returns, in the same variable but identifiable form as before the interruption. Here, the termporary and extended interruptions could represent sleep or anaethetised unconsciousness, though the living brain continues to exist beneath the surface. The interruption is real, but there is still a sense of material continuity.

3) Eventually the dolphin dies and sinks beneath the surface perminantly. Usually we would expect it to decay and be consumed by the normal natural cycle; however, in this case it is instantly collected by magic scientists ( :| ) who carefully and perfectly conduct the preservation-reconstruction-reactivation procedure and, at some later point, return the uber-dolphin to the ocean. This is, I now realise, more or less the plot of Mary Shelley,´s Frankenstein. Was the monster the same personality as that which previously used the brain it incorporated? I think Shelley said "no".

4) Finally, uber-dolphin resurfaces and, being identical in every aspect except it,´s most basic matterial constituents with the original, the pattern its fluke makes on the ocean surface is identical with that made by the dolphin before its death. So there is no difference between the patterns of consciousness pre- and post-death, but the medium by which the message is transmitted has been subtly but fundamentally altered.

In this sense I assert the distinction above, that while "the" consciousness would retain the same content after reactivation, it would no longer be "my" consciousness. The perspective of "the" consciousness would be that of my own, but I do not think that it would in a true sense still be the experience of the me typing this sentence.

EDIT: After re-reading this, I worry that I am still jumping to that final conclusion without usefully justifying it, dolphin story or not.