Beam me up, Scotty?

Identity, teletransportation and philosophy by sci-fi

Is our personal identity just the particular make up of our physical bodies at a particular point in time? And if so, would a teletransporter that replicated our physical bodies on Mars preserve our personal identity? Thought experiments and transhumanist sci-fi technological dreams such as this are deceptive means of doing philosophy and should be kept in Hollywood and marketing campaigns, writes Nicholas Agar. 

 

In his 1984 philosophical classic Reasons and Persons Derek Parfit tells a story about a fantastical futuristic technology – the Teletransporter. 

 

I enter the Teletransporter. I have been to Mars before, but only by the old method, a space-ship journey taking several weeks. This machine will send me at the speed of light. I merely have to press the green button. Like others, I am nervous. Will it work? I remind myself what I have been told to expect. When I press the button, I shall lose consciousness, and then wake up at what seems a moment later. In fact I shall have been unconscious for about an hour. The Scanner here on Earth will destroy my brain and body, while recording the exact states of all of my cells. It will then transmit this information by radio. Travelling at the speed of light, the message will take three minutes to reach the Replicator on Mars. This will then create, out of new matter, a brain and body exactly like mine. It will be in this body that I shall wake up.

Though I believe that this is what will happen, I still hesitate. But then I remember seeing my wife grin when, at breakfast today, I revealed my nervousness. As she reminded me, she has been often teletransported, and there is nothing wrong with her. I press the button. As predicted, I lose and seem at once to regain consciousness, but in a different cubicle. Examining my new body, I find no change at all.

 

Parfit uses the teletransporter story to launch a philosophical assault on common-sense beliefs about what we are. A series of variations of the teletransporter story demonstrate that we are not individuals whose survival consists in the preservation of our personal identities over time. The seemingly earnest question – ‘after many years of Alzheimer’s disease would it still be me?’ – relies on a false assumption.  

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Elrick 7 November 2023

Very interesting article. At 82, I have been asking my grandchildren for several years now when then they will be able to "beam me up Scotty!"
Quantum Mechanics/Entanglement is taking us closer and closer to the possibility.

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James Deleon 22 May 2021

Hmm, interesting enough. Have you heard something about the teletransport paradox? It is a thought experiment in philosophy of identity that challenges conventional intuitions about the nature of the self and consciousness. The founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, Thomas Reid, wrote to Lord Kames in 1775: “I would be glad to know your Excellency's opinion on the following: when will my brain lose its original structure and when, hundreds of years later, an intelligent creature will be created from the same material in an amazing way , can I consider him myself? Or if two or three such creatures are created from my brain, then can I believe that they are me, and, therefore, one and the same intelligent creature? " I gathered this information from scientific posts on Twitter in which scientists and philosophers talk about the nature of life. There you can find a couple of hundred posts on this topic and I noticed that most of them are posted by accounts that have about 93 thousand subscribers! I am sure this is because the owners of such accounts used the services of https://viplikes.net/buy-twitter-followers in order to increase the number of subscribers.

James Deleon 22 May 2021

Hmm, interesting enough. Have you heard something about the teletransport paradox? It is a thought experiment in philosophy of identity that challenges conventional intuitions about the nature of the self and consciousness. The founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, Thomas Reid, wrote to Lord Kames in 1775: “I would be glad to know your Excellency's opinion on the following: when will my brain lose its original structure and when, hundreds of years later, an intelligent creature will be created from the same material in an amazing way , can I consider him myself? Or if two or three such creatures are created from my brain, then can I believe that they are me, and, therefore, one and the same intelligent creature? " I gathered this information from scientific posts on Twitter in which scientists and philosophers talk about the nature of life. There you can find a couple of hundred posts on this topic and I noticed that most of them are posted by accounts that have about 93 thousand subscribers! I am sure this is because the owners of such accounts used the services of <a href="https://viplikes.net/buy-twitter-followers">https://viplikes.net/buy-twitter-followers</a> in order to increase the number of subscribers.

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